 I welcome everyone to the 10th meeting of the education and skills committee. Can I please remind everyone present to turn them out on mobile phones and other devices that will be silent for the duration of the meeting? The first item of business is the first of four sessions on the committee's pre-budget scrutiny. Later this month we will be looking at Scottish funding council, the Scottish qualifications agency and Education Scotland. Today we are looking at Skills Development Scotland. I welcome to the meeting the main yates, chief executive, Danny Cerdd random gyda'r cyhoi, 그�wch, Cyflawni Cerdd. Felly mae'n calwch. Mi'n ffordd am gyd-f شfoe, dweud, os yw yn ddigon i'r wychau, ym eich ffordd, gyda'r cyhoi, dweud yn gydydd. Felly mae'n gweithio, oedden nhw'n iawn, yn dod o'r cyhoi, a'i ddysgu'r cyhoi. Leto'r cyhoi ddysgu'r cyhoi, oedden nhw'n iawn, mae'n arwet hefyd yn gressio'r cyhoi, os yw me venture-pyffol. I know that I did. I'm going to start the questioning before I do. I'd just like to reiterate my thanks for the visit last week, past and Friday. I did find it very useful and it was encouraging to see all the work that's going on here. My question is round about the equalities. I accept that the figures are improving, but could you give us an update on what it is that you're doing to improve the equality balance according to race, gender and disabilities? I'll maybe start, chair. Thanks again for the opportunity to present evidence. I just explained to the committee that all of the concerns and ambitions that the Scottish Parliament has around the equalities are taken incredibly serious by Skills Development Scotland and by the board. We have a formal sub-committee of our board and a qualities group that look horizontally across all of our services to ensure that we address any underrepresentation within the population. In respect of our career services, we've got a very detailed action plan around enhancing and ensuring that those at disadvantage or at risk of being left behind are specifically supported and addressed through targeted services. Danny Logel offer some very detailed information on that. In respect of national training programmes, the modern apprenticeship programme in particular, Katie Hutton can explain in detail around the action plans that we have to ensure that there's increased representation of underrepresented groups in those programmes. I would remind the committee, and I think that you're all familiar with this, that much of the challenge is a societal challenge. It's deep-seated, it's cultural, it's based on perceptions and views that are formed over many, many years, but there's a responsibility on all of us, not just Skills Development Scotland, but through employers, through parents, through teachers, through the whole system to challenge some of those prejudices and views that we have and to work hard every day of every week to ensure that we address them. I'll maybe call on Danny first to speak in more detail about the impact of services in respect of those at risk in schools, and then Katie can speak more specifically on the improving uptake of modern apprenticeship across a range of equality groups. A couple of points to highlight in terms of our school offer. We now have a whole school offer that now starts in P7S1, and that was the result of developing Scotland's Young Workforce, so there's a greater focus now in that earlier age group. We also have a senior phase work, which is S4 to S6, so now what we have for the first time, in fact anywhere in the OECD countries, we have a career service that works from P7 all the way through to S6. In doing so, what that allows us to do is what we call earlier intervention. We are able to work with schools to identify young people with all different sorts of support needs that they may have. That includes two aspects to that. One is about what we call a needs matrix, and we agree that each year with the school to identify young people who potentially are at risk of not fulfilling a positive destination when they leave school, or perhaps have some additional support for learning needs. Currently, around about 28-29 per cent of pupils between S4 and S6 fall into that particular category. As Damian indicated, we offer a targeted support through our work coaches and career coaches in schools to offer a very intensive case management service. In addition to that, we've also been working with Education Scotland and schools around the career education standards, and that particularly is a career education standard from age 3 to 18. We work very closely with teachers and parents to raise awareness of the world of careers, what that means for all individuals, including some of the challenges that Damian mentioned, whether it's additional support needs, whether it's issues around looked after and accommodated children. In fact, there are just under 5,500 young people with a care experience in secondary schools just now between S2 and S6. At the same time, we are doing a lot of work, particularly with the Institute of Physics and other organisations, to try to address some of the qualifications around particular gender stereotyping in careers. That very much forms the support of our careers advisers and work coaches providing school. In addition to that, we also have our My World of Work web service, and a lot of the emphasis and support in the areas around how we support parents, teachers and young people in terms of raising awareness of what career opportunities are there right across the board and to make sure that we address issues around gender stereotyping. There has been some movement, but Damian talked about societal values and having to change them. At the end of the day, you are responsible for the apprenticeship programme. You are the one who has to be pushing that change from your viewpoint. What steps are you making to try and change the perception from businesses that this is the right way to go? To say clearly that we would not share our responsibility in that respect, Cady will talk in detail about the very specific actions that we have taken, both with parents and young people, with training providers and with employers, to ensure that they are aware of their responsibilities. As much as we fund, we depend on employers to put into place actions that respect and respond to the qualities agenda. I might ask Cady to offer the committee some very specific details about the actions that we are taking and the improvements that we have seen in the last number of years. The first thing that we did was engage with our stakeholders. A lot of that was about framing the challenge, understanding the challenge for each of the groups that are underrepresented in modern apprenticeships and informing the activities that we would undertake. What we have done is encapsulated that in an action plan that shows our ambition and frames the challenge as well as the activities and interim measures. The measures that we have taken are specific to each group, but there are some common themes going across what we do. For instance, when it comes to disability, we have particular activities such as funding support and additional support needs fund attached to an employability fund. That is for things such as reasonable adjustments such as BSL interpreters funding that. We have also done things such as coloured overlays and scribing pens for dyslexia too. We have also done a comprehensive suite of training and webinars informed by our stakeholders and delivered in many cases by our stakeholders to all the training providers too. That has been going on and that will continue to go on. We have also undertaken a number of action research projects around specific issues around working with partners such as West College Scotland, Cod SEP Northern and autism, working with the community development trust around dyslexia. I could go on as a range of action research projects. My idea behind that was to understand how it works better so that we can inform the mainstreaming because we cannot keep doing project work all the time. It was really about that too. We have also developed toolkit materials for all the advisers that are used widely by partners to disability. What we have done is that we have funded action research projects with them around what they can do to support and how we can then feed that out to other employers too. What we have also done is that we have produced a whole suite of materials too. We have produced little postcards, which has in one side of it the kind of things that employers might see. The reason for that is that there is a gender imbalance, for instance, because I do not get enough recruits. In the back of it, there are things that they could do. We have invested a lot of resources in personnel working and driving this through the business and training providers. We have also added to our ITT documentation specific requirements around providing evidence about what people do in terms of equalities, training providers, employers and so on. Each individual contractor for national training programmes has to develop an equality action plan and be seen to actively implement it. It is followed up by our skills investment advisers. We have also supported our staff to be able to do that better too. I could go on at length here, but there is a whole range of actions. Obviously, there are actions for each specific group too around what we can do there. The figures have increased disability in particular. We always thought that there was an issue around the self-reported nature of disability. There has been work with the Equalities Challenger Unit in two areas. One is to help training providers and other suppliers to enable individuals to self-disclose. We know, for instance, that university students are happy to disclose a disability in a university setting, but when they go out into the labour market, they do not like to do it. Understanding that is about not asking people to self-declare a disability in a group setting. It is practical measures. The other thing is about the way that you ask a question in a particular order and what we capture in terms of disability too. We have Equalities Challenger Units too. We speak to all the stakeholders involved and also benchmark against other countries too in terms of what is considered in terms of disability. One of the very important developments, I think, should help in changing mindsets about a pathway that people think is not for them or for whatever reason. They just do not think that they would have the courage or the belief that they could progress in that opportunity. The introduction of foundation apprenticeships in senior phase in school offers a low-risk way for senior phase pupils to have a go at something that they might have thought was not for me. The practicalities of addressing gender bias but equally the Equalities Agenda through foundation apprenticeships in senior phase could be one of the most practical things that we deliver. It changes both the mindsets of the individual and the parents and the teachers that it is possible. Far from being something that they cannot do, they thrive in it. Equally, as Katie says, we have to every day of every week keep the pressure up on employers, training providers and keep the centre stage because it is not a nice tool, it is an absolute essential thing to follow through on. A couple of questions around that. No, a couple of my colleagues are going to ask questions on this as well. How long has that been a focus and have you seen any market improvement based on the work that you've been doing, particularly the stuff that you mentioned, Katie? And do you have targets to reach in terms of these equality? We have taken the first question. We have targets to reach that have been set through the youth employment strategy coming out of the recommendations of developing young workforce and there are targets in relation to four specific groups to do with gender, disability, care leavers and also ethnic minorities. We have also set ourselves into them targets in the way that is in our action plan. We have certainly galvanised a lot of activity over the last couple of years. I think that it is interesting to contrast with, we have been talking to the Skills Funding Agency about their approach as part of it and they do not see themselves similar to us in terms of the funding of modern apprenticeships on behalf of the UK Government. Their approach is that they do not see themselves as having a role in promoting equalities because it is the employer that recruits and they do not see themselves as stepping in the way. I suppose that the approach here is to exhaust all the efforts that we can in terms of the leavers that we have. In terms of increases, particularly for disability, at the end of 2014-15, 0.4 per cent of individuals' self-declared is being disabled. We had done a wee bit of matching of our figures with our careers records and the data hub records that we have. We always knew that there would have been an underreporting issue. It went up to 3.9 per cent at the end of last year and the quarter 2 figures came out yesterday and it is up at 7.6 per cent. That is sustained from quarter 1 because I am always a wee bit cautious of mentioning quarter figures. There are differences throughout the year that goes on but it is being sustained this year at 7. There is more to do, obviously, going forward. There has been increase there. Ethnic minority groups, there has been a slight increase there. What we are learning there is that we are up against quite strong cultural preferences with some ethnic minority groups around preferences to go to HE and FE. There is a culture in some ethnic minority groups around sacrifice now and you will reap the rewards better going forward in the future. If you look at 80 per cent of ethnic minority groups go to HE and FE compared to 65 per cent for all of the population, you are up against that. The things that we have learned is definitely to engage ethnic minority groups on their home turf and community groups. After Friday prayers on Edinburgh central mosque, we have a stand there and everything to do that. We have been working with Beemyson, Wezrec and other groups around engaging ethnic minority communities in partner premises. In some cases, we have been driving awareness around apprenticeships and then what is not necessarily matching into seeing figures improve is necessary. Sometimes it does not match up with the expectation of an opportunity or secondly, there is an employability skills provision there. We have been working with community groups to improve employability skills of some ethnic minority groups. That is quarter two. It was 1.4 at the end of last year, it is going up slightly, 1.6 per cent. That is going to be a lot of intensive work required there too. Care leavers, there was not a baseline for that and we got one at the end of last financial year. That is 1 per cent of all that we started last year. It is clear that it is being a care leaver. There is not really a population, an agreed population figure in Scotland to reference that again, but we have got a baseline to work from and it is about 1.1 per cent just now too. Fender is a long standing issue and there has been multiple work over the years in terms of occupational segregation. It went up 1 per cent in terms of overall participation, but you have still seen that occupational segregation. A lot of the activities that are required to influence that are upstream of modern apprenticeships. It is starting in schools and nurseries. It is with parents influencing them. I think that is a long haul there. Certainly, if you look at European countries, it is the same situation around occupational segregation. I will give the chair an example. Participation in engineering apprenticeships, good quality engineering apprenticeships among young women is not nearly as high as we would like. We looked really hard at what are the reasons for that. In 2016, how can it be that we do not have a much more balanced participation in that? One of the interesting statistics that we reported at the last committee was that of young people in Scotland who get a pass or a higher grade in physics every year, 72 per cent are boys. If you are not studying physics, then the likely progression into engineering is going to be highly restricted. That is nothing to do with capacity and capability, because generally young women outperform young men in terms of progression into medicine and other disciplines. It is a perception. It is a belief that it is not a sector that they are interested in or that they do not value or that it is somehow or another formative education or that our influences on their life suggest that it is not for them. It is very deep seated. In that example, we spend a lot of time engaging with the Institute of Physics around what are the outliers where in the world do we have examples that we could draw on that would allow us to believe that we could change it. The only significant outlier is in single-sex schools, which is bizarre, and I guess not bizarre in some respects, but we are certainly not going to move back to that. There is a real challenge around the language and around how young women are engaged in that. One of the early seeds of hope in that space goes back to the point that I mentioned around foundation apprenticeships. I would encourage maybe if the committee can get out into schools and have a look at some of the early pathfinders around foundation apprenticeships. Lachgelli High School was one of the first to take on foundation apprenticeships in engineering, and the vast majority were young women. The success of attracting them onto the programme was the change of language and the introduction of the words around design and so on that broadened the appeal. Having undertaken the foundation apprenticeship, our hope is that people will migrate much more easily into pathways that they had not previously considered. However, as I said, this is going to be a long-term challenge, and all of us right through the system are going to have to challenge the unconscious bias that we often maintain, people just through their language or through how they act and behave creating unconscious bias that is fed in. Before I pass you on to Johann Lamont for some questions, I note today that the apprenticeships numbers come out. We seem very encouraging, but can you reassure us that this will help you to achieve your target? We will not overstate the case, but at the end of quarter two, the figures are strong and the progress towards the targets that we have just discussed at a higher level and a very specific level are in the right direction. We remain confident that we can deliver on both the volume targets and the sub targets that are set for the national training programmes. Thank you very much. I also put on record my thanks to the weekly group on test days for the visits that I had and particularly struck with the enthusiasm of the people who were delivering the apprenticeship programme, but the young people who came and spoke to us, who were absolutely first class and we would want to wish them all well in the future but were hugely impressed by that. Can I go back to the issue about the question of equality in the delivery of your work? If there was an equality impact assessment on your spend, would it pass? I think that it would in the sense of the resource that we have and how we are deploying that and the efforts that we are making. Are we seeing the absolute translation of that specifically in our programmes alone? I think that the answer is no, because I go back to the point that Katie made. To see the balance of choice in equalities across all of the skills programme is really required because should it be that you have an absolute mirror of the population in every choice or would it be that in some choices you have increased choices by women into medicine as opposed to apprenticeships? For that reason, would the committee suggest that we dampen young women's enthusiasm for medicine and somehow plan and force them to choose apprenticeships over? That is not the choice that we are talking about. It is that within your spending, if disproportionately the modern apprenticeships are created are in subjects that girls are less likely to do, you are disproportionately funding the skills needs of boys. That is not against those boys who have made that choice. It is society in all the rest of it. However, in the direct spend by Skills Development Scotland you are disproportionately investing in some groups as opposed to others. What we are trying to think about is what you are doing to address that question now. You made the point about giving extra support. You said specifically about the employability fund. If you remind us what your broad budget is on modern apprenticeships and the employability fund, what proportion of that funding is ring fenced to deliver the supports that are required to make sure that people with disabilities can access modern apprenticeships? We do not ring fens in the employability fund for specific actions around that, but what we are trying to do is look at the needs as we go along. There are other employability-funded programmes across Scotland that we would encourage that partners are also funded through as well. It is about linking all available employability funding programmes in Scotland and using that to help people. In terms of what you are talking about with the gender-related spend, we do not create the modern apprenticeship opportunities and their jobs. In a sense, that suggests that what we are doing is saying that we are going to invest there and we are forgetting about all those other people. The jobs have to be there. It is also a consequence of the recruitment choices that employers make. We can exhaust the efforts that we can do, but we will then be getting into things such as quotas. I am not sure that the employer community would be particularly in favour of telling people who to recruit. With respect to the reason for the public purse to expect its money to be dispersed in a fair way and that if your position is that it is not about us, it is about the employers, what is the point of an equality action plan? I think that you need to be extremely careful about the duality of what we are trying to do here. The apprenticeship funding is to support apprenticeships, which is a derived demand from employers. Government does not create apprenticeships. Employers create apprenticeships. They set a target in the hope that industry will match that. Government cannot force businesses to create apprenticeships. We can insist that the money that is spent by government is spent fairly across the college schools. Absolutely. It is a jobs market. It is jobs that are created to support apprenticeships, which are funded. Thereafter, as we have said already, there is a whole range of sub targets of which we have a real concern for. Somehow or another, we are splitting how the funds are spent by gender. I find that one a very difficult one to work out how we would do that. It might be difficult, but with respect, it is the public purse. If anybody said to me that there is a fund created and I can guarantee you that 70 per cent of that money will go to boys rather than girls, that less than 5 per cent will go to meet the needs of people with disabilities, I would have a concern about that. I wonder whether that is something that, when you have been asked to implement an equality action plan, you are actually working on? I think that that also gets into the legalities of who you are choosing to give money to in terms of recruitment too. There are some legal issues around being disproportionately proactive with one particular group around recruitment. There are legal issues concerned with that too. There are legal issues, but there is the equality act as well, which says that funds should be spent proportionately. There is an issue about people with disabilities and about women. Can I ask if you think that there is an issue about age? We know that you have been asked to focus on 16 to 24-year-olds, but there are significant numbers of people in our communities who would. I think that the CBI highlighted that if there were more flexibility around age, we could address the question of people needing to be reskilled, or in fact people who have lost out at an early stage in their lives who might take the opportunity to do an apprenticeship and get themselves into sustainable employment. I am so happy to answer that question. Katie will go through the specifics of it. I think that sometimes there is a misconception that adult apprenticeships are not available, they are available and Katie can report on the actual figures around that. The Parliament and Government should always reflect on changing economic cycles. Over the past 10 years, the focus has been on young people for very good reasons. I would remind the committee that even today, the rate of unemployment among 16 to 24-year-olds, as compared to the main employment status, is almost double. Young people are twice as likely to be out of the labour market than those older than them. For that reason, for good reason, the Government prioritises the investment around ensuring that young people progress into the labour market, not just by way of an individual benefit but by way of preparing the future economy of Scotland and ensuring that we have the workforce that is being developed. As we look ahead, we completed a recent study called jobs and skills in Glasgow and we look at the changing demographics. We look at things such as birth rates and the volumes of young people coming out of school. We look at the staying on rates in the workplace. I think that there is an emerging priority that is exactly around the area that you are talking about, which is how do we sustain older workers in the workplace and re-skill them and constantly re-skill them, because it feels like increasingly they will be required in the labour market because of future demographics, but also from a personal point of view and pension progressions and so on, people will want that. As part of the consultation around the current discussions on the apprenticeship levy, businesses were asked and others were asked to consult on the availability of apprenticeship funds to support people in work. I think that there was a resounding support from the business community to say that some of that apprenticeship money, levy money, should be directed towards more adults and more training in the workplace. I think that it is an emerging issue and I definitely think that it is going to be a significant priority. In that respect, then, Government and the Parliament would want to wire funds away from some areas and into other areas as those priorities may emerge. The last couple of points. I understand that you have a target of reaching 30,000 modern apprenticeships by 2020, with an emphasis on technology. Do you think that that target is going to help you to address the issues of equality? If there is going to be greater emphasis on sectors that are already in occupational segregation, how are you going to address that? It is a really, really good question and I think that it reflects the complexity of what we are trying to manage in respect of both the needs of the economy and the needs of individuals. I think that some of our reflection, especially on the Equalities agenda, is that we would want all of our citizens to be engaged in higher-skilled, higher-wage job opportunities. When we look ahead at economic growth, there is a belief among all the commentators that you speak to that there will be an increasing demand for STEM-related careers and STEM-related skills. It is certainly a target and an ambition and a priority that the Scottish Government is very mindful of, and I am sure that this committee is very mindful of. What we then need to do is to make sure that more and more of our young people and older workers are acquiring those skills to allow them to progress both in terms of having pathways that have growth opportunities in them and in terms of fulfilling the needs of the economy. If everything remains as it is, it could exacerbate the Equalities agenda and that is why we all have to work doubly hard to make sure that, across the breadth of STEM areas, engineering is more pronounced in terms of gender segregation. What we find in biotechnologies and in more of the broad-based science is that it is actually the other way. It depends on how that plays out, but ultimately we would want all of the young people in Scotland having a fair opportunity to get careers in higher-skilled, higher-wage sectors, which typically are supported by the STEM sectors. It is an issue of individual justice, but it is also about the untapped potential of a whole group of people who do not even think of those jobs. The final question is just a question of outcomes. I note that it says that we figure that 92 per cent of modern apprentice completers were in work six months later. We have also been told that 67 per cent of employability fund leavers had achieved a positive outcome or output. What would be your explanation of why it feels to me that 67 per cent is quite a low figure for people who have achieved a positive outcome from the employability fund? I think that a number of reflections on both of those. One is to remind the committee that I do think apprenticeships and work-based learning are probably amongst the best interventions that government can support because they engineered the outcome into the process at the start of the process, which is a job, and it is a job that is derived from a need by an employer. The ability to sustain that success is built in right from the outset. The employability fund is generally much more targeted towards people in greater need who are distant from the labour market. It does not start with an employer. The hope is that an employer is at the end, so the programme would not compare to apprenticeships that typically have employment built into the start. I would use the comparison of the work programme. Our employability fund substantially outperforms the work programme statistics, and I would suggest that the committee might have a look at those comparators. I think that we outperform at least by three times in respect of similar DWP programmes. It reflects a group of people who have much more complex needs and who are on a journey towards job opportunity. For some, that journey might mean a step along the way, as opposed to a final job outcome at the end of it. When I met the weekly group, they did indicate that they do not guarantee everybody a job at the end of their modern apprenticeship. What proportion of people going into modern apprenticeship go in with a guarantee of work at the end by the employer? The statistics indicate that the vast majority are retained by the employer, so 92 per cent have been in employment beyond the end of the programme. What you were suggesting was the difference is that you start with a guarantee of the job for some young people. Presumably, you say that with a guarantee that you work at the end of it, but as I said, no. What proportion you start off on the basis of yes will give you work at the end of it? Our understanding is that, as an apprenticeship, a young person has a contract of employment. Whether at the end of the apprenticeship, the employer terminates that contract is something that we would challenge employers on. All of the employers that we are aware of are recruiting apprenticeships with a view to sustaining them and planning for the future workforce. Whether they jump employer at the end of the apprenticeship, in some cases a large employer might take on five apprentices with a view that three would be ones that they would keep on. Those two might be taken on by their supply chain or by competitor employers who maybe are not directly investing in apprenticeships. Unless we survey at the end and at the start and say, what was your purpose here, it's difficult, but they have to have contracts of employment, that's the bottom line. We talk about adults in modern apprenticeships. One of the other key areas that is unique in Scotland, as we recognise with OECD, is the all-age careers advice and guidance service that we provide. It's open to people of all ages. We have a network of 47 centres and we have 500 locations. Our footprint is in Scotland of which 364 of them are schools. The point being is that there are resources and professional support from careers advisers across the board from people of all ages. For example, even with the pace of the guidance advisory service, last year we supported 18,000 individuals in that particular support. Over and above that was another 30,000 adults who were supported on an individual basis by our careers advisers. The point being is that there is a big infrastructure support there for the question that was asked here on about adults in terms of how they can access support through the career information advice and guidance services. The other point that Damien talked about is about youth unemployment. With the participation measure that is now in place, there are just under 230,000 to 16 to 19-year-olds that we now, with DWP, local authorities, third sector and others, we now case manage intensively to make sure that they then move on to a positive destination, of which 87.6 per cent in 15, 16 were actually in a positive destination. We want to make sure that they access and sustain that. I think that it's a really important point to pick up about the all-age support that we provide from SDS to help individuals of all ages and all abilities and disabilities in the interests that were there. To make a quick point, I will build on the mislaments questions around STEM and its role within the economy and the fairness of that. We have been working with Government yesterday to publish their STEM consultation document for a new strategy for education and learning. That's going to be open through until January. We are working with our employers and industry leadership groups around making their representation into that. There's going to be a cross-cutting strategy right from early years through into university, so I would encourage the community to review that consultation document. That question very much falls on from James's line of questioning. It was covered quite well by Katie, so it should be relatively brief. Looking at young people with additional support needs, we know that there's a serious gap between those with and without additional support needs in the destinations that they reach nine months a year after school. I was wondering if you could expand a little bit on the training that careers advisors receive in how to support those young people. A couple about all our careers advisors are all graduates and postgraduate trained and qualified through the university postgraduate course. That's the first thing. As part of that course, there's elements built in there in training with people of all needs, including those young people with additional support needs. In addition to that, we also have our Skills Development Scotland academy, and that particular academy has a number of modules that we call the gold standard. We want to make sure that our advisors all reach that standard and, particularly, included in there, one of the key modules is again about additional support needs. We have, in schools just now, about 370 careers advisors who work in schools. Some of them have got specialisms in additional support needs, but for the rest what we've done is we've invested in training to make sure that they all get an ability and an awareness of additional support needs to make sure that they can do that. The other point that I think is worth mentioning is that I referred the other on to their needs matrix, and that needs matrix is, our careers advisors every year, we negotiate a school partnership agreement with all 364 secondary schools, and contained within that is the issue about targeting pupils. That will include young people with additional support for learning. For example, I mentioned the other one, something like 28-29 per cent of pupils in S40S6 will have some form of additional support for learning, so it's quite broad in its definition as you all know. Contained within that particular partnership agreement, we agree with the school, and I mentioned earlier on about the earlier intervention. Traditionally, we had operated mainly from S40S6. We now operate from P7S1 all the way through so we can work with young people with additional support needs earlier. We work very closely with our parents, in fact, in case conferences with parents and teachers as well. Again, we have what we call the needs matrix. We have a targeted service, and that targeted service makes sure that all the young people with additional support needs. We have, just now, about 52,000 pupils in the senior phase in schools will be supported through who have various degrees of support through our case conferencing, case management and careers advisors in schools. We have extensive support programmes, extensive experience of our staff who are delivering it and work very closely in partnership with schools and other organisations such as psychological services and social work. What are the mechanisms that you have in place for getting feedback from young people and parents about the support that they receive that allows you to adapt and improve that? It's certainly feedback that I've found from young people with additional support needs that I've spoken to. Sometimes they've felt, not specifically with careers advisors but in the school environment in general, in moving them on to a positive destination, that their feedback on the support that they receive isn't listened to at times. There are various forms of feedback that we actually do. The first one is in terms of quality. Of all the activities and interactions that we have with pupils in schools, whether that's on a group basis, we target every year with about 150,000 pupils who will go through group work activities with us. It's evaluation taken from all the pupils who attend that, including those broader definitions of additional support for learning. We take that feedback and then change, adapt and amend anything that we've delivered as part of that. The other thing that we do is with the mentioned earlier intervention, we now work across all the secondary schools rolling out the career education standard and developing Scotland's young workforce. Back to Ms Lamont's point about awareness of careers and the opportunities that are there. We now attend all parents nights in S2 and S3 with parents and with teachers to make sure that they're aware of the different career pathways and subject choices that they can actually make. We then have feedback from parents that we had to the recent feedback that we did last year with parents who attended those nights. 82 per cent of parents who attended all those nights felt it had been really informative and useful in terms of the support, the careers advice that we could give them and the young person in terms of looking at career pathways and choices. The last point that I'd like to mention in terms of evaluation in feedback has been the Education Scotland reviews. To date, we have now completed 14 Education Scotland reviews where colleagues from a magic inspector come in to schools working with ourselves and what they do then they actually interview and speak to young people across all abilities within the schools, talking to teachers, headteachers and other stakeholders and partners like social work and others as well and their own staff. To date, we've had 97 per cent of the results have been good or better, so we've taken a lot more and a lot of feedback from Education Scotland as well. The final point that I would say to share with Education Scotland has been that many of the areas for development that have come through and there are a number of areas for development in the Education Scotland website. Much of what we've talked about in terms of what needs to be addressed are not just areas for skills development in Scotland, it's also what can the school do back to Ms Lamont's point about including how do we raise awareness of careers and that's why the career education standard is applying back to the point. I think that it's got to mention nursery age 3 to 18, so it's that whole range of services and support that we can provide parents, young people, teachers and as well as our advisers. I think that as well as taking feedback on the current service, I think that what's really important is to engage young people especially with additional support needs in the service design process, so as we've expanded the career service from P7 to S3, last year we ran 35 pathfinders right across the length and breadth of Scotland. The pathfinders were designed by parents, teachers, young people in the schools in terms of what does it feel like for them and how would the service be best delivered so that they get the best return out of that. Increasingly, we've got to engineer the service user and the person who's at the point of receipt into designing the service in advance of launching the service. First, I want to follow on from Joanne's point. In your answer, you reflected on those over the age of 25 and gaining that support being an emerging issue and looking at that as part of the apprenticeship levy. At the moment, as you'll be aware, in the north-east of Scotland, there's wide-scale redundancies and those redundancies being indiscriminate and there's been a critical need to have people retrained in order to find work elsewhere, showing that there's that immediate need. I know that Danny mentioned pace, but in one of the submissions to the committee there's criticism that beyond pace they feel that SDS has been slow to react in relation to the downturn in oil and gas. Would there not be logic in extending the modern apprenticeship to those over 25 to help to tackle the immediate pressing need that we have in the north-east just now? It's a good question and clearly there's a great challenge for the north-east. I'll ask Gordon the Comet and the very specific actions that we're taking. I sit on the energy jobs task force and every member of that task force is absolutely driven by addressing the challenges that are faced in the north-east. I would say to the committee that one of the areas that I find most disturbing about the north-east is the lack of challenge back to the employers and to industry. We remarked about four or five years ago that the industry was challenging government about skills shortage. There was a lack of engineers, a lack of technicians. Process engineers were being stolen from the whisky industry and from food and drink to drive up the growth in the sector. When we looked at that, it was pretty obvious that in the late 70s and early 80s a lot of the big companies in oil and gas switched off their investment in training. It takes 14 years to get a chartered engineer. There's an upturn in the industry and all of a sudden it's government's fault that they don't have the appropriate talent to sustain the industry going forward. We pull out all the stops to produce rapid transition training funds to stoke up the industry. We then get a shock in the sector and what's the first reaction from industry is to shed staff. We're directly engaged with all of the trade unions in the oil and gas sector and some of the behaviours amongst employers and industry in that sector is appalling. Right now, what are they doing? They're shedding staff left, right and centre. There will be an upturn in the sector. There will be an improvement in the price of oil and we'll be sitting here in five years time arguing about the skills shortages in the sector. I would say that there's something about the committee and Parliament and government shining a light on the practices of industry to maintain a longer-term perspective on their investment in their workforce so that in the good times they reap the profits but in the bad times somehow or another people become a commodity and they can shed them. It's something that I've been really, really struck by but we've taken a huge amount of measures to get on front of people who are facing into redundancy in the northeast and we worked intensively with the trade unions to ensure that those messages were getting across. We rely heavily on responsible employers who then anticipate that they might be shedding staff to get in touch with us to invite us in at an early point and to engage with the workforce. We find that where we get into a company in advance of the announcement of a redundancy and get in front of workers who are on their threat that we can have typically the percentage of those securing a job relatively quickly is about 70 per cent. That approach in oil and gas hasn't happened. There's far more companies that we haven't been invited into than we have been invited into. We've then had to arrange a whole series of events where we try and communicate through radio and advertisements and others to attract people into different events. So we've ran four separate events, one in the beach ballroom in Aberdeen and so on. The average event attracted a thousand, it was typically on an average day a thousand people who felt the need for support. At those events we offered a lot of encouragement. For most of the events having interviewed the workers what they said they valued most was getting in front of an employer. There's lots of nice advice you can give but what they really needed was the chance to pitch to an employer. We typically had between 50 and 60 employers at many of the events and certainly the early events where we had people like Scottish Water, we had the nuclear industry and we had others. They were able to snap up a lot of workers who were emerging during the first phase but as the challenge has sustained it's been more difficult. Typically because of the salary rates that people are on and I guess the real need to switch quickly to an equivalency. Beyond that then Gordon can talk through all of the measures that we're taking and there's a substantial amount of investment far more than would be going through the apprenticeship funding in terms of the transition trade. That transition training fund took a little bit of time to set up because we set it up on the basis of guaranteeing probity for the public money. It would have been easy to give that money away and say look anybody who's any need of any training come to us and we'll pay for half of it or we'll give you any amount of money. We put in place a more stringent process where we wanted to at least challenge the direction and the line of sight of that job opportunity and to test that if the training was undertaking was there a likelihood that there was a potential for a job opportunity and equally was it not going to crowd out other things that might be happening in the labour market in which case we're paying for somebody to compete for somebody in a job who hadn't had an equivalent support. That fund is now really progressing very well. I think you've had an update on all of that. Our turnaround times are very quick relative to the information that we've got and they are absolutely targeting people to equip them with the transition training that they need to get into other sectors. I think the challenge for the oil and gas sector is, and we still ask this question, what volumes of what jobs and what skills and what disciplines are going to be required in the short, medium and long term? Can the industry please engage with us to help us to understand that? That's been a real difficulty, but I maybe ask Gordon to comment on the very specific actions that we're taking because every individual who doesn't have that opportunity to switch from where they are to another job is a challenge. Pick up, Ross. The first point was should more apprenticeships be available and I think we should recognise that a lot of the people that we're leaving the industry we are highly skilled. Apprenticeships aren't always the best solution for people, particularly when they're coming from a skilled job and it's more so about how you add to their skills and make their skills a bit more flexible to move them on. Modern apprenticeships are available over the age of 25 and they're available for the key sectors and cross cutting sectors in areas like road haulage, but cross engineering, life sciences, chemical sciences, food and drink. There are fairly substantial numbers over 25 and Katie didn't get the chance to give you the stats in that area earlier. In terms of transition training funds, around 2,300 applications are made and so far we've approved 956 applications through the scheme, probably an average cost of about £2,500. As Damian described, we've tried to set up a process where our advisers can work alongside people just to make sure that the programmes that they're applying for are going to be best suited to help them to make that step into employment and certainly getting good feedback through the system and case studies. The train of markets in the north-east, because there are a number of agencies, and that's what Damian was referring to, to make sure that we weren't funding 10 people to chase the same vacancy. So there's been a degree of interaction between our careers advisers and individuals that are looking at jobs just to make sure that that's going to be a valid use of money and we'll continue to do that and continue to work with our colleagues in government just to refine the programme and make some subtle changes. We've went through procurement rounds. Individuals can either apply themselves with a prospect, but we've also went to the market through Contract Scotland to ask for employers and other training organisations to come in. So we're currently looking at a second procurement round and we've got activities in there like smart metering, road haulage opportunities in terms of employment and then opportunities around working in the construction sector for the railway industry. It's two things. We're obviously encouraging individuals to be more self-reliant and identify opportunities, but also trying to look to the wider labour market where there's opportunities. As I said, in terms of the over 25s, there are opportunities there and if that's appropriate for individuals then we'd obviously encourage them to do so. I recognise, and I was disappointed in the feedback that we got from Aberdeen Chamber of Commerce and I'll meet with James and be him over the next couple of weeks. We're currently working with him just now in a programme that we're looking at executives that have perhaps been displaced from the sector, so we've done some focus group work. Along the lines of an executive springboard, the numbers of unemployed that have had the registers across the north of Scotland don't mirror or don't are not representative. They're not representative of what we've seen in the labour market in terms of those who have registered through the job centre. We think that there's people, and it could be for reasons like that, because they've sent me mortgage protection and other things. So we're trying to just tease some of that out and get people more engaged and get them the type of support that they'll require to make a successful transition. We make the questions and the answers shorter please because we still have a lot to go through today. I'll try to combine the two questions. There's a quick follow-up to the answer there, Gordon. The transition training fund at the time when it was announced, a lot of play made at the time that this would help, particularly in relation to the teacher vacancies that we had in the north-east. Do you know how many people who have applied for the fund have been successful in relation to retraining as teachers? It would be interesting to find that out. The second point to Damien. You're absolutely right about the challenge to industry. In relation to the modern apprenticeship scheme, again some of the feedback from various people who have made submissions is that in relation to that programme it can be quite bureaucratic in a way. Seven full qualification audits, regular compliance audits from SDS, it can be very demanding and cumbersome, so when we're trying to encourage that engagement there's more that could be done to reduce the level of bureaucracy. One suggestion, which I think came from the Chamber of Commerce, was to look at maybe a more risk-based model. Pick up on both of those. I contrasted the comment again that it was from Aberdeen Chamber of Commerce that it came from Audit Scotland in terms of their submission to the committee. It did pick up in the fact that SDS had good governance arrangements in place and had developed a risk-based approach to auditing process. We're going to cope between a rock and a hard place. We can satisfy audit to Scotland in terms of processes of good structures in place. We do try and make that process with employers and organisations like the Chamber as constructive as possible because there's a quality development role within there as well. We've got 19 people in the programme just now and I think there are constraints around some of the conditions from the general teaching council. Very quickly we've got a working partnership agreement with Aberdeen University, individuals going through a postgraduate qualification in teaching. While they're doing that, they're also performing the role of a classroom assistant, which boosts the classroom time. They have a year's probation, which should be standard, coming off the back of the postgraduate programme. Then there's an offer of two years employment, and that's split between both Aberdeen City and Shire Council, so a four year programme. I think we'll use that to know that Government colleagues are interested if this is a model that can be helped to address teacher shortages in other areas. I answered most of my supplementary questions in the transition training fund. I just want to go on record and thank you for letting me host the transition training fund last week. It was very valuable to the north-east MSPs who attended. I'm interested in how you're monitoring the people going through the TTF into which sectors they're going into. Following on from Ross's question about teacher shortages, there are skills shortages in the north-east that people are going into. How are you monitoring and what sectors are you finding that people are finding employment in? Thanks again for hosting the event last week. The heavier numbers just now are around driving-related occupations, and that tends to be an easy one for people to move over to. I've had a big interest in areas like road-to-wallage, CPC-type training, which are going to fall on in that area. Construction-related, so CSCS cards are CSCS cards for construction site safety certificates. Also larger numbers in project management, and that's people looking at bolt-on skills, supplementing the skills that they already have, but maybe helping them move in. That might be conditions that have been attached to employment by some other employers like Prince II and others, but we've encouraged people to look across the board. People might be looking at additional skills to move into self-employment, food and drink sector, whisky production, that type of thing. There's a broad range, and I can come back with a breakdown of that. We're currently doing fall-off exercise in terms of the valuation of how that's working. From the procurement exercise, we're moving to bring some of those areas of higher interest and higher value into the procurement process. That allows us to deliver a wee bit more cost-effectively. For example, we're working with a road-to-wallage association in terms of a tailored programme, but we're still going through the procurement steps for those programmes, so I probably don't want to say too much at this stage. I would really appreciate a breakdown. I'm particularly interested in how many people have set up in business. I would like to know those figures. Thank you for offering that. Can I ask a couple of questions about the budget? This is about budget scrutiny. Am I right in saying that your 2016-17 budget is £208 million? Yeah. And your expense on people is £65 million? Yeah, broadly. That's a big chunk of money on people, as opposed to the 116 you spend on national training programmes. Why that balance? It's to do with careers advisers that we'd directly employ, so we'd employ between maybe 800 and 900 careers advisers who deliver the services in school, so we're in over 360 secondary schools directly. We operate... It's all on the web now. No, no, no. I have to correct you, chair. I have to really correct that. That is an absolute... not a truth. We have school partnerships with every school. We have careers advisers dedicated in schools. But not in schools. No, in schools. Ask a question, get the answer and then come back. Yeah, so in schools. What do you mean by in schools? Sorry, careers advisers will spend anywhere up to four days within a school, so they're actually physically in the school for that period of time. I know the reason why they're back in the office again is that they may need to pick up and post-school clients are coming into the centres and also to follow up in some of the additional work required for the students at the ready scene. I'm quite happy to arrange for you to visit some schools to see that direction. I don't need to be told about schools and my constituency. Can I ask you why you said that it was all the oil industry's fault? If you're on the industry task force, you'll know that OPEX has fallen from $32 to $16 a barrel and oil was at $28 a barrel. What did you expect the industry to do? I think there's something about retaining some workers, so that's one option. A second option would be to invest in reskilling them so that they might transition, so a responsible employer might look ahead and actually say, I'll tell you what, this employee has served me incredibly well, so I have a duty of care to support them to transition out of the sector that I'm in. I mean, some of the practices, I maybe recommend you speak to the trade unions about some of the practices that were pretty shoddy. Do you see what those practices were? Do you see people arriving at their desk getting an email saying, leave? Can you give the committee absolute evidence of that? It discusses SDS and the relationship and how they can bring in apprentices and the others. It's not veered off into the working practices of the oil and gas industry. I'm just saying that the chief executive organisation made a very serious charge against the industry and I'm asking him to lay it on the record. Then what you can do is you can write a letter to the committee. With that detail? Can I then ask the representatives of Skills Development Scotland why the Chamber of the Grampian Chamber say that, and I quote, a one-size-fits-all centralised approach is not working? It's an interesting question and I'm not sure that the reflection is very well informed, so that's the first thing I'd say. As I said to you already, our delivery is probably the most localised of national agencies. We have individual school partnership agreements with every single school in Scotland, very localised. In respect of the work that we do in support of economic development, we have invested a huge amount of money in preparing analysis and future forecasts around labour markets. We have over 40 regional schools assessment plans, which look at the very detail of what happens in very specific regions. If I take, for example, the work that we do at the Convention of Highlands and Islands, we produced a very detailed regional skills investment plan covering all of the Highlands and Islands region. That plan was supported by individual skills action plans in each of the local authority areas. The services that we deliver are highly responsive. How we deploy our careers advisers in schools are agreed with the head teachers in schools. They're not mandated from the centre. Modern apprenticeships are there to support employers and employer needs. If there is a growth in apprenticeships in a certain area, we should be able to meet that. I don't recognise some of what the Chamber of Commerce has presented by way of evidence. I'm more than happy to meet them to challenge that. The Chamber of Commerce is also going to say that the local SDS team are hardworking, but in our view are under resourced and do not have a strategic focus given the lack of senior staff based in the region. Is that a fair comment? No, it's not a fair comment. Why is it not a fair comment? As I said to you before, if I work out in the last year to the amount of time that Danny, Gordon, Katie and I have spent in the north-east, it's pretty phenomenal. In fact, in the last year or so we've increased the number of full-time staff in the region, so we've actually resourced the region even further than we had previously to reflect what is a very, very serious priority. We take the challenges in the north-east very, very seriously and we're working incredibly hard to do that. All the evidence that I can provide the committee with as opposed to the anecdote that maybe you're quoting me on, so the facts are we have more staff in the north-east now than we've ever had. We are spending more on transition training funds and in other interventions in the north-east than we've ever had. We are engaged locally with a whole range of partners in support of that, so the facts don't bear scrutiny in respect of the anecdote. Why do you think, then, that the Chamber of Commerce, I directly quote from the submission of this committee? Your guess is as good as mine. Well, I'm not guessing, I'm asking you. I don't know. Excuse me, Danny. In the north-east region we also have a senior management team that are actually based there. We have five regions within Skills Development Scotland's structure of which there's one for that particularly. There's a head of region, there's an area management team, there's team leaders as well, I think. That's where they're based. The second point in terms of what's available across the country. We're in terms of the localism that Mr Scott mentioned was around the community planning partnerships. We're involved in all 32 community planning partnerships at strategic levels. We're also involved in many of the subgroups in particular. More recently, the committee will be aware of developments around corporate parenting. We have just launched a corporate parenting plan and that very much reflects what's going to happen within local geographies. We've got community justice outcome impact assessments and agreements that will be in place with 2017. Again, it's another example where we have to very much work locally, within the local area, to develop a service and design and deliver a service that meets local needs. Do you want to come back on? No. Supplementary, Richard? Well, it came from supplementary, but also from the subject zone. First of all, I also had the opportunity to visit the Skills Development Scotland's office in Elgin, in Murray. I was impressed by what I heard in terms of the partnership working locally. Also, to meet Megan Flett, a young woman who is the apprentice working for Skills Development Scotland, who is a really impressive individual. I just want to pick up on oil and gas issues. The first assistance has been mentioned as a supplementary. It is disconcerting to hear that some of the lessons have not been learned from the early 2000s. I remember that that was a big issue back then, where the oil and gas companies released staff too early and then regretted doing it later on once the price recovered. It is quite disappointing to hear that that lesson has not been learned from the early 2000s. I think that it is helpful that you could recognise that there is not just an Aberdeen problem in terms of Murray and rural areas. There are many offshore workers who have lost their jobs in the more rural areas, so can you reassure me that some of the resources and attention to help redeploy oil and gas workers in rural areas is high up in your agenda as well? However, I am aware that some oil and gas workers are retraining teachers in rural areas, so that is helpful as well. Can you just address that briefly? I think that the highest numbers around applications for transition training fund have, as you might expect, been Aberdeen City and Shire, but there have been healthy numbers. I have been on the right terminology, but there have been higher numbers. Of course, there are five more in Angus and Highland, so we are working there on some of the provision that we had through our procurement routes as well as related to programme delivery through Inverness College, Tullis training and others. We are conscious of that, working with local authority partners as well around that, and there have been a couple of smaller job spheres within the rural economy as well. Okay, thanks. Finally, maybe you can send us some information about what is happening in those areas and the results to the committee. I think that that would be quite helpful. In terms of looking at skills gaps in local areas, not just in the national perspective, and I was also aware of whisky facilities losing staff to oil and gas industry a couple of years ago. Maybe they are returning now, as they are to the fishing industry as well, but I am also interested in finding out that that is the case. How do you approach national priorities being delivered locally in terms of addressing local skills gaps? Also, when answering that question, can you address Brexit? Because quite clearly there are potential skills gaps going to be worsened in some parts of the economy, particularly rural Scotland, and we have to start thinking ahead as to what potential scenarios might be, and I just wondered how Brexit is influencing your thinking in terms of anticipating skills gaps. Skills Development Scotland, we started and we had produced 10 sectoral skill investment plans working alongside industry leadership groups and we are in the process of refreshing those just now. A few years ago, we then took a further step to produce regional skill assessments, which was taken as much data as we could, both from publicly available sources, but also from partners, from Scottish Funding Council in terms of supply, also from Scottish Enterprise and in this next round Highlands and Islands Enterprise as well. So it is to look at the demographic profile of the area, build what we could from surveys like employer skills, survey workforce, survey at a UK level, but supplement it with as much local information as we could. We produced regional skill assessment documents, but that was also backed up with a data matrix. It was around 56 different data sources that would help organisations where it was a local authority, but it was particularly focused on regional colleges. So it worked in conjunction, as I said, with the Enterprise Agencies, also with the Scottish Funding Council. In between the sectoral skill investment plans, which we also cut at a regional level, and the regional skill assessments, that gives a local evidence base for the regional colleges to form their views in terms of their outcome agreements. It has worked really well in areas like Highlands and Islands with the UHI. There are also good examples in rural Scotland around Infisyn Galloway who used it to Infisyn Galloway College, used that very much to help with their curriculum planning. Areas like Glasgow is at Glasgow City Region College event. Yesterday there were 90 individuals from across partners and stakeholders hearing inputs from both the Chamber of Commerce but also a substantial input from our own staff in terms of regional skill assessment for the Glasgow and Clyde Valley area. So we can cut these in a number of ways at a local authority level, at a regional college level, but also in the areas that are looking at things like City Deal, so Inverness. We are working just now with the three years. So very much an analysis there. We undertook a review of the regional skill assessments after the first round. Glasgow University's training and employment research unit undertook that. We got very good feedback but also points where they could be improved and some indications of local data or local issues that we had to investigate a bit further. So in the Highlands and Islands, it's part of the work that we've done through Conventive Highlands and Islands but we've developed local skills plans as well. Brexit then in terms of Brexit. It was obviously a paper and a session at the Economy, Jobs and Fair Work task committee last week. We're working through industry leadership groups and those issues getting reliable data at a Scottish level. So I would refer you to the papers that were produced for the Economy and Jobs and Fair Work committee last week. That indicated that there was about 128,000 people employed EU nationals in Scotland from a work in industry leadership group. So obviously I'm aware that there's high concentrations in tourism, food and drink manufacturing sector and areas like IT as well, IT and financial services. Our fears and that would be mirrored by the Scottish Government to think that even if some solution is found for individuals who are currently here or presently here, if there's any blockage to the movement of Labour then that starts to present real major challenge in the future because some of that Labour will be, some of the distant people that are here will return home or move to other areas. There's real concerns and that's going to be a focus in our work both with industry leadership groups but with other government agencies and government itself obviously in terms of how we address these issues. There's some real concerns coming from food and drink companies and even looking at the Migration Advisory Committee, some concerns coming at that process that currently stands and for the access people from out with the European Union is too bureaucratic for them to move quickly in terms of the speed that they need to move at as a business. I think that there's challenges ahead but it's one that we're going to need to do more work on and just identify where there's kind of key areas of challenge. I'll ask about the consistency in careers advice but I think that Danny's actually mainly covered that in an earlier point but what I would like to ask is following up on me from what Davish was saying is there a careers advisor in each school or is it for an area and how is that a sort of needs led basis? Thanks for the question. A couple of points here, I mentioned earlier we have of the 364 schools we have in every secondary school what's called a school partnership agreement and what that basically does is we negotiate and agree with the headteacher and the senior management team within the school the services that we will deliver within that school and that includes some of the earlier questions around when we have a universal services and that's my world of working group work and other things we also have the targeted service and that's about working with young people who fall into the additional support for learning we talked about earlier on and young people who perhaps might not make a positive destination but it also includes a number of young people who are very highly academic have very good qualifications but there's so many choices they don't know what to do so we've got to make sure that that school partnership agreement reflects the local needs it's back to the point that Damien said that yes, yes, yes, it's got a course service offering and that's part of the Scottish Government's careers information advice and guidance strategy that was launched a few years ago that's then tailored and adopted in terms of how it actually fits with the local needs the local geographies because what we deliver in Strunrar will be very different from what we deliver in schools in Glasgow so that provides that level in terms of the consistency the other point to mention I talked earlier on about the whole school offer we now have for the first time across the OECD to keep going on with this the OECD countries we have a whole school offer the ranges from P7S1 right through to S6 and that involves group work it involves one-to-one engagement with young people but particularly it addresses some of the points that come up earlier on about subject choice a lot of work with S2 and S3 with individuals and also with their parents in terms of what we do there and again Damien mentioned earlier on about the early demonstrator schools 35 early demonstrator schools that were there we deliberately tried and tested different models of schools to see what would fit and that very much reflected local needs so what we have we have 371 school-based careers advisers who are actually working in schools they can be supplemented at various times in different precious and additional work but the other staff we have we have in work in our centres Damien said with over 900 staff we are actually deployed in delivering the careers information advice and guidance services that we provide I mentioned to Mr Scott's question that we have our establishment plan as in the basis of staff working in schools four four and a half days a week the other half a day they're back in the centres dealing with other clients and other administrations as well so a heavy emphasis and a heavy resource that we've actually allocated to to working in schools now we obviously have a lot of work happening in post school and I can cover that if you want to there's a lot of other things happening in the school setting that's where the consistency that's where the flexibility and the resource deployment we would have within schools and at the final point I would make as well is that's then backed up and supported by various forms of evaluation through the headteachers evaluation where over 93% of the headteachers saying that what an impact the significant impact to our particular school partnership we've even had in the air outcomes in schools as well and that very much reflected the local headteachers local schools arrangements the final point I would mention as well is about the we've had now just completed the 14th of the Education Scotland reviews into all the work of the careers information advice and guidance services across the board but particular emphasis on the work we actually do in schools in the very positive feedback we've had to date said over 93% of that's been good or better in terms of the indicators there I would be happy to speak to you out with this meeting about perhaps setting up a a date to one of the schools and meet some of the staff in Co-Priest in Creson but I'm happy to leave the question into that. We've built an opportunity. Thank you. Daniel I'd like to echo the thanks in terms of facilitating the visit that I recently made to your office on Shandwick Place. In fact I'd just like to also mention one thing from that. You provided me with a very good A31 pager showing me in an infrogram the things that you're delivering and the one thing I would say is I wish that every public sector agency produced a similar thing it made it very clear of what you were doing it's very useful. I mean I think the work that is happening in terms of skills and I think the work you're doing is of strategic and national importance. I think we have some very big challenges in terms of raising productivity raising skills and coping with skills change. Given that and also given that in 2014 Audit Scotland said that you needed to develop appropriate outcome based measures I mean could you please just sort of step me through how you do measure against those high-level strategic outcomes? I think actually the recommendation from Audit Scotland was the Scottish Government as opposed to SDS specifically but we've taken that on board ourselves in terms of supporting Scottish Government but just to say that on the broad outcome analysis Katie has been working for two years now with the OECD and we have engaged the OECD in developing a comprehensive framework for measurement of long-term outcomes and the outcomes in terms of long-term are really important because for most of the work that we do a five-star outcome is somebody securing a job with an investment in skills and the ability to grow in that job and increase their earnings and be able to look after their loved ones and their families and contribute to the economy in a very productive way but the challenge then from government is how can you demonstrate that that's happened and it's been sustained over the long term so that work has been undertaken now and it's been undertaken in respect of sustained employment earnings the average contribution per worker in Scotland to the GDP of Scotland is around 27,500 so if productivity goes up then you would expect that figure to go up you're looking at career movements so are they getting job jumps are they actually getting career progression and then from the employer side we're looking at measures of productivity around output and increased earnings from new markets and so on but that's a longitudinal study that will take place over a five-year horizon but just to reassure the committee that the frameworks and the measures that are required to inform that are now being agreed with probably amongst the best external international evaluators through the OECD but even today we can report to you particularly on the apprenticeships by way of both qualitative and quantitative data in respect of the outputs and impacts of apprenticeships so we know that our completion rates are in excess of 78% we know that 92% sustain employment but on the life of the apprenticeship and on the services every other year to get qualitative information about what was their experience and what's happened since they have completed the apprenticeship and again all of the findings from that which we can provide you are very significant they're in advance of the 70% in terms of the so just in terms of the framework you just mentioned there when will that be signed off and agreed and when will you be able to share that answer that one that was published on the OECD website and they were looking at best practice across the world on that so that's out there now they've now produced the draft framework and that's going to probably be published this month through OECD we've now sent that to Scottish Government because the methodology that and it was one that we also thought ourselves so happily we agreed with OECD and that for actually tracking long-term outcomes it's both a complex thing for example etc but also it's costly if you do surveys it's actually to link administrative data so it's linking up view records with HMRC records and also with DWP records and obviously there's whole sorts of safeguards around confidentiality etc so that's seen as the best the most cost effective and it's the way you'll get better returns if you keep sending it a survey every few years you'll get diminished returns from it and it'll enable you to disaggregate say by the qualities groups or by different areas of Scotland etc where people live so that is the kind of gold standard in terms of linking up these administrative data sets so I'm going to obviously long-term measures take a long time to watch through and it's important to have clear KPIs so that you can understand in the short time whether or not and albeit not in the same way that long-term measures will and I note that that was an area of concern that Aberdeen Chamber of Commerce raised, I mean are you confident that you have adequate KPIs? I asked the committee to have a look at the Cambridge Policy Consultants report on investment employment services I think it was published last year and that report independently verified that of all the agency skills development Scotland has among the best quality of data and in fact challenged back out of the way in respect of other organisations who maybe don't have as complete a set of data but I'm more than happy at any point to invite you in and go through all of that data in much more detail but we have comprehensive range of data particularly on apprenticeships in terms of the With all due respect I mean I think the point that Aberdeen Chamber of Commerce making not necessarily that the data wasn't there but was really about how it's presented so they were suggesting about a balanced scorecard and kind of a more focused set of KPIs so that we could performance could be tracked and indeed when looking at your own submission your quality assessment section is quite short and there's really nothing concrete there in terms of precisely what you're measuring in terms of hard measures and hard numbers so would you think that that's an area for improvement? I could reverse a truck with reports and evaluations on your desk so I think it's a question of the balance isn't it? That maybe needs to be a kind of a focus set or a balanced scorecard approach to provide clarity? We actually operate balanced scorecards internally within Skills Development Scotland but we don't publish those as an external Do you think that could be a step forward to providing greater clarity? I think the other thing I was just interested to look at I mean in terms of just anecdotally my experience talking to apprenticeships is quite a broad range of experiences in terms of the content of apprenticeships ranging from things I've seen at CITB where it's very away from the employer there's a lot of classroom based content through to apprenticeships to tell me well I get a little bit of online stuff but not very much external contact just in terms of how do you measure and monitor that external content being provided as part of the apprenticeship and how would you assess that that impacts quality and how do you look at those sorts of quality aspects of what's actually being delivered in terms of external content as part of apprenticeship programmes? So the inception of modern apprenticeships as was was built on a policy document called Towards a Skills Revolution which I'm old enough to remember concept behind that was that employers wanted provision that was flexible enough to meet their needs and also that it should not mirror traditional forms of learning which were based more on knowledge and less on competence to do the job so the whole foundation in which a modern apprenticeship bill is actually on competence which is why VQs are a key part of it so that means that it's different forms of training in learning for different sectors and for different companies depending on what they're doing it's possible to deliver for some frameworks on the job there are frameworks which are set by the industry for the industry that determine what the learning is so for instance within the engineering framework there is a set national certificate qualification that you must do which can only be delivered by a college but in terms of retail to develop competence on the job that's an entirely different matter and a lot of it can actually be done in the workplace so actually how that set is to do with the framework delivery also in terms of how an employer wishes it to be delivered that's a negotiation between the employer and the training provider we've got a Scottish apprenticeship advisory board which was set up in April of this year and one of the key things that is going to look at particularly because of the introduction of the levy is actually looking at being very clear on what the definition of an apprenticeship is there's been quite a lot of change in England which we need to make sure that we come to an accommodation because of transferability if you want someone who's finished an apprenticeship to be able to be mobile as well but you also want the employer to know that what you're getting is what it does in the tin so the Scottish apprenticeship advisory board standards and frameworks group will be looking at actually is it time to review what the definition of apprenticeship is a lot because they're concerned about potentially employers rebadging apprenticeship work that they're doing already to access the levy so there's that thing when it comes to what we do in terms of monitoring when we get information in from providers and bidders we ask them how they're actually going to deliver the learning in general terms they might do it differently for specific instances and we get information on that and then what we go out and do is we meet thousands of employers and modern apprentices each year to check that actually what they said what's on the tin is actually delivered and that's what we're doing all the time we've changed quite a lot of the focus of our contract managers to be out meeting the customer rather than too much with the supplier Education Scotland also have now been undertaking inspection of off-the-job training that's been going on there was an engineering report out previously and there's one for hairdressing due out I think this month as well so there's quite a lot of activity that goes on around quality review to look at but I think clearly within the context of what an apprenticeship is it's horses for courses depending on the framework and the company I mean what you just sorry it's a question I mean what you described there I think it's quite a broad range of different things in terms of some apprentices have quite deep technical skills and some less so I mean do you have any measures in terms of assessing the value add that either particular groups are delivering or indeed the apprenticeship system as a whole is adding in terms of what we'll do is I mean within the context of a survey of 2,500 employers and 2,000 individuals what we've been looking at recently is disaggregating by broad occupational framework to see the differences in terms of things like was it the tend to train new recruits the tend not to do that satisfaction with the level of the train so we can disaggregate by framework there I have to say in general satisfaction levels are high across the piece because value add though well the value add there are measures of value add in that and I can talk to you about that if you want great thank you Ross did you want to come back in quick points we're falling on from Tavish's line of questioning it's just a brief point and hopefully a positive response in the chamber of commerce one thing that we did ring alarm bells with me coming from business leaders was that it had been difficult to establish partnership working with STS so I would be just grateful what sort of immediate steps STS can take now to get that partnership working in place to address the concerns I challenge back the evidence that's been presented by the chamber and I'll ask Gordon to offer because the facts don't bear the evidence that was presented and I'll ask Gordon the facts about our intensive engagement with industry picking up in the chamber itself we've been working on the back of a regional skill assessment with partners in the local authority college to universities and the chamber to produce a regional skill investment plan James has been directly involved in that process and that's why communicated back disappointed by that comment Aberdeen chamber host the north-east regional developing young workforce group, Mike Duncan who is our senior team is on the board of that senior group so I'm a wee bit at loss given the reference there and as I said I've got a meeting planned with James just to distill where some of these issues have came from that would be useful okay thank you Gillian would you want to come back in a brief question given that the Scotland economy is mainly made up with SMEs I wanted to ask you about how you were facilitating shared apprenticeships you know the challenges there you get small businesses who maybe feel that they can't take advantage of the apprenticeship programme because they don't have the staff to deal with them so shared apprenticeships probably going to be the key to quite a lot of our participation in this and I just wanted to know your thoughts on that we have been working on that that's been a bit of an uphill struggle to be honest it's been hard to get some companies engaged in that partly because you've got to have somebody as the employer every apprentice has got to have a contract of employment that's part of it as well so we have got some pilots I think in the dindee area around construction at the moment I think in one in Highlands and Islands and we're also working on an arts related one a creative one as well we're trying to push it as much as we can but I think in terms of companies also aren't necessarily that keen on working with somebody then they go somewhere else and all that they all want them at the same time and all that so there are quite a lot of logistical issues but we are going to keep plugging away at that just to reassure the committee chair that two thirds of the current apprenticeships are with small to medium sized businesses I think what Ms Martin might be referring to is often micro businesses of 5 to 10 employees and absolutely I can see the need for joined up the challenge then is who's prepared to stand up and say well I'll be the host employer and then how do we manage the system but we're very open to addressing the barriers as Katie said we've got a number of pathfinders and in principle what you suggest seems to be a great solution but when we try to apply it in practice it doesn't just seem to work quite as well I've had a look at a similar system in Norway but government adopts the intermediary position and so government becomes the guarantor of the employed status and it then facilitates the micro businesses to engage and then it kind of passes them out and it's almost like an intermediary labour market position so I guess one of the options we could present to government might be that in the absence of very small businesses being prepared to take on that risk is there a midpoint where government might be prepared to take on that risk that's not without its challenges as you could imagine but we're very live to it and if we can make it work more wide scale I'd be very open to it but subject to that the individual doesn't suffer in respect of that employed status and the guarantee of progression so is there in terms of flexibility of the type of apprenticeships you maybe offer maybe that would be the key maybe we have a flexibility around maybe more project based type apprenticeships and sharing that way in terms of small businesses might recruit someone as an apprentice to help with a particular project as it meets the requirements of the framework in terms of demonstrating competence in that occupation and sometimes project work is seen as a bit of training for stock it's not actually a real job that you're doing so it's just a bit making sure but there are ways of looking at that but you have to meet the requirements of the framework and that's a requirement for the registration and sector skills council et cetera so what outreach are you doing with the smaller businesses with concerns is maybe the wrong word but maybe there are issues about taking on apprenticeships Federation of small business undertook a piece of work through rocket science consultancy several years back we've used that in terms of focus in terms of how we work with particularly micro businesses so we have a team of employment engagement advisors that are based on a regional basis engagement through Federation and through the chambers of commerce in terms of promotional events one to many presentations but also go out and actually sit and help them distill what their requirements are again solutions aren't always the apprenticeship programme there might be other solutions there in terms of recruitment of a more mature person or working through the college in terms of work experience in terms of that type of activity so we've got two skill investment advisors per region and again we've got a web service, a skills force and that's connected into our contact centre as well so there's online and telephone support as well thank you one last question from Johann Lamont just to see there are a number of other issues that highlights us we're not going to be able to get through today I wouldn't want to think that it was only Aberdeen Chamber of Commerce had tough things to say but maybe we can pursue through the clats and the conveners some of the issues that have been highlighted to get a response I just was interested in your view on a fair work agenda in relation to the amount of public investment that's going to support employers to support modern apprenticeships and employability initiatives and so on so guarantees can you give us on the quality of the work that people may be involved in what are the expectations of employers that you would put on them and have you had any thoughts on how the business pledge could actually incorporate some of good practice around support for training apprenticeships more generally starting that so I think it's a good question and it's at the heart of that more inclusive economy that everybody wants that people get the opportunity as I said before to get a decent wage to get decent progression and to be in a workplace that values them and so all of the work that we do as we say on apprenticeships is about those two outcomes of a job but with an investment in skills and as a proxy for the best chance in terms of progression I think that's amongst some of the best in terms of interventions we've been doing a lot of work to promote what is best practice in respect of fair work where do we see examples of workplaces that have highly engaging workforce strategies where people are seen as the principal asset of the business and where the investment in them is significant and that's something that we'll continue to do it's not our primary responsibility but it's certainly a horizontal theme that we do go on forward and maybe ask Katie to pick up on some of the other I think in terms of going forward one of the areas that we've been thinking about is in the levy and we don't know yet what money is going to come from the levy to us but you know there's maybe an opportunity there in terms of securing the funds back the way around putting maybe some measures in place to say around fair work agenda and the equalities agenda to say well can you demonstrate what you're doing to recruit from a wider talent pool and all that sort of stuff I think there's maybe some things that the levy might give you to actually put more of a stick back to the things that you were talking about earlier in the session again there If there's public investment would you have expectations at least through the conversations about what is deemed to be fair work and that do we be reasonable expectations of employers that you know once apprenticeship is concluded and if they're going to have a job then we would expect things that the business pledge identifies round wage rates end to zero hours contracts the engagement within the workforce do you see yourself having any role round that agenda, round fair work so the answer is yes but it's how far it goes because I think the Government has stepped back one step from actually mandating it or in respect of procurement contracts for public services do we mandate that people have can demonstrate fair working practice so I think it's the degree to which the committee would think we would go to so all of what you said I would support 100% and we have an important role to ensure that those employers that we engage with are demonstrating those practices is how far can we take that I'm not really sure but it goes back to the point of mandation you know would the committee recommend that any business in receipt of public funds should have a mandation to demonstrate a commitment to fair working practices and to the business pledge and to the living wage and so on and that's a matter for Government I understand because we the previous Parliament economy committee did an inquiry into this and we understand the distinction between voluntary and mandatory and I'm sure the Government this will be something that they will be looking at for example we questioned the DWP would ever sanction somebody for not taking work when that work was in a zero hours contract with no guarantees and very poor conditions there was a bit of dissemblance what the answer to that was so my question to you I guess is have you got an agenda around the employers that you're engaging with there are some employers you simply wouldn't engage with on a basis that you've not got reasonable guarantees around respect for the workforce and the conditions in which people will be working is yes thank you very much and that brings us to the end of the session thank you very much for your time this morning and I would ask the public gallery to now close we're now going into private session thanks once again