 Mwneud hynny i fynd i'r cwportunitys cymryd. It's the 15th meeting of 2015. Can ask you to set any electronic devices to flight mode or off place. I'd like to start with introductions. We're supported at the table by the clerken and researcher staff, official reporter and broadcasting services, and around the room by the security office, and welcome also to observers in the public gallery. My name is Margaret McCulloch and I'm the committee's convener. Secheson yn dda. Rwy'n fawr oedd oeddy'r gweithio. Yr ystyried, yng Nghymru, ysgol gweld y cyfnod amdano a'r ysgol. Felly ar gyfer gwaith, mae hi yn dda cael ei wneud i'r cynnod i'r ysgol i'r cyfrannu. Oeddydd mennid i'i cyfrannu. Mae hynny'n iawn i ddweud, a chyfnod i'r cyfrannu. Mae hynny i ddweud i ddweud i fynd i'r cyfrannu. Felly, we have one agenda item, an evidence session on our removing barriers, Wraith ethnicity and employment inquiry. If witnesses or members wish to speak during the discussion, can you please indicate to either myself or my clerk on my left hand side? I welcome the panel and ask witnesses to introduce themselves. I can also invite witnesses to briefly outline the work of their organisation and any current projects for the members. I'm Helen Martin from the S2C. I'm secretary to the S2C's Black Workers Committee. The Black Workers Committee brings together Black workers from all across Scotland from a range of organisations and a range of sectors. It's a sort of self-organising committee that passes policy each year and it really helps the S2C understand the needs of Black workers. It also makes sure that our policy reflects the views of the society and of the labour market. We have a whole variety of work that we are undertaking at the minute, but I think that the committee would be particularly interested in the fact that we are currently being funded from the fair work directorate to do a pilot project looking at the creation of equality reps within the private and third sectors. This is a new piece of work that we are looking at and how it is that you support equality reps in those industries, particularly given the fact that there is no statutory recognition of the equality rep status. The idea is that the pilot project will select four workplaces and will try to support the creation or the development of equality reps, and that's on-going until April. I'm Katie Hutton from Skills Development Scotland. I've got responsibility for the national training programmes, Modern Apprenticeships and Employability Fund. We're doing a range of activity in terms of equality of opportunity. I suppose that the kind of three main areas I'd like to highlight are, first of all, engagement with individuals and parents among ethnically diverse communities. We've got a project with Bemis at the moment called Modern Apprenticeships for All, which is two full-time members of staff embedded with Bemis working with a range of community groups to go out there and sell both to parents and individuals the benefits of undertaking a modern apprenticeship as a career. We've got a range of challenge projects with community groups, too, to look at diverse ways of engaging individuals in modern apprenticeships. Our CIAG services, as well as careers information, advice and guidance, we've got a range of measures in place to reach ethnically diverse communities. We've got continuous professional development for our own staff and toolkits to support individuals in giving guidance to ethnically diverse communities in terms of understanding customs, cultural norms, etc. Lastly, in terms of continuous improvement of our services, we've got a quality advisory group that we use a lot to advise and guide us on how we might tailor our services to different groups. That would be looking at things like our online guidance tool, my world of work, working with communities to look at how the information is presented, how we might better present the information going forward. That's just a snapshot of things that we're doing. Morning. I'm David Watt from Education Scotland, a senior education officer with responsibility for inclusion and equalities. Within Education Scotland, we have a range of work streams taken forward developing young workforce and working together with Skills Development Scotland to publish career education standards and work placement standards imminently within the next couple of weeks. I'd just like to mention the success in Scottish schools in attainment of children from ethnic minorities. Most ethnic minorities, if not all, are attaining above national averages and a strong success for schools and education authorities. Even those young people who have additional support for learning are now achieving a head of national averages. They are gaining entry to higher education and further education above national averages. There is still a bit of work to do in terms of employment. That's below a national average for those with ethnic minorities, but we're working from a strong base to continue to improve outcomes. John. The IPD Scotland. We are the body for professional people in development. We represent in Scotland 10,000 members, UK-wide and increasingly internationally, a total, including the Scottish total of 140,000. We're at the forefront of inclusion in the labour market, working across all sorts of agendas from developing young people, developing people with disabilities, etc, and making work access to opportunities available to all. Obviously, there's a lot of work to be done on the BME agenda, and we acknowledge that. We acknowledge that there's a long way to go before we have a good evidence base for what good practice should look like, but we're happy to work with the parties in Scotland and nationally. Thank you very much. Can I just say, when you go to speak, you don't have to press the buzzer or come on automatically, okay? Katie, can I ask you first specific questions about Skills Development Scotland? You mentioned about BMIS and the other projects that you're actually doing. Can you expand a bit more about what the two allocated individuals, their actual role, actually, is within BMIS and what sort of outcome you're actually expecting from that? What a range of community groups have told us is about engagement. It's about going out there and reaching out to the community who may not have a great deal of awareness about what modern apprenticeship is about. Crucially, what they've told us is that it's about selling it a career rather than just an opportunity at that point post school, and I shall be aware that higher education in particular is a favoured route among some groups. These individuals are going round various community groups, and it's really shoe leather going out, going round across Scotland. So far, I've seen in terms of the reports that we're getting back, there's about 158 groups already, where there's events lined up to talk about modern apprenticeships and the employability fund. It's things like also CV building, et cetera, that sort of thing. Going round, they've got hard outcomes in terms of we want 200 additional individuals from BME background participating in modern apprenticeships next year. So we've given them hard outcomes, but a lot of it is about going out there to different groups using, taking advantage of events that are already in the ground and also setting things up themselves. What kind of feedback are they getting when they're speaking to the groups about the reasons why they don't participate in the modern apprenticeship programme? I think it's back to what I said in terms of the career route. They want to understand more about the career that they'll get. Someone said to me last week, it's about a lot of BME community groups are prepared to sacrifice now in terms of putting individuals through HE, et cetera, for the benefits of long-term career. I think it is about that thing about, well, what does that get me in the future? So that's the kind of messages that the two individuals who are working with BMIS are going out there to promulgate. The other sort of question is employers that are recruiting apprentices. What are you actually doing along those lines to encourage employers to open up their recruitment process to more ethnic groups as well? As you know, one of the issues about modern apprenticeships is it's the employer who by and large makes the recruitment decision. Unless they've been at the training provider, it's asked specifically to undertake the recruitment process. It's mostly the employer. We are doing the usual in terms of trying to promote the business benefits of diversity within the workforce. We've got an equality toolkit online on our skills force, which is our online service for employers as well. We're looking at what we can do around unconscious bias advice as well. The training providers, including colleges, local authorities, private training providers, third sector organisations, are the sales force to employers. We've invested quite a lot in terms of what we do with them. The qualities challenge unit, for instance, undertook on our behalf the end of last year training needs analysis for us in terms of understanding issues around diversity. Before that, we'd funded also some CPD. We had about eight events and four webinars around equality of opportunity with training providers. We will be building on that on the basis of the training needs analysis of employers doing there. He'll get connected events. The other thing that we've done is we're funding challenge fund projects. About seven of those, seven out of, I think, the 14, I'd actually have a BME theme as part of them. The other thing that we're looking at, which is quite a delicate issue, is around the whole procurement issue with employers. We've been speaking and working on a project with the Scottish Government and the Police on with the Equality and Human Rights Commission about what you can put in your procurement requirements around equality of opportunity. We're adding some things to it for 16-17 contracting along the best practice guidelines from EHRC. What we also want to do is talk to employer groups—the CPD might have been an interesting one—business organisations around what more could we do in reaching and getting the message across to employers and what you can put in your procurement guidelines beyond 16-17. Our own staff have a small employer engagement team, so they've been through equality training and it's about selling the messages there too. That's a range of things that we're doing. Tanibah wants to come in. Quick factual questions for Katie. How does Skills Development Scotland measure participation by ethnic minority young people in modern apprenticeships or other training schemes? Once they're in, does Skills Development Scotland carry out any appraisal or review of how they're getting on? In terms of the measurement, what we do is measure the percentage of people who have started in a modern apprenticeship. That's the measurement. That start, I have to say, is a self-reported start. You ask the individual when you're going through the registration for them, when they're sitting and when they've been recruited in the company, or if the company has chosen them amongst their existing workforce, and you ask them what their ethnic group is, but it's a self-reported basis. We do get some people refusing to say what their ethnic background is. In terms of what we offer once they're on a modern apprenticeship, that's really what the training provider in tandem with the employer should do, because they are an employee of the company. It's really about what's provided as part of their training and assessment. What our staff do is we go out and speak to the contracted training providers and talk to them about what they're providing. We also will speak to trainees and employers as part of it to say, look, are you happy with the training that you're doing? Just to be clear, convener, does that include discussing with the apprentice? Yes, we do a sample of… How they're getting on? We speak to a sample of all the modern apprentices who are involved in the programme and ask them what they think about the quality of their induction, what do you think about the training that you're getting? Are you happy with the support that you're getting from your employers? That's what our contract managers do. We will do in-training surveys online from time to time, too. Thank you very much, convener. Can I just come in on that? I know that you're talking about surveys as well. When every modern apprentice completes a programme, you send out surveys as well or leaves the programme, do you? We do a leaver survey every few years to find out what happened to them, six months plus being an apprentice. That's what we do. I'm probably going to go back and ask you to expand a wee bit, given the younger age profile from the ethnic minority population in Scotland. What are the other reasons that are actually stopping young people from participating in the modern apprenticeship programme? I know that you said that there may be lack of knowledge about the modern apprenticeship programme in general. Is there other cultural reasons that are barriers? I know that some people think that modern apprenticeships aren't as good as maybe going into college or university higher education, but I'll probably declare an interest in that I was involved in the modern apprenticeship programme and there are opportunities for young people doing the modern apprentice to go and do degrees as well and carry on their education within a working environment. What other barriers are you hearing from young people? I think that part of it is that 80 per cent of school leavers in the school leaver destination report from a BME background go on to FNHE. Therefore, compared to 65 per cent from other backgrounds, there is a choice being made and it can be a family choice as well about what you want culturally. That's where the route that you take. Already, in terms of looking at the young age groups that you were asking about specifically, you can see the choice being made to go there. I think that there are other things about the community that doesn't necessarily have the links to the workplace perhaps. If you've not got those links, perhaps you come here as a refugee or whatever, you've not got the links to employers and your family's not got links to them as well, so you can be isolated as a community too in terms of what you've got. Again, just if no one's ever gone into construction in your family or maybe you've heard perhaps news within certain industries that they don't take people who come from our background, that may be part of the dialogue within the community. Again, there are a variety of reasons why you could be put off taking particular paths. Obviously, if your parents are very keen for you to become a doctor or a lawyer, you'll go down that route post school. Thank you. Helen, do you want to come in on this? Yeah, I think really, I'd like to agree with a lot of what Katie is saying. I think there is sort of a perception among ethnic minority communities that higher education is really the way to go. But I think that we can't give up on the idea that apprenticeships are actually a really good route for ethnic minority young people. It goes back to the Wood Commission and the party of esteem agenda that we're trying to create. One of the barriers that ethnic minority young people face later, even when they come out with degrees, is that they find it difficult to get into employment roles that other people maybe do get into because they don't have the same opportunities to do on-ped internships and other sorts of things that often are the routes into good careers at the minute in our labour market. The reason why that's harder for an ethnic minority young person is that they don't have the social capital that comes with a lot of other families, so they don't necessarily know people who work within industries. The apprenticeship route is a really good route for ethnic minority young people because it helps build that social capital. It takes you into the workplace earlier and it gives you a very structured route into work, which could help with the longer-term labour market outcomes that we are ultimately trying to change. On the foundation apprenticeship scheme, which is the new scheme that's being developed at the minute, the foundation apprenticeships differ very substantially from normal apprenticeships, as I'm sure the committee is aware, because they are not employed, they are on-paid and there is a form of work experience, as it were. The STC would have some concerns about that as an approach, but given that that's the route that we've decided to take, it's incumbent on us to make sure that we are making the most of that route. Given that they are not employees, you would be able to do a lot more positive action targeting towards BMA young people than you would be able to do when there is the employed status involved, so we would hope that the foundation apprenticeship will be used as a way to break down the occupational segregation that we've seen within apprenticeships in the past. Katie, do you want to come in on this? In case the committee isn't aware, foundation apprenticeships are within the school system, so it's an option that you can take when you're in fourth year. They're just developing at the moment. We've got two pathfinders on at the moment and they'll be more next year and the following year. The work experience part of it and the whole ethos behind it is that it will create parity of esteem basically in terms of the work-based learning route and you'll come out with a nationally recognised qualification that means that you've already done part of your apprenticeship which is a good thing. The work experience can take many forms, which I think is what we talked about this actually, that our equalities advisory group on Friday about the whole issue about paid work experience. It can take many forms in terms of coob and afternoon in the workplace etc, so there are some issues around that, but it is a developing option and we hope particularly as Helen says around the equalities agenda we've got high hopes about that right from school place, having parity esteem with other academic qualifications and actually picking up people earlier to go down the work-based learning route. John. One stage was a figure, I wonder if you just explained what that was, was that to be an increase? That's to be 200 individuals from BMA background taking up modern apprenticeships, a work-based learning employed route as a result of the activities that Bemis are undertaking. Is that 200 effort on top of how many are presently doing it? Yes. And where would that take us to? That would take us to, we had at the end of 1415 we had 361 individuals self-declaring from a BMA background, but that's not the only, I mean that's one, Bemis is one activity, we've got challenge fund projects, Rathbone for instance last year. It's the numbers I'm interested in being a kind of numbers person because if I'm right saying we're talking, is it 25,000 modern apprenticeships? Yes. So 1% would be 250 and given that 4% I think is the average across, we should be at 1,000 if it was to be proportional and amongst young people it might even be higher? That's the working age population for 16 to 24 we're looking at because remember the 25 plus age group is targeted at certain sectors so it's not necessarily representative of the whole workplace so we're specifically looking at 16 to 24 as a key group. Right and that's more than 4% then for Scotland? Well it's 4.4% I believe, so we're looking at an additional 700 individuals from BMA background. So would the hope be to get it up to 1,000, is that what we're aiming at? That would be for it to be reflective of the working age population BMA groups. Okay thanks, sure. Very briefly before question comes in, is there anything you can do to try and capture the other ethnic individuals that don't want to actually tick the box to say that they come from that background because there could be a rough higher percentage of people in the workplace doing modern apprentices that aren't sort of identifying themselves? Yes, so at the moment the qualities challenge unit are working with us on two things, definitional issues, but also one about what are the best strategies you've got to enable people to self-declare across a range of equality issues. We know for instance that graduates have got a disability, even graduates are not keen on declaring some aspects about themselves so at the moment that's about looking at the best strategies, good practice around enabling individuals to declare and then what we would do again is speak to our training providers about that, have good practice sessions around that about helping individuals. Okay thank you, Christian. Thank you very much convener. I'm speaking a little bit and I would like some clarification. I know John talk about numbers and numbers are very important, but it's about people. Bemis is doing a fantastic work and you're doing a great work and it seems to be working. But because you said early on that one of the biggest difficulties that you have is families from different ethnic backgrounds are really very successful and high education and we are willing for the children to be doctors and solicitors and etc. How are we targeting really best people to go into modern apprenticeship? Are we talking to families to asking them to consider every son and daughter to become bricklayers as opposed to doctors or solicitors? Are we doing this? Together with Skills Development Scotland at early stages within secondary school we are making an enhanced offer that when they are making subject choices they will have a number of group sessions plus an individual session together with a parent to discuss career options and to look at subject choices. I think that there's another bit of work that schools are taking forward just now within the senior phase about more personalised pathways and better working between school and business to offer a senior phase that leads them to the world of work. That's still on-going development work at senior phases but there's some exciting stuff happening within schools across Scotland to broaden people's choices which I think is one of the things underpinning this that people need to have a higher expectations for themselves. My concern, Mr Watt, is that we are targeting that diversification to a specific group. Are we going to ask Dr McLeod to tell him that his children shouldn't become doctors but we should go into masonry. It's what I'm asking. You're doing as you're laying out the options. You're making sure that it's informed choices so it's not uninformed in terms of the work-based learning route. You're not forcing people to choose the apprenticeship route, it's about making informed choices. I agree but we seem to be spending money and a lot of effort for a specific ethnic minority to go from higher education to modern apprenticeship. That would be not very equal if we're doing that only to one part of the population. I found it difficult. It's not just one part of the population. We do promotion across Scotland in terms of apprenticeships. We recognise in terms of looking at the statistics around modern apprenticeships that there are some communities that aren't going straight into the workplace and taking up apprenticeships. What we've got to demonstrate is that we are helping individuals to make informed choices. It's up to an individual whether they become a doctor or not but we have to make sure that the message gets out there. It's important that we don't think in caricatures about what part of education is better for young people. It's right that ethnic minority young people should have the same ability to access modern apprenticeships as all other parts of the population. It is the case that a lot of ethnic minority young people are going on to higher education at the minute but that doesn't mean that that's right for that ethnic minority young person. It might be that they would do much better if they were given the option of doing an apprenticeship because they would potentially learn in a different way. It's not necessarily the case that just because you've done higher education that means that you're going to have an excellent labour market outcome. We know that there are an awful lot of ethnic minority young people who do higher education, get a good degree and then don't have the good labour market outcomes that you would expect from that degree because of other injustices within the labour market. It's important that we remember that there are some really good professions that you can access through modern apprenticeships that would allow you to potentially become a doctor but in a different way and in a different route or allow you to become a pharmacist in a different way and in a different route or an engineer or whatever. Those options might actually be the best route for that young person because they might prefer that style of learning. However, right now we're seeing in a lot of ways in our education sector people being funneled by their background, by the level of earnings that their parents have or in lots of other ways into specific routes. I think that that's really negative for all young people actually whether they end up in higher education or in apprenticeships because people should be given the ability to choose what's best for them as a learner not what's best for them due to the ethnic background or the earnings of their parents. My last concern about it and if you want to say it is, how are we targeting people under the ethnicity and trying to pigeon all of them in different areas of modern apprentices for higher education just to satisfy some arbitrary numbers that some people should be, they should be equality about about education experience. Can I bring Davies in on this just now? Yeah, I mean I just want to rephrase it in terms of a more personalised approach for people and in terms of where we sit with Scottish education you know we've probably had an unheralded success with engaging with those with ethnic minorities and ensuring that they make the attainment and that measure of attainment successfully. But I think that the next area is aligned to what you're talking about is we need to be a bit more focused around the underachievement of boys compared to girls. We need to be aware across ethnic minorities that Asian girls for instance do very well but we know Gypsy travelers you know don't reach the scores never mind making an improvement and so I think we have to look at these in a personalised way to ensure that the young people are making those choices within their senior phase that are going to lead to the best option for them in terms of whether I mean we've moved away from an academic vocational divide and moved into looking at pathways and achievement pathways for young people. Okay thank you moving on to Sandra. Thank you very much convener we've talked obviously a lot about modern apprenticeships and there's lots and lots of work going on out there from everyone but we don't seem to have a lot of data in regards to exactly what BME factions go into what type of modern apprenticeship taking it through the course if there's a high drop out rate if they actually get there and I think it was Mr McGurk that mentioned the fact about being evidence based but we don't seem to have a lot of data in regards to that can any of you tell me exactly what you're doing to follow that pathway through I think that's the favourite word that's came out pathway lately because basically we don't seem to be able to have the data to let us know exactly what's happening with BME youth kids when they go into or if they even do go into apprenticeships and what type of apprenticeship they actually go into. Katie, we do have data and we publish quarterly statistics I think on STARPs and I think we've now started doing it on achievement rates as well but we certainly do it on an annual basis. We're developing a qualities action plan right now which is in response to developing young workforce commission youth employment strategy and on it one of the actions we've got without giving in anyway is about the data side of it which is you know working with representative groups to see what kind of data they want to see we do collect data we collect it on achievement we collect it on start we collect it on gender ethnicity you know we have data that we publish actually quite a lot of data on a quarterly basis but if there's more that that groups would like to see then we're happy to talk and publish that sometimes you'll only hear about what people want through the medium of a committee actually which is interesting but certainly we've got that as one of the actions to look at what more that we have to get out there. Well certainly you mentioned about evidence the committee and the evidence we've taken so far says that STUC gave evidence also that we don't have the data and BME communities going forward in ethnic minorities for apprenticeships and I just wonder how that would affect likes of Mr McGurk's profession if the data is there do you receive data of that type? I think employers collect data routinely on recruitment and on training promotion you know in various work cycle issues like performance management grievances and dismissal organisational exit etc and you know generally it's good practice to monitor by specific groups but it's wickedly difficult to collect that data systematically and actually use it and we would acknowledge that there needs to be much more of a mindset around business about how you use that data purposefully because what happens when you don't use it purposefully is people just collect it and then forget about it so you need to use it to create a dialogue about a problem and try and solve it and obviously you know there are organisations that are very good at that like the big public sector bodies tend to be pretty good at collecting that kind of data they have obligations to do it but if you're talking about a large number for example we had a launch with the cabinet secretary for fair work skills and training yes if you have a people skills program to support SME capability and people in development and you know it's quite clear the number of SMEs in Scotland how do you collect the data in that area where a lot of the opportunities exist and we're not you know we're saying that yes it absolutely has to be an evidence-based approach but there are a huge number of gaps before we actually get to having that evidence but a real start would be to collect the data purposefully so that we could compare it and start to make decisions. Sorry to come back in if you do have the data we'd really like to see it but basically from the information that we've received if there is any data there it doesn't say about the ethnicity of the people who are taking part in modern apprenticeships so therefore it's not broken down enough for us to be effort anyone. I mean we can do that if people want to see that published. You don't do that at the moment. We publish a lot of data I have to say SMEs statistics are a lot out there more than a lot of other public sector agencies we publish quarterly statistics on that we could publish one thing you've got to watch about when you're publishing data seem like it's down to very small numbers sometimes you're not allowed to publish that because you could actually identify the individual so there's rules around that but certainly we can look at what we publish and as I say it's on our action plan to do that to talk to partners about what they'd like to see us publishing so we'll do that. Yeah just to hammer home this pointer I've gone about it once again the reason we're doing this inquiry is because of the the BME communities and lots and lots of work has been done out there and I congratulate everyone who's doing that work but we don't have the actual data to tell us particularly in the modern apprenticeship situation exactly what BME communities are taking part in apprenticeships what the drop out rate is and what the flow through is at the end and that's what we're looking for because as you all said yourself that BME communities are doing so well educationally wise but the figures and the data that you do publish shows that an awful lot of them are not able to get employment at the end up so we would just like to know a wee bit more about BME communities and if they are actually enabling them to if you're enabling them to get through into modern apprenticeships and if you follow that through. Talking about subdividing the BME groups by the census groups so you're talking about that? That would be my help. Can I just summarise and clarify that we're looking for MA starts, levers and the ethnic group that actually come from if they've achieved an MA and probably the drop out rate as well? At the moment we publish for BME in general the start, lever and achievement rate that's what we publish already so what you're talking about is so again with the caveat that if we get down to very small numbers and groups then you really can't show that. And also if there's still no job when they complete their MA qualification as well? If there's still no job when they complete their MA qualification? One of the issues about that is that we do that through survey because you can't do a census of you know however many thousands leave every year. If you do it by survey then you're getting into sample sizes that's an issue then we can look at that as part of a research, a big part of our research is to look at the equalities agenda too going forward. So you just need to watch in terms of samples now. Yeah that's fine, thank you. Very brief on question. I just want to clarify something, I hear two things. As a committee we're asking for data but are you saying that if we do the subdividing of different ethnic but data won't tell us anything? What I'm saying is with official statistics guidelines if you subdivide by a group and it gets down to like one or two people in that group then you're really not supposed to publish it because they could be identified as an individual so sometimes you've got issues about small numbers. So what we're asking is it not possible is what you are saying? No it's possible to break it down what I'm saying is for some groups we just need to be careful about you know almost you could say what their name is you know where they live. Just when we touched on this when we talked about young people specifically about you know it would be interesting to hear a little bit more maybe particularly from Education Scotland and from SDS about what schools are actually doing to encourage people from ethnic minority backgrounds into training or apprenticeship programmes. Is there specific work that is targeted at these groups of people? It's not targeted at present we are introducing some career education standards and work placement guidance that is going to be framed in terms of equalities and taking account of the public sector duties specifically within this area. I think that the schools and SDS have had the focus on ensuring that their qualifications gain them access to FE and HE. I think that the question that is now to be raised with schools about yes we have been successful in raising the attainment but you now need to engage with parents and young people around choices directly from school. That's maybe an area we continually need to work on. Can I make a point I think that apprenticeship and access to modern apprenticeship is absolutely vital but we have to have a wider debate about the skills and labour market issue and in CIPD Scotland we put forward an approach called Scotland's skilled future where we look at everything from preschool which is important you know you need to look at how people actually get socialised informed in the community which defines a lot of their life chances and their behaviours and their later access to the labour market etc. To pension age and beyond you know because we've got an aging population you know we're going to have to work on later in life you know a lot of us are going to not be too happy about that a lot of people are going to want the opportunity to do that and whenever we're considering any labour market problem or issue we should be thinking about that wide spectrum of issues and you know when you look at for example you know this settled and established BME community and in terms of their access to the labour market there are issues there's a lot of evidence around for example anonymised you know applications compared to names that are manifestly black or ethnic compared to names that are manifestly white and there's some research from the states which is also being replicated in the UK that shows that there's almost a 50% chance of not getting through to the selection stage after the initial cv submission stage if your name is manifestly black or ethnic and that's that's an issue that we need to tackle but you know that applies to people that are already in the system and we've got to think about how we actually tackle those issues and our belief in CIPD is that you know that the issue of collecting data is absolutely you know paramount but also the issue about behaviours and mindsets and that's much more difficult how do you change behaviours and mindsets one of the issues is you need to put in front of people the issue that they must consider these issues that they must think about their unconscious bias and a colleague from STUC talked about that earlier we've got a report called the mind at work which looks at how you think about issues like you know just your worldview your limited perception can affect how you make decisions and that shows how difficult the issues are and when you look within the actual ethnic minority groups themselves one thing economists love pay data because it's easy to collect they don't really like issues researching issues about characteristics and progressions through the labour market but if you look at the data there's a really good report by Hilary Metcalf for the National Institute of Economic and Social Research which is national research but there's no reason to assume that Scotland would be any different which shows the different labour the different pay outcomes for ethnic minorities and it actually shows that within ethnic minorities themselves and this is kind of folk wisdom that a lot of people think they know but you know there's actually a higher rate than the average which is the white male population in this sample and there's also research on full-time and part-time work that shows that within the ethnic minority communities themselves there's a lot of difference and differential in outcome and we have to be clear about what problem we're trying to solve but there's an absolute need for awareness raising and understanding that you know that the fact that you know young people aren't getting the right level of access to MAs that a lot of the established community aren't getting access to jobs you know and there are well-known evidence you know cases that show why that is and that it's related to ethnicity and this is statistically controlled and modelled then you know we need to have a dialogue and I think the issue is that you know it's easy to get into solution mode but I think we need a dialogue before we start to get into solutions because the solutions that we come up with might not be fit for the problem we're trying to solve Katie, do you want to say anything? On the careers information advice and guidance that you were asking about schools so we developed guidance on the development of partnerships agreements with schools about school-based career coaching and this includes specific guidance on considering the needs of ethnic minority groups in particular. The individuals have face-to-face meetings with our careers coaches that's a discussion between the school and you know to select peoples etc we've got an equality toolkit for our careers information advice and guidance staff and that includes how you sensitively handle day-to-day situations about customs etc and also the use of interpreters as well. We've also got continued professional development online internet modules for our staff as well and I think we've strengthened our partnership agreements to better identify young people from BME backgrounds who are in a school setting too. The other thing that we're doing at the moment is we've got a research project with BME school pupils to ask them what they think about the CIEG services that they're receiving at the moment are with a view to are there any improvements that we could make with it too. Are you aware then is there any evidence around our pupils from ethnic minority backgrounds more or less likely to engage with the career service or to engage with it in a different way or is there any report of a different experience of the career service that you would maybe expect would reflect some of the other things that we know or go on in terms of propensity to enter higher education for some groups and then also the issues about your worst labour market outcomes in the end. Is any of that borne out through the career services engagement? I'm not personally aware of those things that go on but I mean I think if you go into a higher education background you're less likely to want you know intensive careers guidance support and also I think there is evidence from wider uptake of employability services maybe in general about being less inclined to put yourself forward to DWP etc or our out of school services in terms of coming forward to seek employability support too. Helen, do you want to come in? I think there is some anecdotal evidence to suggest that schools reflect some of the stereotypical views of career paths so you know well meaningly so I think teachers will sort of reflect back to students what a lot of like their parents are saying as well so like they'll say to working-class girls oh yes you should be a childcare worker and they'll say to a working-class boy oh yes you should be a bricklayer and they'll say to an ethnic minority girl oh yes you should be a pharmacist and they'll sort of reflect those stereotypes back and I think it's about helping you know teachers to sort of remember that you don't necessarily have to do that and you can encourage people to widen their widen their horizons and I think one of the nice things about the My World of Work website is that it is a website and one of the the hopes for that website was that it would give alternative pathways to similar places so that it would help people understand the fact that they could take a vocational route rather than just an academic route and it would help people think about what their options were without necessarily having that kind of prejudice of you look like this or I know your mum so I'm going to say this to you sort of a thing which is what we what we really want to try and break down because we don't want to to pigeonhole people into certain routes we want to give students the opportunity to choose their own paths one of the issues yeah and I think it was quite a it's a telling issue in schools that quite often when we think young people are destined for university and I think Katie was saying I'm not saying this is evidence you know it's just it's something that we all know in our social world we hear it all the time there isn't a careers conversation we are a lot of young people that are destined and inverted commas for university and that's part of the problem of parity of esteem about how we actually have a really good dialogue with young people about what their options are and how people get baked into choices and one of the pieces of research that we've recently carried out with scope which is the centre for you know operational and labour market research at Oxford and Cardiff and is around over qualification and you know there's a lot of over qualification labour market in the UK generally and a lot of it is because you know people have effectively just been chosen and or had options selected for them or pre selected for them and end up in university without really the right skills that they possibly need for the careers that are available and drift into you know jobs that don't actually use the full skills and and those are issues that are part of the problem as well for all communities. I think I've got three when this is what you come in David, Katie, then Helen, not just David and Katie. I think that's part of where schools are taking forward a wider a wider view of work and the place of work within education the careers education standards that are being launched are going to broaden out young people's understanding of work from an early age and to engage with that about their understanding of the world of work and what it means to them and so to begin to engage about that discussion about what a career should be and how what they should aspire for that. I think another bit of work that goes together with that is that we were asked within the wood commission to embed equality education across curriculum for excellence and we're working to populate equality as content within the curriculum to engage with gender stereotyping to look at prejudice to look at issues around migration and just how that can be part of a study within the curriculum again from an early age so we're looking to further improve the curricular content there. When you reply can you tell us what has currently been happening just now as well regarding careers advice on information, Katie? There's a blended service that's where it is and it's blended and there's some targeted support for one-to-one support but every pupil in Scotland if they want one-to-one support can get it, the opportunity is still there. We offer some of it online as mentioned by Helen and we offer group sessions in schools. We've actually just been given money by the Scottish Government to put it further down the school so everybody will take part in a group session much earlier than the school system than they currently do too so it is a blended service it's a blended service for two main reasons it's about personal choice and the way that messages that you receive you might receive them in a different way from other things and also targeting support where it's needed most and that's why you've got to do that in terms of your intensive support. Okay thank you, Drew. Are you okay? I suppose to just take these things back as far as you want to but I mean the educational Scotland for example collect evidence on or collect data on ethnic minority backgrounds of pupils and their subject choices through school and how would our leaders that start? I mean that fed into it the subject choices I think from ethnic minorities are broadly a broadly similar to the general population the biggest diversion in subject choices is between boys and girls but I'm not clear that the subject choices for ethnic minorities are differentiated than the national. Okay, I think we're moving on to Christian now. Mr War, Education Scotland's inspection and review framework embraces 10 principles, one of which is equality and diversity. How does an inspector then discharge that responsibility in relation to the provision of careers advice in a school to a young person from an ethnic minority background and although we're now aware a lot of advice is given in respect of career choices to young people at school how many careers advisors come from an ethnic minority background themselves? Well I'll kind of ask my colleague to deal with the second part but if I could pick up on the inspection process. The recently issued inspection advice notice so that's now the updated guidance for inspection for the coming school session strongly threads through the developing young workforce agenda. Talks around the career education standards and the career education standards are framed in terms of their qualities. Initially when the school's self-evaluation is sought we asked how well do they promote diversity and equality and ensure inclusion and the answer they give us in that will enable the inspection to talk with children and young people, parents and staff around that agenda. Going into inspection in the coming session we can expect a greater focus on DYW and a greater focus on equality education in that. Could I name you a report where I think minority careers advice was commented on by inspector I'm not sure I could but these discussions feature within inspection it's at the opportunity we on occasion pulled together a group of ethnic minority children asked them about their school experience asked them about the support they receive it more likely focused on the support they receive from their guidance staff and their support staff rather than their careers advice but again it's it would be a trail that we could engage with within the school. I think that's very helpful because my question is not to criticise education in Scotland I think we're all agreed we're slightly you know swimming through strands of weed and sea at the moment trying to just see what the picture is but it seems to me that with the best of intentions the discharge of the equality and diversity obligation in the inspection and review framework may very naturally have concentrated on relations within the school amongst pupils and behaviour between pupils and staff to pupils but this specific issue of how youngsters from an ethnic minority background obtain careers advice may be something off the radar screen and if there was any more information you could give us about that Mr Wat I think that would be helpful. The inspection advice note is worth having a look at and aligned to that we're doing some try-outs of new inspection models and a couple of themes were the theme for the coming few months in the try-outs is the senior phase and part of the senior phase is ensuring that that pathway is personalised and that you're well informed about what you need to be undertaken to have that experience that equips you for the next stage. There's opportunities for us there to engage with ethnic minorities in the schools that we are focussing their try-outs. Katie, do you want to come in on that? Sorry, I don't actually have the figure with me about the number of careers guidance courses within SDS or from an ethnic minority background but the other thing I'd like to say about careers information and guidance when I said it's a bit of a blended approach it's also not just delivered by SDS because it's delivered through partnerships and schools so there's guidance teachers in schools, there's a variety of school professionals who spend far more time with the pupils than SDS staff can so it's a bit providing a more blended approach so there's a number of people involved in guiding young people in school but we can get to the figures. The issues around school, is there any examples of work with parents? It's all very well to say what is the careers information and the assistance people are getting on school but if some of the pressure comes from family or home is that is anyone doing anything to inform parents as much as possible about the options that might be available for their child and the things they might want to speak to them about. The good practice would be in around the second and third year options and usually that would be an evening where parents are together with guidance staff and SDS staff to talk through what the options are. I think we're now seeking to encourage business to employers to be better engaged at those stages to set out particularly in some local communities again where we're looking for school staff not just SDS staff to be aware of the profile of employers and to have a better understanding of how the teaching and learning that takes place in the classroom relates to the employment market out there that the young people are going to face. I think in terms again of parents it would be more around availability and I suppose that a challenge is to speak about a broader perspective on what the next stage might be. Kate? As well as what David has mentioned there about SDS staff in schools, my world of work on line service has got a specific section devoted to parents to provide the information that's required there and also what I mentioned in terms of the work that BMIS are doing a lot of that is actually targeted at both individuals but parents crucially too within the communities. Kate? Question? Yes, thank you very much convener and unfortunately I'm going to ask more question about surveys and data and particularly when we're collecting for people working and that's quite important so my first question will be about we heard a lot early on about data and survey during at school and during at AMAs and during at higher higher education and we're trying to compare them with data that you collect at work and surveys that we do at work. Is there a discrepancy there with the number of people from a different technique background who have not been educated in Scotland? Will that explain a lot of the difference that we find? Who would like to answer? Everybody's looking at you Kate. So could you repeat the question again? A lot of the data we try to compare data and surveys that we do at school and education with data and surveys on what we do at work for people at work. Now the problem is a lot of people who are working particularly on low wages are people who are not being educated in Scotland who have come in the 20s or 30s. Will that explain a lot of the difference that we find between the two set of datas? Yeah because we're trying to compare, we're trying to explain why a lot of people from ethnic background are having quite a very good education and quite a successful degree of education but when we come into as a 20, 30, 40 years old we find there's a big difference about wages. So part of the explanation will be that a lot of people from different ethnic backgrounds are in fact people who came into these countries after being educated somewhere else. Helen, I think what you're sort of hitting on here is that it is a very complex picture and that the data sources that we're using are very limited to tell us things and we're trying to sort of get that kind of picture exactly what you're describing but it's really difficult to do that because the labour market data that we use tends to get us no further than white or non-white really in Scotland and is quite thin on the ground and awful at the time. So we have to use our understanding from wider sources than just pure statistics. So we know that there is a difference between whether or not you're raised and go through the Scottish education system and whether or not you're a new migrant. We know that there's a difference. I think what we've tried to what we've been talking about currently on the committee has been people coming through the education system and it suggests that people coming through the education system from you know leavers service, destination service from education and they suggest that there are less good outcomes for that group as a group but then you get into a wider picture as well of labour market disadvantage when you look at what's happening to new entrants to the labour market as well so there are two different issues going on that perhaps are related. We know that people who are new entrants to the country are generally working in in very certain sectors because they're coming in on tier two shortage visas so they'll be in the health service, they'll be working at Rothsaith on the Nukes being nuclear engineers, they'll be you know in our education service in particular areas particularly further and higher education and we can identify within those public sector employers problems with progression within the within employment so yes people are employed but they aren't necessarily rising through the ranks in the way and that's a very identifiable trend but it's identifiable primarily for people who are new entrants but then you get other issues that are caught up it's harder to track what's happened into the domestic population obviously because they're much more spread out through the sectors but there does suggest like there is a problem there as well it's hard to know though. So if it's harder to track maybe it'll be better for us to concentrate really on what's happening at work and what the challenges are at work as opposed to try to compare two things that are difficult to compare. We would agree that there has to be an absolute focus on what's happening in public sector employment in Scotland. I think it is unforgivable that we can see a very identifiable trend within the health service for example that ethnic minority nurses are congregated in the very bottom grade and they feel that they cannot get out of that grade and I think the work at NHS Lothian which for years and years the STUC was here in a lot of complaints from ethnic minority staff at NHS Lothian through our sort of informal networks and now they are running this really great programme that's very well put together about supporting ethnic minority NHS nurses to rise through the ranks and they're already within year one seeing people being promoted off the back of it and it's a very it's a very well put together programme but it's quite it's quite easily replicated in other places so I think there is definitely stuff that we can do and perhaps if we focus on what what is in our gift and what's fixable that is a good start. John. I suppose there's when you look at labour market access the key issues which you can't disentangle from any other outcome are skills and qualifications and when we take them out and when we control for them and we see ethnic bias then that gives us a public policy and labour market problem that we have to address but we have to be clear you know what those issues are and a lot of them will relate to skills I mean not just qualifications it's about recognition from different jurisdictions etc and how qualifications are rated and Scotland's got an excellent qualifications recognition system through SQA and SQCF that can help to address that but it's also about skills and I suppose one of the biggest skills around language skills around the kind of cognitive skills that are needed in key areas and anybody who's tried to recruit recently knows that you know the the recruitment environment is becoming more and more complex the skills that are required for roles are more and more multi-dimensional and sometimes you know with the best will in the world you know people who have got you know fairly difficult to predict qualifications going into that kind of job selection pool won't stand a chance unless we take some other action but that action needs to be based on evidence and I'd be interested in the Lothian programme in terms of you know the data for that that shows that there is a different outcome for BME nurses that was actually that that's a big public sector organisation that can collect that data and can model it and can maybe give an example to the private sector the bigger organisations like banks etc to see how they can compare but that's that's the dialogue part that we need to get into before we start to define solutions as I said earlier because a lot of those issues are around qualifications and skills that's quite interesting what you just said about languages and and Ellen Martin as well when you talk about you know less concentrate of what we know and and languages it's it's it's nothing you know languages could be a big barrier I know but it's an office if you don't speak the Doric you you you have some trouble but it it's it's maybe that maybe we should concentrate on is trying to to to work on data which is easy to define a bit like the gender balance gender balance is easy because it's you get a true picture when it's more difficult to get a two picture when you talk about ethnicity but if you start to talk about barriers again language languages when you talk about barriers regarding employment sustainable employment the category of people that we know about it's a lot easier so restricting that will maybe be the busy answer I would like to have some views about that I think it is important to to be prepared to look at at what we know and to be prepared to tackle the problems where we see them quite obviously existing and I would be a little bit reticent to say that we can just disregard things that are difficult to measure because in the area of ethnicity in Scotland things are going to be difficult to measure they just are you know because the numbers are quite low the survey that the surveys aren't very well designed for our purposes particularly big national surveys and so we kind of have to accept the fact that we are always going to be in the dark a little bit but that doesn't mean that we don't have information it doesn't mean that we don't we don't know things it might just not be statistical information but we can take evidence from community groups we can't ask people what their experience of the labour market is and we can take that evidence seriously even though it's not necessarily backed up by a statistic there are other ways to collect evidence and I think it would be important that we do have you know a focus on community dialogue and actually taking seriously the problems that people identified because you know that's what we try to do through our black workers network and that's how we knew that there was a problem at NHS Lothian 10 years ago before there was ever a statistic about how I meant how the nurses were congregated in the bottom grade we knew that there was a problem and then James Clever came in and collected the data and everybody now knows there's a problem but we could have done it 10 years ago off the back of what the nurses were saying if we wanted to. I read your evidence about it but are you suggesting we should use anecdotal if you know data just to you know we really need proper evidence to to make proper change or to invest or to use resources anecdotal evidence is it enough. In my view if you have tried to collect the data over many many years which we have in Scotland you know there has been a lot of there has been a lot of emphasis on that I've worked around ethnicity now for a decade and we have this conversation every year and every year we talk about how difficult it is to collect the data and at some point you have to accept if that so if that question is fixable or not if it's fixable fix it if it's not fixable then let's use the information that we have to do something but um we can't just sit here trying to create better statistics every because that's not helping anybody. On my last question I'm going to ask the other members and try to help you Ellen Martin about that. The challenge is is that ethnicity is getting a lot more complicated in the world today. My mother happened to be Portuguese, my wife was Scottish, what are my children you know and a lot of more families are are being this now being that different kind of people with different background you know maybe Ellen Martin is right and I would like to challenge the few of yous on this you know should we stop trying to collect data and trying to make it so precise when we have no chance in hell to to to win that battle because the complexity of our population is getting such that it's impossible. Who would like to answer Katie? I think like Helen I think you look at both sides of it you look at what data you can collect and what you can actually you know that you think is trustworthy but also I think you do speak to communities get the dialogue going I think that's part of the stuff that you do around does this work for you how could it be improved you know stuff you do around continuous improvement but also about identifying if there are serious issues somewhere with some community some locality so I think a bit of both to be honest. Okay I very briefly joined to move on to the next question. Yes sure I think just even if you're only dealing with populations of people that you've identified you've still got to collect data you've got a group of people there you can get the information on their qualifications on their skills and you can use that as a basis you know and that's that's where we have to go we have to drill down into specific context. Okay if we've got time we can come back to that after but we're actually quite tight for time so I need to move on to John Finnie if you've got any questions John. Thank you convener I've a couple of which I'll direct to Dr McGurk and I'm afraid I'm going to have to use the D word as well because I've had a couple of questions around that. You expressed a view that it's paramount and I think we would all accept that and we want you're perhaps in a unique position of your members will be both in the public private sector widely spread do these employers understand why it's it's important? Yeah I think there's a there's variability amongst employers I think public sector employers you know given the leadership that's been provided by various administrations in the Scottish government and the UK government as well are aware of the issues and I think a lot of private sector employers large SMEs they're in a global talent large sorry MNCs multinational corporations they're in a global talent market their customers are diverse their market is diverse you know they need to be operating a policy of diversity and you know the issue of inclusiveness in the labour market is a business issue increasingly and it should be because it's about people being able to make their contribution to the labour market without any barriers to them being able to do that and it's about employers getting access to the best talent that they can access and develop so there's definitely variability in understanding the real problem is in the smaller and medium sized enterprises that's just because of visibility of the issue and that's something that we can all do more and I know that STUC and Skills Development Scotland Scottish Enterprise have these debates the trouble is we're having such a multiplicity of discussions around virtually everything which is great it shows the amount of energy that is for change that sometimes things get lost and we've got to put it more to the top of the agenda can i ask about a very specific aspect you referred to it as organizational exit exit interviews I did pose a question to police Scotland about that and the particular challenge that a number of people who would leave an organization the last thing they would want to do is sit in a room with the people perhaps who the belt had been course to them and explain that it's an opportunity to learn from I mean obviously there's an opportunity to learn from exit interviews can you give us any examples particularly with regard to race where an exit interview has resulted in perhaps a change in work practices in that or a change in approach because there's clearly a glorious opportunity there yeah absolutely I'm not aware of any specific examples but we have a lot of research in CIPD and if we can you know find any of that research we'll put it your way and the issue about exit interviews is you know do people want to engage with the organization at that stage what's the frame of mind you know what are they going to actually disclose is there an issue about the if there is proper monitoring and and that's a big if you know if we were finding that there was a disproportionately large number of people from a particular group exiting an organization we should investigate that and we should interview them in a more neutral environment for example and get an idea and that would be another piece of data that we could use to address the issue and accepting the challenges and again the small numbers is an organization like yourself in a position perhaps even through informal discussions to understand that there might be a pattern developing just you know whilst individuals exact the wider might might suggest that I mean the HR professionals that that we represent that that work in in in business and in the public sector will certainly be aware to different degrees but I would say in a large public sector body like Police Scotland or you know the NHS then they should be collecting that data it might be very you know limited data but you know I think that if there was a disproportionate incidence of people from a particular group leaving an organization it would ring a lamb bells and I don't I'm not saying in all cases the individuals would challenge that but it definitely should and it should be something that they would be talking about across their networks how we would capture that I don't know Basically I think what John has said is correct but at the same time I think we shouldn't be too keen to accept that employers will just pick this stuff up I think it does require quite a lot of dedicated action on the on the part of the employer like the employer has to go in with an eye to looking at how the ethnic minority staff are perform are finding their workplace how that workplace outcomes are looking for ethnic minority staff because you would be amazed how long a trend can exist within an organization and the employer not really see it until it's kind of pointed out to them and they're looking at it in quite a systematic way and as trade unionists we we try to do this in a whole range of ways equal pay being quite an obvious one you know it takes quite a lot of dedicated effort to go through all your structures and work out what's happening for ethnic minority staff we find that access to training can be a really big barrier often it can be simply the fact that people are clustered in grades where training isn't routinely offered and that might mean that ethnic minority staff might never get access it's not really it's not deliberately targeted at preventing them from getting access it's just happens that way because that's the way the company is structured so stuff like that can be broken down quite easily but you have to realise that it's happening and you have to have a look at how the organization has been structured okay thank you if i may it's it's precisely a point thank you I was I was going to to pick up on that to say you can of course formal structures about exit interviews and all the rest but as as miss martin says I would hope there'd be some form of monitoring nonetheless and particularly a focus on minority groups within the workforce is that likely to be the case i think it's likely to be the case in large public sector bodies but the issue is how do how do individuals actually disclose that information and that's really something that's around the overall governing structures of those industries well government has got obviously a big say in how those industries actually operate but generally HR professionals would be should be on the lookout for that kind of thing i'm not saying they would always take action in all circumstances but you know it's another part of the dialogue that we have to be more systematic about if that's an issue we have to identify it and we have to have a way of getting it out in the open and getting it discussed but the the evidence that you presented will will help us to do that okay thank you moving on to john mason now thanks convener and perhaps to move in a slightly different area kind of employment barriers and that kind of thing and dr McGurk you already mentioned the fact that sometimes by people looking at the names on an application form can have an impact and we have heard evidence that ethnic minority job applicants are less likely than others to get past shortlisting and interviews and so on is there anything we can do to tackle that side of things yeah i think one of the one of the first issues is that you know we in the HR community generally have to have a dialogue about it you know we have to you know put it in terms of having a dialogue about it getting data to show where it exists and where the issues are and then developing professionals to be able to counteract it you know so for example in the recruitment phrase and that that evidence from i think it was something like our Greg and Emma more likely to be shortlisted in Laetitia and Jamal yeah so these were quite evidently white American type names at the same study was replicated in the UK by two of my former colleagues at the Cardiff Business School might know and and Kim Hawk and you know and it basically came to the same conclusion and the issue that it raises is that you know the the screening process should be you know generally the CVs for example is a method of submission should be discouraged you know you know a CV is often sent for high level roles because you want to have a real drill down into people's skills and qualifications and career history and you should be able to do that on a standard application form and that should be standardised it should have all of the monitoring information on it does that happen all the time no it doesn't so would you leave the name off the application form you could do i mean what what i would say is there are lots of areas that we can consider but you know before we actually make recommendations and decisions about this we have to have a dialogue about what actually works in different circumstances and what does are you aware of any employers where they have tried something like that in the housework yeah yeah and BT for example have had anonymous submissions and the the trouble is that when people have done this they haven't always had a control group to actually compare it against to see that it's improved practice they've just brought in the practice so it's part of a general issue around resourcing and talent planning which is the professional area that's responsible for recruitment and development of staff that we actually start to look at these issues and how they actually operate and collect much more evidence and this inquiry has made us aware that we need to do more of that i mean we had a we've had a whole lot of submissions but one of the comments i think was western bartonshire referred to a report from the coalition for race equality and rights suggesting that you know when it gets to interview we put too much emphasis and experience and not enough incompetence i don't know if that's something you would agree with and i'm not i'm not sure how you actually split this up because if i want somebody in my office who's going to get on well with people well if they haven't had any experience of getting on well with people i don't know how i measure that you know yeah i mean it's um i'm sure you know all of the witnesses live a different view of this my view and i was a former learning and talent development lead advisor in cipd nationally um and you know i dealt a lot with the issue um there are certain people who think that competence based assessment is the be all and end all there are other people that think that the world is changing and more fluid and dynamic and that competence kind of bakes in a certain type of behaviour and skill but obviously it has to be a mix of the two and how you do that is by having properly structured interviews and you do sometimes have to consider things like cvs because they give you more of the experience issue you have to conduct i would say telephone screening interviews with very targeted questions that ask people about their skills and their capability um you have to actually you know conduct structured interviews with questions and with rankings um for the candidates so that you're asking in the same questions and you're assessing them on the same criteria which is is all very well for bt and Lothian council and all these people but sorry Edinburgh council um but um you know your most employers are just quite small i mean yeah absolutely how on earth can we get impact there yeah it's a really good point and i think um being small doesn't mean that you shouldn't be fair you know um it's all about viability visibility the issue and viability of the practice um so from our point of view our people skills project which we're developing a lot of the evidence will be a lot of the support will be around recruitment so we'll certainly be putting in um good practice guidelines which will be based on our um based on our um our fact sheets on fair recruitment for example and selection um that will help SMEs to actually think about these issues um because i don't think there are very few people out there who are going to say i don't want to employ a person from a a BME community you know um but you know sometimes through unconscious bias through lack of visibility in that community in that or in contrast to the audibility of the bottles being there there's dispatch there um that in itself is um something that you know making people aware and making it viable for them to do it so if we put big processes in front of them that make it difficult that make them have to comply in a tick box way they'll get routine about it and they won't do it mindfully we want them to do it mindfully in a committed way because it's the right thing to do okay i wonder if any of the other witnesses want to comment on that kind of area at all miss martin yeah i think i just i'd agree with that final point i think it is about people just considering the issue for a minute because um evidence we have research evidence that shows that where people are asked to do it in a fair way that that actually does help the outcome it can be as simple as that actually and there is no there is no right or wrong way when it comes to this issue because the issue isn't so much the process that people are engaging with it's it's the person that they're engaging with you know it's the subjectivity that's involved within the within the process and people will make a decision about who's the best person for their organisation and they won't necessarily realise that they're picking somebody because they look like them or they seem like them but they will and if they if you can interrupt that thought process then you can make a real difference and that's kind of that's sort of part of the learning that we've seen already through the project like a NHS loading that was kind of part of it was that sort of training on unconscious bias and trying to make sure that recruiters actually just considered fairness in their interactions okay anybody else want to comment okay i mean kind of moving on from that then a i mean maybe less at the recruitment process but as somebody tries to move on in their organisation the kind of informal networks and things can become very important and well one example seeing we're hearing all these bottles i mean you know people go to the pub they socialise in the pub that excludes perhaps muslin folk or anybody else that's not happy with the alcohol side of things is that a problem and again can we do much about that anybody want to answer that helen and then david do you want to answer as well okay we'll go for david first he's not spoke for a while i'm usually not this shy um i'm not sure that from an education point of view in terms of organisation across scotland it's something to offer but if we look at um we'd mentioned earlier thin slice judgment as a piece of psychology that you go into a job interview and in almost all cases it's decided within the first five seconds and there's clear there's clear evidence that that's what takes place and just asking somebody about fairness would would dissipate that from the education angle it's it's who you are that makes a difference these days not what school you go to and therefore the networking bit comes in because that's about your identity so your network with who you know and if you don't have those networks then that's that's going to disadvantage you to to engage in employment i mean that's just an observation from from that side of things helen yeah i think i think the specific example that you raised is is a real problem it does it is an issue within workforces that people feel like it is about who your friends with it can be you know cultural practices can really hold hold people back within the workforce but i think it doesn't have to be that way you know a very small amount of emphasis on this within them within employers can really break down barriers quite a lot even just having having training courses that allow people to come together and discuss the issue can be actually really really helpful because it just it just clears the air and it just gets preconceptions out of the way and the stc ran has been running over the last couple of years a scotish union learning course for bme workers all moving into management and a lot of that the success that course has actually been really successful and it has people has helped people move in to promote a post even though it's had no contact with employers at all it's all been focused on the the the employee and it's being taken people from a whole mixture of workplaces from all across scotland but what that really looked at was about coping it was about resilience essentially it was about coping with racism and providing people networks amongst themselves really to to give peer to peer support going forward and just having that kind of solidarity and that ability to discuss things has the feedback is phenomenal people are saying that it's transformed their whole way that they look at their career and as a result they become more positive about themselves and their skills and the employer picks up on that so even you know small behavioural changes from both the employee and the employer can have a really quite a dramatic impact on the outcomes for people I mean I like that and I'd like to get down that route but I mean I just wonder if that's just going to take forever while we change people's attitudes I mean with women and men you know I think that there was the feeling while we just gradually encouraged but I mean the progress has been so minimal at certainly in the political field that eventually people have just started saying right we are going to have 50 50 or 40 60 or whatever on a company board in the cabinet these kind of things I mean we have a suggestion from Amina the Muslim women's resource centre that we should be looking at quotas and that is really the only way to make something happen is that something you think is useful okay you're talking about in terms of modern apprenticeships for well it certainly could be modern apprenticeships but one of the issues is that we offer a funding contribution towards the training and assessment costs but it's the it's the employer that employs the individual so in terms of introducing a quota that could be problematic I think but if every one of your your modern apprenticeships was white next year and male for that matter you know you would find that unacceptable so the question is how well I think I mean I think a lot of what we're doing in terms of the projects that I've described earlier today is about trying to change minds and and and influence individuals against you know against cultural pathways that there are in terms of what happens post 16 and you've got to understand that in terms of the context that we're working in you get into all sorts of legal things around quotas too in terms of what you're offering so I mean I wouldn't want to jump into anything without those kind of things being thought through can I come in that do you think it's mainly that there's two areas that really should take priority here is one the young people in school prior to leaving to to choose there that their career options and also target the employers as well because as you say it's employers that actually employ the individuals and then choose to do the modern apprenticeship so it looks as if it's like a two strand attack you actually needs to do it would you agree with that is that right I think there's actually three strands you know 28% of people in Scotland think it's okay to hold a prejudice 66% of them think more should be done to challenge prejudice so we've got a gap to to narrow the air and that comes out of the social attitudes survey and that asks and questions to people of who would you employ you know and those from a gypsy traveler background or transgender I've got no chance in terms of the percentages that people just admit to in a survey and so I think this is where broadly need to be not just inclusive identity in Scotland but put that into practice again I think when we have that 66% it's a more than solid basis for that and and I think there's something in how do we empower diverse communities that people have to make their way in the broad stream of society but how do we pull them together in small groups to support each other I think there's something in that going across the identity bits we had a very successful deaf learners conference 66 young people coming together for the first time and and they gained out of that in looking at their agenda and the challenges they face so I think that opportunities to pull that together and other people are better placed to comment on the role of employers but we're looking to establish school employee partnerships that are very effective and again in the best practice they work really well with schools Helen do you want to sit very briefly because I've still got another question just very briefly I think the problem with quotas we would be in favour of quotas but they're not they're not really legal is the problem but but the only the only area where we think you should consider is potentially on foundation apprenticeships because there is no employed status there so you could potentially run quotas in that area and you maybe should if the individual does not want to take part in it then you know that it's also supply and demand I think it's got to work here too anyway can we can we sort of stop sorry to sort of problem move on join are you finished yeah can we move on to Annabel please yeah I think I'm left with a kind of a hybrid situation we're about four fifths of the question I was going to ask have been answered um and I think we'd all agree that coming from you this morning as witnesses has been some very positive information and some very encouraging information about what is happening which is good I mean the one thing is legal is positive action at the moment and I was quite interested Helen of what you were saying about an unacceptable situation in a health board and then when that's brought to the health board's attention and the health board has told this is just unacceptable immediately a process and procedure is introduced which from what you were saying seems to have transformed the situation so is it the case that limiting the use of positive action in the public sector is perhaps ignorance of what is happening or can be done and how would we improve the situation in the public sector for assisting people from an ethnic minority background either to get a job in the first place or to get proper career progression once in that job I think that's absolutely right I think I think there needs to be a focus on it and I think you know as is the case with public policy in every area like things go in and out of fashion and it's been a few years before since we've really had a proper focus on race issues in a systematic way across Scotland and I think public sector employers having a look at their own workforce looking at how where people are clustered looking at their access to training looking at promotion issues and listening to communities having a proper discussion with communities and hearing what they have to say about their own lives I think that would be really really helpful and we and we could do a lot without necessarily having to change the law and does anyone else want to chip in to that question yeah I think the issue about positive action is that you know it's absolutely to be encouraged that we engage positively with different communities that we build a diverse workforce the the issue is that you know characteristics are multifaceted you know you've got you could have white working class kids from North Ayrshire could consider rightly consider themselves excluded from the labour market in Edinburgh you know you've got to think about how that is coherently and positively managed and that actually doesn't have the opposite effect which is sometimes to cause another form of exclusion or perceived exclusion to another group and that's about you know government playing its role in absolutely doing what it can the leavers it can pull it's about the private sector the big private sector organisations that you know like BT and RBS etc doing what they can to engage with diverse communities and as long as the the visibility the issue is in at the forefront and the viability of it for smaller organisations is also possible then I think we can make a lot of progress but certainly the issue of positive action for example it's been practiced in lots of industries around you know we had an initiative in the airline industry around positive action the fact that if you go to south allward you know Hounslow and west London you see lots of people from BME communities primarily south asian loading baggage onto airliners and my phd was in the labour market the airline industry and one of the issues that we looked at was you know what were you know how were these people getting into the better jobs in the airline industry like for example pilots and I worked for the airline pilot union for eight years as the director of research and we looked at doing that and we did get a lot more applications what we found out though and this is this is part of the issue with positive action is that people get into a mentality where if we can recruit then that's fine we've fulfilled that what we got were another layer of middle class young people who had STEM qualifications who might have gone on and done other things and a lot of the people that were still loading the baggage were still loading the baggage so you know there's an issue about how what the outcomes are and how other people perceive that but you know I'm not rolling it out it's certainly something that should be considered if we don't make very strong progress in the coming years so just to summarise convener because I don't want to repeat ground we've gone over are the four of you saying that with a combination of continuing to collect meaningful data to understand what's not happening by continuing to look at areas of good practice such as Helen described by continuing as John has just described to look at what really is working in the private sector and also taking note of David's important point about an underlying cultural issue which is a broad one for political and civic Scotland to address that if we can really move forward in these fronts you can see a way towards improvement I can I think if especially in Scotland if we work together on this I think we can make a big difference okay thank you very much do any members have any other questions you'd like to ask briefly just now no so any witnesses want to say anything they want to add they've not had the opportunity to no the committee for addressing this really important issue at a very timely moment thank you very much I'd like to thank you all for coming along and giving us the information evidence today it's been a really good session we really appreciate it and that concludes today's meeting our next meeting will take place on the 24th of September and I now close the meeting thank you