 Can I welcome everyone to the 18th meeting of the Education and Skills Committee in 2018? Can I please remind everyone present to turn on mobile phones and other devices on to silent for the duration of the meeting? The first item of business is the decision on whether to take item 4 of this meeting in private will be considering a draft report of an inquiry into attainment and achievement of school-aged children experiencing poverty. Are members content to take item 4 and any future considerations of a draft report in private? The next item on our agenda is the second evidence session on young people's pathways. Last week, we heard from a number of organisations involved in the delivery of the recommendations of the commission for developing Scotland's young workforce. On Sunday, Monday and Tuesday of this week, we visited the Shetland Islands for a fascinating visit looking at the experiences of school students and staff, college students and staff, local businesses and third sector representatives and apprentices in the workplace. I would like to put on record my sincere thanks to everyone who made this fact-finding so worthwhile and enjoyable. This week, we are joined by Sir Ian Wood and Jennifer Craw. Can I warmly welcome you both to the meeting? Sir Ian was the chair of the commission on developing Scotland's young workforce and remains involved with the DEYW national advisory group. Jennifer provided support throughout the commission's work. Can I invite you, Sir Ian, to make any introductory remarks? OK. Thank you very much. Thank you for the opportunity. Jennifer actually wasn't on the commission but was an incredibly valuable participant in the commission. Jennifer's worked with me in a number of projects and provided support and advice all the way through, so I'm delighted to have her with me here to help in any whole range of areas. First of all, I'm going to say that the paper that you've got for today, which, thank you, was sent to us, is actually a very good paper. I think that it has a really good, fairly succinct go at identifying the key issues and also the progress being made, so that was very helpful. It was suggested that we might cover pretty briefly up front the really key issues, the heart of the issues that the commission got involved with. I'm going to do that with maybe four or five of them. The first one, I called it the neglected 50 per cent. I actually wanted to call the report the neglected 50 per cent but I was told that it wasn't the right thing to do, so we called the report something else. We visited a lot of schools and we were very well received and well looked after, but essentially the first 10 minutes was taken with telling us all about the academic achievements of the schools and how well they were doing with whatever 80 per cent higher passers. Then we'd say, well, that's great. Can you tell us please about the—we never got the right words. I'm going to use non-academic. I don't like it, but it's either non-academic or vocational. Can you tell us about the non-academic youngsters who are not doing hires? Honestly, in a number of cases there was an embarrassed silence. Have you got any figures on how many qualifications they're leaving school with? That hit us right out front. Alongside that, which clearly you guys have all very much picked up, there's a real cultural thing about university being the be all and the end all. Therefore, anything that's not university tends to get secondary consideration. So early on, we had in our heads, we need to get a much more focus on meaningful qualifications for the non-academic youngsters leaving school. There's no point in the kids staying on at school unless he or she has got something to aim for. That was very much in the front of our minds, that and employability. There is an issue on parity of esteem. Frankly, parents are at fault, teachers are at fault, some schools are at fault. I think we're all at fault, frankly. My mother was desperate for me to be a professional person, and that was really all she ever wanted, and that was essentially going to university. Secondly, very quickly from there, we went on to the concept of college partnerships. How can we get as quickly as possible vocational teaching capacity? It wasn't really that difficult to work out that the colleges had a lot of the vocational facilities and resources and lectures, and therefore, if we could build a really strong bridge between the schools and the colleges, that was one way to significantly expand it. We actually got a number of things wrong. I mean, I guess we thought that that could expand into the first year of HNC and first year of the modern apprenticeship, and neither of those yet have come about. We were looking for meaningful qualifications that, when the youngster left school, it would take them on some kind of pathway. I don't think that there's any youngsters right now at school doing the first year of an HNC, and I don't think yet that we've really graduated into youngsters doing modern apprenticeships. Actually, the focus just now is on foundation apprenticeships, which are great ideas, but they don't help to neglect 50 per cent. The qualifications and the level for foundation apprenticeships is actually above what the youngsters that we would be concerned about do. They're a great concept. I'm not going to denigrate them at all. Real concern about career advice and career advice is not easy. It's absolutely not an easy one to get on top of, but the huge mixed quality of career advice, very poor work experience in terms of preparing kids for employability. There's no better way to do that than to give them some real work experience. Frankly, for a number of reasons that just wasn't there, we greatly valued apprenticeships for a number of reasons, and particularly what's now called modern skill apprenticeships. Interestingly, they're focused on modern skills, but what we all need to understand is that modern skills are changing so fast in front of our eyes. Digital is going to change just a whole range of way in which we design the appropriate way to get youngsters ready for what's going to be a very different world. Modern apprenticeships, we greatly valued. The second part of our report was focused on business and industry. I think that there's probably been reasonable progress made there. There's still a very disappointing lack of youngsters being employed directly from education into business. There's a very poor take-up of apprenticeships, and SMEs have a particular problem there. We actually suggested that there should be some financial incentive for SMEs to take on apprenticeships. I think that that's probably the only significant recommendation that we made that wasn't taken up, but we felt that there's particular problems with an SME. If 20 per cent of our SMEs took on apprenticeships, we'd solve all kinds of problems. We thought that that was worthwhile and that wasn't picked up. I'm probably going to stop there, because that's me looking back. Obviously, as we go on, we have thoughts on just how much progress has been made on the various recommendations. Thank you very much for that. Despite that, you've certainly said that there's a number of things that still have to be done. Despite that, there does seem to be a further deal of progress. One of the witnesses last week was talking about the wide support that Development Young Workforce has had from all sorts of sectors. Could you tell us what your views on the challenge in coordinating a programme that involves so many different types of stakeholders? For example, the establishment of distinct vocational pathways can be routed through college, training providers and businesses. Is there the additional challenge of ensuring schools, pupils and parents know the benefit of these different pathways and what they present? It's a very significant challenge because there's a number of stakeholders with pretty different approaches and views. The key players are the schools themselves and the recognition within the schools that it's not black and white, but there's clearly some very strong academic content and there's also a large content that is vocational. The colleges have a very important role to play. The colleges are the main training resource for the non-academic youngsters. If they're going to go into some kind of further education, the universities themselves have a role to play. We try to spell out what we saw with the developing relationship. Clearly, we established a relationship between schools and colleges. It's very important that that is developed. We try to establish the basis of relationship between schools and business, and I think that that's probably got a 60 per cent past mark. There has been significant progress on most of our recommendations that has been real progress, and that's very positive. There isn't a single all-embracing if we do this and everyone's going to come together. There's a number of important dichotomies here where you're trying to connect key players together to do the right things. I'm very disappointed that you don't have a magic bullet there, Sir Ian. There isn't a magic bullet. Yeah, there never is. Exactly, the very seldom is. Can I ask on one subject that you mentioned earlier, you were talking about careers advice, do you think that it would be helpful for companies and colleges and other organisations to go into schools earlier than they do just now, not to point them to one industry or whatever, but just to say here are the types of options that you've got? It seemed to us when we were visiting some schools just over the last couple of days that what happened was that people were making their choices before they knew what they were going to do, and therefore they were heading down a path that they might decide they didn't want to do. So would there be some benefit in going in earlier? Do you mean primary school? No, no. I was talking to somebody just recently who was saying that they go in P7 now, but I don't think that that's universal at all. It is happening, because my chance is a little bit about it, because on the family foundation side that we have been looking at, it's been done in England to some extent where there's actually quite a lively movement towards linking businesses into primary schools and actually getting people to go into primary schools and talk about careers. I think that it's helpful, but I think that it's much more important to get the rights involvement in secondary school. It's senior one, two and three. I think that's when there's likely to be some kind of not a decision, but an orientation towards what they might do. I don't think that youngsters don't have it. They leave school and they still don't have it. Careers advice is not easy, but it is so important. The computerised version I think is now more user friendly and I think is being well used, but there's absolutely nothing to beat, particularly a young person in whatever profession they've chosen, whatever job they've chosen, going into the school and standing in front of the youngsters and talking to them and telling them, and letting the youngsters ask questions. There's nothing to beat that. Okay, thank you very much. I'll just ask Julianna. Yeah, I want to pick up on something that you said that I think that we've all found has been speaking to young people in particular about their choices at school and that's the influence of parents and you mentioned your own personal experience that's similar to mine, university was a be-all and end-all for a lot of parents. What can we do to engage parents more and let them know a little bit more about the value of what's out there and get to a point where parents don't have a tunnel vision when it comes to their children's options? We are trying to change culture here. We are trying to change a long embedded view, but somehow the really worthwhile thing in life is to go to university and so many parents have got that as the aspiration for the youngster. We met, there's a national parents association? Yeah, so we met, that's actually a really interesting meeting, because so this obviously isn't enlightened group, you know, they're interested and involved and and even some of them at various stages of the discussion, I want to say there were pennies dropping, there was in terms of the thinking and the way they were thinking. I think we absolutely need to make apprenticeships and trades occupations and what have you. We need to make it more respectable. I mean we need doctors, we need lawyers, we need people to look at the plumbing in our house, we need a whole range of different things and we need to find a way to make that, we need to increase the prestige of it. I mean frankly what's our experience in North East of Scotland is that a lot of the youngsters who in fact didn't go to university but did a really good technician training, they're earning more, if it's money, they're earning more than a lot of the professional people are earning, so money is only part of it. I mean my dad had a fishing business which I went into, I shouldn't have but I did because my dad had poor health and my mum just desperately didn't want me to go into the fishing business, that was infradig. So some of these old fashioned ideas and concepts still very much exist, I think it's making these alternative the vocational occupations, everyone's got to get a mindset change into understanding they are worthwhile, they are essential, they are equally part of society as other things that we do. Teachers in school are incredibly important, I actually think parents are the root of the problem but I think teachers if you like are the next stage up because a lot of teachers believe that their success is based on how many hires their children get and their kids get. And we've got a change, this is on the agenda, we've got a change the way in which schools are appraised. So we're no longer just appraising schools on the old traditional higher passes or the academic passes and we need to highlight the importance of the way in which we can significantly enhance the number of vocational youngsters leaving school with qualifications, it's only improved very slightly, I think it's gone from 7 per cent to 10 per cent or 11 per cent or something, that means 40 per cent are leaving school with nothing. The change in that reputation and the prestige as you mentioned is about how it's reported and getting like the wider media to understand what's positive about all these destinations and then when the reports come in about higher passes and all the rest that seems to be the be all and end all and that feeds into that narrative that parents are still thinking that apprenticeships are a lesser option. I mean this just has to be a personal view, I mean I think we can blame the media for a whole range of things, I don't think we can blame them for that culture, I think the culture begins with parents and with teachers, I really do. And that's where we've got to affect the change. So there's got to be a big effort in schools, I mean the headmaster or headmistress has got a huge impact on the culture in the school. We could almost tell when we'd done a number of schools, this wasn't us being particularly clever, it's just what I can sense, we could almost tell what we were doing at the school within the first 10 minutes, what are those any serious attempt at vocational education in the school. It wasn't just there in the facilities, it was there in the way the headmaster or headmistress spoke, it was there in the way the teacher spoke and we always spoke to youngsters in the school as well. So it's not difficult to tell a school that we're four years out of date, I mean five years out of date. So I really, well it has changed because I've been to a couple of schools in the last couple of years and this is on the committee I now sit on, whatever it's called, the overall committee. But obviously they've chosen good schools but they've chosen really enlightened schools where there was a very, very clear shift recognising that vocational education is stood alongside academic education. So it is possible to do. One of the reflections from the original work that we did, I remember, and it's reflected in some of the evidence you've taken before, it was round about the application process for universities and there's a lot of focus within schools around UCAS and parents are also introduced to how does this work and then following that you've got the whole funding element. One of the key observations was how much more fragmented any education pathway outside universities can seem and feel and be so not just access to college but equally access to modern apprenticeships. So that simplicity of the UCAS process and the focus of it within a school environment is very difficult to replicate that for both college FE and also the modern apprenticeships. So that piece of infrastructure that's been invested in for university education is still not there for the other education pathways or pathways to work. So that, I think, is reflected in some of the evidence that you've taken. I hope that it's confusing at this point. It's not known, so it's still not known. I know particularly from an Aberdeen perspective what has become better known is the 2 plus 2 degree route to college and to university and that's one route but it still ends up being the focus is on degree. So it can be done. You can introduce new pathways and that can filter down but it's not easy if you're looking at an apprenticeship and it's more difficult doing college applications because you don't have this single focus in the same way that you do have for universities. So that still is a challenge both parents and career and teachers and employers in terms of how they make it work. I would just like to go on about the party of steam just my colleague Gilliam was talking about. Serene, you said that in your opening remarks as well university has been seen as the be all and end all and also your own mother wanted you to become a professional person while you didn't turn it to bad serene. The whole thing is if you look at parents and how we can use them as a driving force for change as well is it not the case that there may be some more for the business world to actually come into education and actually tell the potential career paths for young people to try and get that prestige and also potential earnings because nine times out of ten with parents in particular the potential earnings is always the one that fuels the deal. I mean of course and I do think that the dyw groups 21 around the country now and that's growing. I do think that that's part of their responsibility in building up the partnerships between business and particularly secondary schools. We must get more and it's got to be young people. It's got to be people that the kids can relate to. We must get more young people into schools and literally just talking through what they do and talking about their earnings and whatever they're doing, whether they're a doctor or a fireman or whatever it is they're doing and get kids to hear the story as it is. That's a motherhood question. I completely, that's a no-brainer. We need to significantly enhance that and in my opinion that's much better than career advice because they can ask a whole bunch of questions. I know you can ask some questions in the career programme but you can ask a whole bunch of questions so that's just a no-brainer. We also had UWS principal Craig Mahoney in here and he said that he had some kids in his institution, young people who didn't drop out of university but opted into a new career and he saw that as a success. They didn't graduate but they actually saw university became from that institution an option for them to go some down a vocational side of things. Is it possibly maybe in higher education there should be more ideas like that as well where possibly there is that kind of balance between people can change their career because people change subject matter but the idea of changing well from academic to vocational would probably be seen as a radical idea. It's a funny roundabout way to do it. I would much rather... In all honesty the institution I'm talking about comes from a technical college background so that's probably part of the reason why it's more historic than anything else. Much sorrow that we had a very significant focus and effort and resource into trying to help the youngsters to make the right career decision whether it's university or whatever it is at school and getting them started off in the right part. Honestly because of the cultural issue a lot of youngsters go to university because their parents want them to go to university and they've nothing against it. It's another four years and university life generally quite a good part of a kind of lifetime for people but they come out and they're still not sure what they want to do. The qualification hasn't really helped them an awful lot so it's people who go to university as well as those at Douglas University that we want to try and ensure that they fully understand the implications of what they're doing. Final question just on that actual point you know if I use my own father's background it's different times more brutal times but he effectively it was educationally 11 plus you either went down grammar route or you went down modern secondary and he went modern secondary but then he ended up getting an apprenticeship at the local engineering forum and became an engineer had his own business we all had a reasonable lifestyle because of that work. In this modern age that engineering business isn't there anymore you know in my local community that option probably wouldn't be there because he'd probably been encouraged to try and go down some kind of academic route that. How do we get to something similar but not as brutal a system? You know these opportunities are there. I mean there's a growing focus on how do we maximise support for what's called young entrepreneurs when your dad was actually a young entrepreneur setting out on his own business. There's a lot of resources now being allocated towards that some of it's digital I mean this world is changing some of it's digital but it's certainly a lot of higher tech stuff so what you call the engineering businesses there's a whole lot of them there it's not enough but there's a whole lot of them there and there is the opportunity for young people to really now get fairly reasonable support if they've got an inclination to start their own business. Sidney you talked a couple of times already about basically peer support about young people coming in and giving their experiences would it be worthwhile or does it happen that maybe local authorities or business organisations or schools themselves try and create a group of people that they can use to go into the schools and talk about their experiences for the benefit of the pupils? I think that's what some of the DYW groups are doing so they're definitely encouraging their employer members to do exactly that. I'm not sure whether they've got a formal list but I'm quite sure they're actively I'm trying to know that actually I'll be doing that in some areas. I mean I know within our region DYW are focusing very much on sectors and the business links and partnerships and then across those key partnerships what you tend to find is one leader who will then try and harness other companies to come in behind them and and share that. I think the other point I was going to also add to the apprenticeship discussion and question we are piloting with SDS and SRUC and others in the northeast of Scotland a shared apprenticeship scheme in agriculture so I think that other if there's no small engineering company any more and large employers are really important in terms of providing apprenticeships there might be other more flexible models that we could develop within a Scottish context to support SMEs and I think it would be interesting we're just out recruiting for that at the moment and it would be interesting to see that how that actually works so A we're trying to attract people into agriculture and B we're trying to address the issue of no single farm can can can train up in all the areas that the apprentice needs so that I think is going to be an interesting model and I'm sure could be replicated in other sectors certainly food and drink industry are interested in it as well. It would certainly be helpful if the committee could get some detail about that. Yeah it's just just recruiting now. Yes yes yes. It's taken a year. Thank you. Eilas. Good morning sir Ian Wood. Could I ask about the sort of structure within schools and could I start with the curriculum for excellence which as you know has eight areas which are obviously fundamental to the education of any child. Do you think that employability should be added to that group? I'm just debating on the word added I mean employability should run through a number of these eight areas. I mean it's we don't just put youngsters to school to get them a job we put youngsters to school for a whole lot of really good reasons because it's an essential part of developing into a successful contributing citizen but part of it has to be to try and ensure they get a job and therefore whatever possible in the various areas and curriculum for excellence there absolutely should be a focus on and you mustn't make it too blatant there's a degree of subtlety in this as well so that youngsters we don't kind of overwhelm youngsters but but part of the motivation in a young person going to school if they're going to be a good citizen they're going to be employable. But it raises an interesting question then because you started out this morning by talking about the 50% that you feel are being let down. Do you feel that being let down in school is a difficult issue within the curriculum for excellence because it's not quite focusing on the employability skills that we would like in order to develop all the ambitions that you have? I think the answer to your question is yes but again I put it a different way. I think we're letting these youngsters down or we were letting these youngsters down. I really hope it's improving significantly. We were letting them down by having no interest and no focus on them, honestly, no interest and no focus on them. They were filling positions at school. Frankly, I wonder why some of them stayed on. A lot of them would have been enough for a better leaving school whenever they could at the end of year four and when we asked can you actually show us what kind of education they're getting? What have they been taught? It was just filling in. In that case, what do we have to do to ensure that the qualifications and the stress qualifications not exams necessarily? What do we have to do within schools to provide the quality of the qualifications that will assist those who are not going to follow a university career? You mentioned when you opened up this morning about the possibility of HND within schools. Is that something that you think can really help in providing a greater quality of provision within the school to give youngsters a better basic training before they head out into either college work? It doesn't just give them a good basic training, it actually gives them a qualification. I said that this hasn't been as successful as we hoped, but I understand that we will be up to about six and a half thousand youngsters in school going to college next year or the year after next, so the numbers are building up. The idea is that they spend maybe two days a week at college, so they're in school but they go to college two days a week. Our view was that HNC was one of the opportunities of modern apprenticeships, another one, where they could do the first year in school, but studying at college. When they leave school, they've actually got a year under the belt, they've also got a year's knowledge as to what it means and a better idea as to whether they actually want to do it or not. There's a bunch of other things that we felt we could do in school with attendance. You may say, why don't they just leave and go to college? There was a clear view expressed to us that a lot of youngsters aren't ready for that, and if we could give them the combination of staying in the school environment and culture, but getting a couple of days at university, that's a great insight into the future world. It's a really good combination. I don't disagree with you at all, but that would inevitably mean a slight structural change for S3, S4, S5 and S6 within schools. We stumbled on this. It was early on, unfortunately, and there was one meeting that we went to. We met the principal of the college and one of our senior staff and two people there from the education authority. They were planning for the next year how they'd started a pilot programme, which was about kids in school spending one or two days a week at college, and they were planning the next year's extension of the second year of the pilot programme. That was a eurica to me, frankly. Yes, each Lothian. Yes, that was a eurica. So it was there, but in a tiny, tiny, tiny way. I think that the colleges of mixed views on it, when I knew it was giving us evidence today, I've spoken to two college principals as to how they think it's going. I think that the correct thing for them to say is what they said to me yesterday that we're happy and it's going well and numbers are increasing. I think that there's a view that we'd actually rather have them direct into college rather than take them through school. I asked one of them that and they just smiled. The fact is that it is on the increase that is happening. We don't have the funds to make a big investment in educational facilities and schools, and the colleges are actually pretty good at what they're doing. We're just, for some reason, we've missed out on HNC and we're not yet doing significant first-year modern apprenticeships. Thank you. My last question would be just to push you a little bit further on that, whether you think that we would have to make some changes to the structure, particularly, as I say, of S3, once subject choice is taken place, through S4, S5 and S6 to make sure that there is a very clear pathway to the different routes once the pupil has left, whether that's at the end of S4, S5 or S6. What you're suggesting is that there is a lot more quality in the system than is perhaps being used. Can we just push you a little bit further as to whether— Hold in the system. Well, you're flagging up that you think that things are getting better and that there is some real quality in the availability of HNC possibilities, etc. It's all there, technically, but is it actually happening in, given the current structure of schools in Scotland? Because I think—if I could just bring back something that you said when you came to the cross-party group oncologies and universities—you hinted that a little bit more had to be done to develop the school structure to allow greater clarity of the pathways for some of our young people. I think that the concept of pathways has really caught on. It's a really important concept for anyone studying. Even though they're not sure what they want to do, they should have a view of the way ahead—maybe three or four different pathways—and then you split it into three or four different pathways. I think that pathways are really important. That wasn't raised as a problem. When we spoke to schools about the concept of the one or two days a week, it was practical for them to handle. They actually gave them a wider choice. Interestingly, some of the academic youngsters were interested in experiencing college. I think that the idea of a day out of school going to college and experiencing a different environment was actually quite attractive. I'm not up to date, Liz, but I'm sure that the potential is there. I don't think that there are any insurmountable structural issues that should allow us to get a much better combination of school and college education, mainly for vocational youngsters but on a wider basis. Thanks very much. I'm struck by some of what you're describing in terms of relationship with colleges. Those were things that we were doing 20 years ago in Glasgow. Perhaps one of the problems in education is that people do interesting things on a small scale, but they don't necessarily then roll out. I'm interested in what you're saying about the cultural mindset that I was teaching for 20 years, but it is 20 years ago. Our problem was that, frankly, some folk in one profession and families didn't see their children going through an academic route. They didn't perceive it as an academic route. In fact, most youngsters, even with good hires, cashed out at the end of their fifth year because they were wanting, as in the 80s, wanting into work. I understand absolutely that schools ought not to be saying that they would be on end all as a university education, but is there a concern on the other side that pre-sumptions and assumptions are made about youngsters in the basis of where they live and whether they should be doing academic work or not? How do we make sure that we don't end up in a position where, in some schools, the offer is vocational, because that's where you come from as opposed to academic? That would very much my anxiety around, because I completely accept the issue about vocational education and value unit properties with youngsters, and I most enjoyed teaching. However, how do we stop what was one of the reasons why people have made such a thing about the importance of access to university and all the rest of it? It's precisely because, back in the day, it was seen that it was only for those and such as those. I'm sure that you experienced what you've described there. That wasn't an obvious trend for us. We went to a whole range of different schools. In some of the schools, in the more disadvantaged areas, pride was taken by the teacher or the head, Mr Marston, who was telling us about whatever, eight or ten or twelve youngsters from quite a large number who could go to university. I don't think that we sensed that everyone in our schools, because it's a poor area, is going to finish up being a vocational. However, I suspect that time has moved on. I think that it's probably better than that. I'd be very sad if we were still facing that. That would be very sad. I think that it's definitely moved on and it's progressing. My concern is that we end up in a position where the fashion moves from one thing to the other and we end up in a position where, I mean, I'm getting very strongly a message from you that it is what is most appropriate for a young person in the schools to be offering relevant support, whatever their skills are. I wonder whether you thought that the careers advice and support is sufficiently tailored to young people. It feels to me that going on to a computer is one thing and it's useful, but the level of support that some young people might require is greater. If you have a view on what that should really look like, what would be the reasonable expectation of the careers advice that you would get within school? I know that employers can come in. We had a guidance teacher in front of us last week who was talking about the other pressures on that, because of pastoral care responsibilities and careers advice. I wonder if you think that sufficient progress has been made in that regard. I think that we had a clear view that there was a huge variation in the quality of careers advice and some of it clearly fell short of what it might, but we also had a recognition that it's actually a very difficult thing to do. We had some interesting discussions with SDS on the issue of careers advice. We had some interesting discussions on work experience, which was a key part of it. If there was any way that you could get a package of things, it wasn't just sitting behind a computer, but it actually involved some practical experience or someone coming talking to you. Sitting behind a computer isn't enough at all, frankly. You need a combination. Frankly, some schools had a good package, and they tended to be the less disadvantaged areas. In the disadvantaged areas, there wasn't the same kind of support from parents and others to try and provide insight into some of the career opportunities. We need to keep improving careers advice. We need to keep getting more work experience, but there's definitely not the magic bullet for this. Can I ask one last question? One of the biggest changes in my teaching career was when they brought in certification for all standard grades, which meant that you had the credit general foundation. Immediately, resources had to follow all those courses. In the past, I taught non-certificate classes where there was no resource, no course, and it was simply whatever you could magic up yourself. Do you share my concern on the decision that a national foe is internally assessed on a pass or fail, which means, in my view, that it is less likely to be seen as significant a qualification when it is externally assessed as the first point? Secondly, would you see your idea of your HNC or whatever filling that space because it would be externally assessed and it would be seen as having credibility for that group of young people? I don't think that I've got enough knowledge to answer that question. I'm serious. I don't think I have. We are four years out of date and there's been a change in the four years in the process. That's too much. That's a question that requires more knowledge than I have of how that system works, I'm afraid. Do you think, though, that it is entirely legitimate to see that external assessment and qualification give us value to what a young person has learned? That's the message that I'm getting from you around why bridging into the school and out into college works and why should some of that not happen in the school? That same mindset would apply to what the national qualification is. Is there a value in it being external as opposed to just the internal? I guess that it depends on the quality of the internal assessment and the reputation of the school for making a good job of that. I mean, there has to be some advantage in that kind of external standard. It's, you know, people recognise that and it's credible. It's formed secondary education when we were finally in a position where youngsters were leaving school with qualifications as opposed to, in the past, being able to get all the way through for four or five years of school with no qualifications. The problem was a lot of these youngsters weren't just leaving school with no qualifications, they were leaving school with no aspiration. There had been no pathway. There's nothing worse, and I've said this a number of times, and I really mean it. There's nothing worse than a young person waking up in bed in the morning and not having something to do. It's the worst thing that we can do to a young person. Part of the answer to that is ensuring that we have a pathway and an aspiration which is there from whatever age, but certainly from kind of fourth-year school, even third-year school, they should have an aspiration to achieve something. Preferably, yes, how meaningful is an internal qualification? It's better than no qualification, but if we could get first-year HNC or first-year model apprenticeship and there's a number of other things that we could do, that's meaningful. Ross Ross, I'd like to follow up the issue of choice. We've received, not just over the course of starting this inquiry but previous work that the committee has done, a substantial amount of anecdotal evidence from young people who feel that, although there might nominally be a choice presented to them while they're at school for future pathways, that choice has really already been made for them. It's that challenge for us in distinguishing between where a school might have broadened the number of options available within it, it might have started, a school that previously was very focused on the academic roots to university, might have started engaging far more with vocational options, with colleges, with businesses for apprenticeship opportunities, that while they're doing that, the school itself, teaching staff or potential parents have essentially made those choices already for the young people. The options are nominally there, but for that individual young person there really wasn't a choice. The school might be offering more, but for them the choice has already been made for them. Are you saying that the restriction is the school curriculum restricting what they can do, or are you saying that it's the parents and the teachers? Parents and teachers, rather, are in the curriculum, yes. I'm in no doubt that the parents and teachers have a huge influence. If you told them that, they'd probably disagree with you. That was one of the interesting things that the discussion with the parents association was, how do you discuss with your kids what they should and shouldn't do? I think that in some cases from quite an early age a lot of parents said that it's their aspiration. It's not the kids' aspiration, it's their aspiration. If you really said to them you're unfairly and unreasonably influenced by your child, the answer is for not. They just don't believe they are. I don't think that teachers really believe they are either. I think that the teachers' issue is getting better. I think that the younger teachers have a somewhat different approach and different thought. I think that the teachers one hopefully will get better over a period of time, but your kids are talking to you are absolutely right. Maybe they don't realise it. When it's happening, they don't have the insight to realise, I'm getting a prejudice view here and we have to find a way to counter that by, as I've said, exposing them to work experience, by getting people in school to talk to them about it, by films of different things. There's a whole range of ways we can do it. There must be a choice and you must be given enough information to make that choice. If we look at an example that you brought up somewhere a moment ago, an experience that I had recently speaking to a young person who their academic achievement would allow them to go to university. The school was very much directing them to go to university, but their interest was to take a vocational route instead. How are we able to measure and assess that distinction between options being available in a school and genuine choice being given to individual young people to individual pupils? That's the challenge for us. The schools can present on paper that they offer those options, but for us to know whether the individual young people are getting a choice is quite a challenge. I don't know how you do that. It wouldn't be acceptable, but we could have a bunch of clever wise people going around independently talking to kids in schools and getting an hour a week for three weeks with them and talking through what they really want to do and trying to help them in a more organised way. I think that it wouldn't be acceptable because parents wouldn't want that and teachers probably wouldn't want that. Could the school inspection regime try to capture even just a part of that? The school inspection regime, which is already in existence, if we included criteria around that, could it try to capture some of that? Again, it would be largely anecdotal, but it might be quite informative. It's trying to get the child into a position where the parent isn't there and the teacher isn't there and they get a chance to be fair. Kids don't have a lightning clear insight. It's something that you have to help them work their way towards. I asked lots of kids what they think I do and what they want to do. I'm going to say that 80 per cent of them shrug their shoulders and they're not sure what they want to do. In the few occasions when I have a time to actually talk to them, the fact is that they have got some things they'd like to do. They've just never really thought their way towards it. So any kind of good professional independent counselling, call it whatever you like, whereby we try to help kids to broaden out and develop their insight into what's best for them to do, would be helpful. Can I just come in in the back of that story? We were just back from Shetland, where we did pretty much what you have just suggested, where we had pupils in a class, no teachers there, and we were asking them about their preferred pathways. I think that it works, but there might be some way that that. Obviously, you can't have groups of 12 at a time for every pupil in the country, but there might be some other ways, using online methods or whatever, that you could get some of the information that Ross was talking about and that we've been trying to get, so maybe it could be spread out and some using the technology that is now available that you talked about earlier. It would be most interesting to get the parents' view on that. Yes, but we didn't talk to any of the parents, so maybe that's how it works well. Mary and then Oliver. Thank you, convener, and good morning. I wanted to ask a very brief follow-on question about careers advice, because one of the things that we've heard over the last few weeks is that there is a huge disparity across the country of the quality of careers advice that young people are given, but there's also a view that if you ask the people that deliver the careers advice, they tick all the boxes and they do everything, but if you ask the young people, quite often they tell you a different story. While I understand that it would be good to have a standard across the country, how can we measure and assess that careers advice is actually delivering what young people want? I think that it was great difficulty. You'd have to do it with some kind of independent assessment. Frankly, the most important thing is to get across to the senior people in the school, the headmaster and headmistress, to get them committed to giving good career advice. I mean, really committed to doing it, so it's not just left with the careers advisor or whoever, the careers teacher or whatever it would out with the keepers and the ball. I don't think that we can do it by any kind of external assessment that wouldn't be quite a ponder thing to try and do. What we've got to do is get across to the people running the schools and responsible in the schools, get them persuaded that this employability issue is one of the most important things that they can do. It's every bit as important as the other things they do as a kind of teacher or education person. I think that's the way I would tackle it. We don't want a whole bunch of inspectors going around and sitting watching how career advice is given and what have you. SDS does careers. SDS and in support of the local with each of the schools as well. So we'd have to get SDS, and I think they are. I mean, I think they realise just how important this is. What have they got enough resources? I don't know, but a combination of them plus the kind of senior teaching in the school really committed to getting it right. But we also have to ensure that whatever careers that advice and guidance is given is fully inclusive and allows young people with perhaps additional needs or with disabilities to get the right advice and help to pursue the career. I'm not completely confident that the current system does that. I mean, you're absolutely right. I guess we've got a sense in most schools that really, you know, capable kids were just left with a computer, but special attention was given to kids that needed some help. I think it was probably more advice in terms of the technicality of working in the computer and how you do that as opposed to giving them some different insight into career choices. I mean, we need to sort career choices. I'm going to say it again. With work experience, I mean, clearly by maximising the impact that we have in schools and by young people going into schools and sharing with the youngsters what they do. Just on the issue of work experience, because one of the things that certainly surprised me, and I know that it surprised the other committee members that were in the group that we were in in Shetland when we were talking to young people, is the lack of preparation that young people have when they're about to start work experience, because we spoke to a group of young people that had no idea what was expected of them when they went into a workplace. They didn't know that they were meant to be there on time. They didn't know how to talk to anybody and they didn't know what they were meant to be doing. So one in particular said that they spent two days just following someone around because they didn't know what was expected of them. So surely that's a huge gap. In a way, we're almost setting young people up to fail in that work experience, which can be really important and crucial for their on-going career choice. That's a bad reflection both on the school and on the work experience company. The school could have a very simple module, which was maybe a couple of hours, something like that, which took the youngsters who were going to work experience, prepared them for it, and the business absolutely, if it's contributing fairly to the process, should have an induction whereby it tells them what they're expecting them to do. It's a waste of time otherwise. We're wasting everyone's time unless we get people prepared for it. I've got one very, very last brief question, because I was particularly struck by the recommendation 20. That was a recommendation that you mentioned about financial support for SMEs. I'd be interested in your view on the impact that that will have on rural areas. Again, I suppose that I could reflect on the Shetland experience and many other rural areas in Scotland where there are a number of very small organisations that simply can't afford to take on and support an apprentice. That has a wider impact on the sustainability of the business but also on the sustainability of the community. If that business fails, the experience will go somewhere else. Young people might be forced to leave an area. Is there anything else that should be done, apart from your recommendation 20, to support those organisations to take on young people? There are two problems that SMEs have. One is that they don't have any kind of process or resource to handle the kind of administration and planning of taking on an apprentice, and that's a big one. That's as big as the money one. We can sort that out. The various local employment groups or DYW groups could easily have a resource that held SMEs hand when they engaged in the process with the apprentice. The second one, we would only suggest that there are some support given—I've forgotten, is it first year or second year of apprenticeship—there is some support given. We were, in fact, just saying that we should probably give support for three years, not a huge amount of money. If we could get a bunch more SMEs to take on apprenticeships, I think that we'd help the SMEs and would undoubtedly help the employment problem and would undoubtedly help the number of young people being trained. We'd have to ensure—it's a third problem actually—we'd have to ensure that, in a small company, there was the level of support to look after them when they're doing their apprenticeship, because you can't just cast a person and drift into a company. You've got to have someone. There's a bit of work required there, but goodness me, there's a huge positive end result if we get it correct. I wanted to follow up on one of Mary's points briefly about work experience. Do you feel that young people get enough variation in work experience or enough work experience? When we were in Shetland, some of the feedback from the young people was that they do their one week before some of them leave school. That's all the work experience they're getting, and they don't have anything else to compare it to, so they have one placement. They quite like it or they don't like it, but they don't know how that compares to anything else? It's a trite answer. I don't think that you can give young people enough work experience. The more, within reason, within the education requirements they're going through, the more we can give them, if we could get it. The problem is, we're lucky if we, I guess, maybe half the youngsters right now get work experience, but if we had a really good system, which gave the young person three work experiences in different companies and in different environments, that would be great. Frankly, even going to college is helpful, because that gives them, I mean, that they're actually practically handling joinery tools or plumbing tools or what have you. Even that's pretty helpful, but it doesn't. This whole question of youngsters not turning up in time. It's just some basic things actually they learn from work experience. We had some horrific stories from employers. I may say we fell out with employers when we fell out with schools, but we had some horrific stories from employers taking on kids to do things and they turned up an hour late. It was depressing, but I don't think that it was the norm. There are some basic things that we have to get youngsters used to. The more substantive line of question that I wanted to pursue was around rurality and consistency of approach across the country. Obviously, it's a strength having the 21 different regional groups, but there's quite a lot of variation in that, particularly around the college model, which has been regionalised as well. It's practically more difficult for some youngsters, particularly in the area that I represent, to access college courses at the same time as being at school. Is that something that you recognise? There definitely were, and I'm sure that there still are, logistics issues and problems. The problem of cost of transport taking people round, and I think it's worthwhile getting round that, but I'm not saying we'll get around it on every occasion. I mean, there were some difficulties in that. Generally, that wasn't the number one concern. There were other concerns that we were dealing with before that. Do you think that there's enough resource going in to make those relationships possible at the moment? Do you mean in terms of the business school connections? The business school college connections, obviously. That is significantly more challenging in remote parts of Scotland. I think that there's a bunch of good people working very hard on the wider delivery of the DIYW programme. They've got seven years to do it, and they know that it's being measured, so they've got some clear measures. Actually, I think that there's a bunch of really good people trying to do that. I'm sure that it's not enough, but there's probably as much as we can reasonably make available. The final question was, one of the concerns locally, again, is that there's a shortage of working-age population. There's a lot of young people who tend to leave rural communities and gravitate towards more urban areas. Is there a conflict of interest almost between the needs of employers and individual choice for young people? Again, if we're going to address some of the school's shortages, something has to be done to encourage some of those young people to pursue a path that isn't their choice, is that it? I guess they have to make a choice between the job and where they stay, and it's not easy. I don't think it's reasonable to take a line to say to a youngster that this is what you're going to do. I think that the youngster's got to choose which one they want. It's not easy. I want to ask you a couple of points that you just raised. You said that it would be great for young people to have a wider choice, maybe three options when they were doing work experience, and certainly when I was at school many, many years ago, that was the option that I had had three actual work experiences. I have no idea. Can I say that the work experience that I had in the three different places had no relevance to what my career was before I entered politics, but anyway, that's a different thing. However, how do we encourage SMEs to realise the benefits of taking on a young person to gain either work experience or, for that matter, take them on as a modern apprentice? Here's the problem. Most SMEs are working like mad to keep the business going and keep themselves viable, and that's the prime priority, and we must respect that, because that's essentially—and the first thought on knocking on their door and saying, we'd like to take on a modern apprentice, we've got a hundred and one other issues on the hands. They've no one to deal with it, they don't have to deal with it themselves, and it'll be a drain on the financial resources for the first, whatever, year or two years, even with some kind of reasonable subsidy. I think that we have to do something financially, and I think that the DYW groups have got to be prepared to have resources available locally to go and spend time and help them to do it. How much of it do you think is a cultural issue within small businesses? I've used this example before, but the hairdressing industry takes on an awful lot of apprentices and their small businesses with no resource, no HR department, et cetera. How do they manage it, and yet a plumber or an electrician or a joiner doesn't necessarily be able to provide the same opportunity? I'm not an expert in hairdressing salons, but in that situation, there's maybe five or six people working in one big room, and they can all see what's going on. If you start talking about joiners and plumbers and what have you, they move over the place of different safety issues. There are a different bunch of challenges, but it should be surmountable. It is interesting. We've got a lot of feedback. Company employees like companies taking on apprentices. They really like it. We're helping train and young kids coming in with all their stories about Saturday night and what have you. They actually like it. Most of these SMEs employ a 10 people SMEs, a decent size SMP, so there may be five or six people. It is a big event for them to do that. We'll make some progress there. I don't have huge hopes, but there's how many SMEs are in the country? Thousands and thousands of SMEs. If we could get 5% of them to take on a profit, that would have a big impact. Is there a role here for the trade associations, the master builders federation, the plumbing federation or select or whatever it happens to be? They're already active in the apprenticeship programme. Are they members of the regional groups, for instance? Yes, absolutely. The regional groups are pretty widely representative. The last question that I was going to ask you about was 21 regional groups, but only seven of them are currently using the marketplace, which is the matching tool for young people and employers on my world of work. Is there a particular reason for that? I don't know, but it's bad news. It's not good. I hope that it's just a question of time, but it's a pretty poor figure out of the 21, I agree. I thank the convener and the committee for coming up to Shetland in the last couple of days, particularly your contribution to the local economy, not many of anyone in particular, contribution to Shetland network and things like that. Serene, you will not be surprised to hear that in the bridge simulator at the North Atlantic Christchurch College on yesterday, Tuesday—no, it's Monday—two of my colleagues who will remain nameless managed to crash the 12,000-ton Shetland Aberdeen ferry. All kinds of political metaphors come to mind, but I'm not going to use any of them. I have three quick questions, if I may. The first is on work experience that Oliver Mundell and Gordon Paddall have been asking about and relates to Liz Smith's question about school structure. I just wonder if you have now flecked after a number of years of having produced the report. We, too, took the very strong evidence that more work experience is, by definition, a good thing, but, relating to Liz Smith's question, we've had curriculum for excellence for as long as now. Is there a connection? Is there a challenge in how 2 plus 2 plus 2, the senior phase of our secondary schools, are structured, which, in your view, just creates difficulties in terms of timetabling time out of school? That's what it is. It's an issue about timetabling another week in our busy pupil's life. Do you have any reflections on whether that's the block on more work experience? I hate dodging questions, but I don't know enough. I'm not a politician. I don't know enough about how the school planning system works. I know that there are a bunch of challenges in terms of getting all the timetables, and we've continually told that in terms of the timetables working. I don't know enough about it to say whether that's a good example that we shared in the report was Alfie Cheney's business, Ace Winches, and they were offering work experience on a Saturday morning. Now they were open on a Saturday morning to be able to do that, and I think that the key thing was trying to move away from it just being a one-week work experience, because that does lend itself to the model that you turn up. You just have a week. You're not reliant on your parents' networks. You're reliant on school, company, industry, relationships through and facilitated through MIW. It would obviously take time to build up to that, but employers didn't have to see it as a one-week only. It was actually an opportunity for them to get to know young people within their region, in their area, back to how you retain young people in your region area. Through that, you could start to identify future employees, and it would be mutual in two ways. I think that the idea that work experience should only be one week was not widely held as best practice, and the best do more than that. They will offer outside of the school term time, and they will also offer at weekends. That clearly does not work for all young people, either. To me, as a parent experiencing curriculum for excellence, the whole idea of how you develop as an individual and how work experience maps across to that was a huge opportunity, both as you move from the junior phase to the senior, from school through to the senior phase. I think that we were still at the stage in the commission when the first of the senior phase was moving through. It was still unclear how that was going to work as you moved from primary into the first phase and then the later stages, but how they map across is actually a science in itself. How do you map people outcomes? How do pupils and individual young people do that? The science of using work experience as a developmental tool within your personal journey of education through curriculum for excellence should become easier, but the work experience has to reflect that. To reflect that, you need an intermediary who can explain and understand how curriculum for excellence is trying to build the young individual through the whole education journey and how that fits into what employers are looking for. There should be a perfect match, but the language is different. One of the key things about the external validation of education—I am not an expert, but what we did here from employers is that they found it really difficult to understand education qualifications. That was before national fours and fives had been introduced, but they were coming in. The language between education and employers is really critically important in terms of what does work experience offer for both the people, the young person, the school and the employer in the future and how the education qualification system works. All those things need intermediaries to help translate from one sector. One language would be good, but that would probably be impossible and understandable, but a translator and manager of that process, and that is where DYW, with the right resources, can help in the early years until that becomes embedded, assuming that the education system stays fairly stable. We do not help in that as politicians, both on exam changes and things like that. That is a very powerful argument. The second question that I was going to ask was about a young apprentice at the Malikov yesterday in Lerwick, who is 27. He has just finished a three-year apprentice. The question that Lewis raised with us yesterday is that he took that apprentice on at 24. What his boss was saying, what Dougie Stevenson was saying, is that we could do with the system being more adaptable to allow young men and women to take apprentices and to start modern apprentices a little bit later in life. Do you have a perspective on that? He was semi-skilled, and he said that he would have gone on being just a semi-skilled young man working for the Malikov until that chance. No, he did not. He started in a garage as a mechanic, but he did not want to be a mechanic. He then became semi-skilled and then got a job with the Malikov, and they plugged him into a hole. That is great for him. What was the question? You are very good at this, by the way. Should the 24-year-olds have an equal chance of onto apprenticeships compared to the younger boys and girls, younger men and women? I need to tell you my years to perk up with Malikov. We partly owned Malikov for a long time, many years ago. I absolutely do not see why not. I really do not. I would worry about a 55-year-old person wanting to do modern apprenticeship, but I am not even going to begin to say that it was a dividing line. However, any person with a reasonable career time ahead of that, I do not see any reason at all why they should not be allowed to do an apprenticeship, and to get the same support that young people get. The final question that I was going to ask was just about how modern apprenticeships are structured. The other, I thought, telling evidence at the Fisheries College in Scalloway was the lecturer there saying to us, employers are looking for us to provide courses that include not just teaching young boys and girls about laths and milling on a lath, but actually how a 3D printer works. An oil rig in the future or in a ship's engine room, it is not going to be waiting for the part to arrive. It is going to be a 3D printer sitting in the corner, which will build after the things downloaded or build a piece of kit that is needed. Do you think that the system is adaptable enough in terms of how modern apprenticeships are designed and how they change to reflect modern technology and the changing world of work around us? Honestly, the problem is that it does not matter how hard we try to get these up to date in five years' time, they are going to be out of date. What we must have is continuous development and training. We must have a really good apprenticeship, which does take account of as much as possible of the new technology and the new equipment. It is mind-blowing, honestly, to see the way things are being done, but we must also have continuous development and training. I think that we are going to have a bunch of expert digital companies who will make money, good money, by going around digital companies and normal companies and updating them in terms of what they can do with their digital technology. Every company must be as up-to-date as possible, but it is going to change. First, I will pick up on some of the other issues that were raised in terms of SMEs. I know that Serena was talking about the need for SMEs to take on more apprentices. I visited a very small business in my constituency in Monday, Murray. SFB Consulting and Leif Razor is a young woman who has just started an apprentice for marketing, is what she wants to pursue. Small businesses seem to be able to take on apprentices. I am trying to work out what the obstacle is to SMEs taking on apprentices. I think that there will be four or five employees. Then it is an SME. Yes, I know, but that is a small end of SMEs. If they can afford it, I was wondering what the obstacles were for SMEs generally in terms of what you were saying earlier for not being able to perhaps afford to take on apprentices. Richard, we have really pretty consistent feedback. I have made the point that people who own SMEs are usually up to the rears in trying to run their business. They are faced with the administration and the hassle of whatever they have got to drop to take on an SME. They are fixed with the thought, how do I help to develop this SME? I have got four employees. They are all pretty busy. Am I going to lose a quarter of their time in the next 12 months by them focusing on the—I mean, it is all very selfish stuff, but to be fair, they are trying to run a small business. Frankly, the finances is not necessarily top of the list. That is why I have said that we have got to find ways of trying to give them some kind of support to do those things. Anyway, there are great examples out there of small businesses taking on apprentices, and that is good news, particularly in areas such as Murray and the north-east of Scotland, which we are very familiar with. I was just going to ask for your reflections on some of the challenges that are facing in more rural areas, where clearly there are additional challenges, particularly for different types of career options. If you want that career option, you have to travel perhaps to a different community elsewhere in Scotland. I made the point last week at committee that, in Murray, for instance, we have less young people compared to national average, but we also have above the national average for young people wanting to leave the area, so it is like a double whammy. Did you have any reflections on the challenges for the opportunities for young people in more rural areas? Have you got a good college in Murray? That is my eagerness, I am sorry. Have you got a good college in Murray? Good college in Murray? If what? We have got Murray College, yes, Murray College, UHI. Some of the so-called rural colleges have a superb college in Fraserborough. I am sorry, I have not visited Murray College, of course I am aware of Murray College. Having a good local college is very important in trying to plan skills development and careers development. In the rural areas it is more difficult because there are probably less employer choices. You have less employers to work from and take apprentices on. I do not see how you get round the so-called negatives of being in a rural area. It is just a fact of life. You do not have the same proximity to companies and subcontract machining and all the other things that you need to do to grow and develop a business, but some do it very successfully. They have just adapted and do it very successfully. Finally, I just want to ask you about the bigger picture in terms of your comments. Quite rightly we are about the need to ensure that we are up to date with the needs of the 21st century and you mentioned the digital revolution. Clearly, as you will be familiar with from the northeast of Scotland, there are various skill shortages and more and more employers who speak to say that they cannot get staff or X or Y roles within their businesses. I wonder again if you have any reflections on the bigger picture in terms of what we are talking about today and whether they are attuned to the needs of the economy for the 21st century and if they are attuned to the skill shortages that we are experiencing, particularly with Brexit coming up and the potential for even more skill shortages. Do you feel that that has taken into account in terms of what colleges or schools are doing? Are they matched with the skill shortages? We do not do this well. We do not do this well. Universities do not do it well. A whole lot of kids are going to universities to study things. There are pretty high chances that there will be a job in that particular thing at the end of the day. We do not match, frankly. Anywhere do we have as a criteria the likelihood of getting a job at the end of the day from it? It is not right. There is going to be a significant change in the content of the skills and so-called modern apprenticeships. They are going to be ultra-technical apprenticeships, whatever we are going to call them. We should match. It is not easy because we are then saying to the youngster, I am sorry, that you cannot do what you want to do, but you can do this, which is we have a better chance of getting a job. Frankly, that is what we should be doing because we are spending a lot of money, but worse than that we are possibly wasting that youngster's time in studying something that is a little likely to be getting a job. We live in a democratic society where people do not necessarily like that. People like being unconstrained and able to do what they want to do, but in terms of an ideal planning, we absolutely should make a much better attempt to match our training input to the output that is required. I thank Sir Ian and Ms Crawford for their attendance this morning and answering all those questions so fully. That was very helpful for the committee and I can assure you that we will keep you up to date with the findings of the inquiry and how things go.