Question reference: S5W-14676
- Asked by: Alexander Burnett, MSP for Aberdeenshire West, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party
- Date lodged: 15 February 2018
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Current status: Answered by Jamie Hepburn on 6 March 2018
Question
To ask the Scottish Government what (a) support and (b) funding it provides to unemployed people who require specific certifications to transition from one job sector to another.
Answer
The Scottish Government, in partnership with Skills Development Scotland and employability providers, has a range of support packages available to help support individuals to make the transition from one career into another, where that requires a specific certification or qualification.
We also provide support through our initiative for responding to redundancy situations, Partnership Action for Continuing Employment (PACE). Through providing skills development and employability support, PACE aims to minimise the time individuals affected by redundancy are out of work.
Transition Training Fund (TTF)
The Transition Training Fund (TTF) is focused on supporting people who have lost or face losing their jobs in the oil and gas sector and the support will help them build on their existing skills to transition into other roles in the oil and gas industry, other energy industry and manufacturing employment or any other available roles.
The Fund is providing support by offering grants to individuals to support redeployment through retraining and upskilling. The fund is also helping people with the costs of maintaining any licences needed to work in the sector or to acquire new ones to broaden their skillset. Funding may be approved for up to £4,000.
At the end of January 2018, a total of 2,649 people had received support through TTF. The following table showing the occupational sectors to which their training applied.
Sector categories | Clients | Training items |
Education/Care/Health Services | 195 | 321 |
Health and Safety | 886 | 1594 |
Management and Business Occupations | 444 | 893 |
Office and Administrative | 214 | 336 |
Oil and Gas | 530 | 868 |
Other | 248 | 438 |
Renewables/Low Carbon/Engineering | 300 | 473 |
Skilled Trades | 881 | 1799 |
Transportation | 795 | 1785 |
Total | 2649 | 8507 |
Individual Training Accounts
Individual Training Accounts (ITAs) are targeted at individuals looking to get into or back into employment. The funding is up to £200 towards the cost of a training course.
Employability Fund (EF)
The Employability Fund targets those who are not currently in employment, education or training and delivers a range of interventions to those in need of support at Stages 2-4 of the Strategic Skills Pipeline. Stage 4 provision is designed to enable individuals to access sustained employment through industry specific training. It helps individuals who are likely to be job ready in terms of generic employability skills but need specific skills and/or certification to improve their chances of gaining employment.
No contribution is expected from participants towards the cost of training or obtaining qualifications.