Education and Skills Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, March 20, 2019

Official Report 453KB pdf

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Review of Responses

Agenda item 3 is a review of responses in consideration of the committee’s report “Young People’s Pathways: a progress report on Developing the Young Workforce”. Responses have been received from the Scottish Government, Skills Development Scotland and the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland, which are detailed in paper ES/S5/19/10/4.

Before I invite comments from members, I will make one suggestion for further work in the area. Recommendation 3 of the report is that the Government undertake a large-scale, quantitative survey on young people to establish whether the developing the young workforce programme has progressed the culture shift towards achieving parity of information for young people on post-school options.

The Government’s response does not suggest that it intends to undertake such a survey. On that basis, I suggest that the committee re-run the survey of young people that it used to instigate the inquiry. When it was originally done, it was open for a few weeks and received more than 900 responses. We could run the same survey at the end of 2020 to assess what progress has been made towards parity of options by comparing the results with the 2018 results. That is a suggestion for the committee. Do members have other comments?

When I was looking back last night, I could not remember when the discussion took place—I think that it was during a session with Skills Development Scotland, but it was also referred to by Colleges Scotland and Universities Scotland—but it was about how accurate we are in determining the data as to where a young person goes after leaving school. Did we make progress on that?

I defer to the deputy convener and other members on that, because I was not present for the evidence sessions.

Could we find that out? It was quite important.

I do not know whether anyone else is able to follow that up.

We made the suggestion that we need better-quality information about when somebody leaves school in order to track their progress. I remember that it was referred to by Petra Vend when the universities were talking about tracking young people as they go through institutions.

Are you proposing that we seek clarification from the Government on that?

Yes, that would be helpful.

I am sure that we can write to the Government on that issue. Do members have any other comments?

We might be reluctant to go through the whole thing. I did go through it and I have a lot of points to raise, but I do not know whether it is useful to raise them here.

As a general observation, I am concerned that, on quite a number of the recommendations, the Government just repeats what it said to the committee before. The survey of young people is a good example of that: the Government just says, “We’re doing what we’re doing.”

I think that we are awaiting an update on the retention and promotion of teachers. A report was produced for the Scottish teachers negotiating committee, and the update was due in February 2019. We can maybe ask what has happened to that.

We raised issues around the quality of careers education and about prioritising statutory leavers, which the Government again just bats back. It does not engage with the argument, which I find frustrating. It has also not really responded to the question whether there is an equivalent of the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service.

We made a point about work placement standards. We argued that young people who are taking such a module should be told what to expect when they go. The response is that the standard tells them that, but the point is that the young people should know.

I do not want to take away time from other folk, but another point is that the Government does not answer the question on positive destinations for care leavers and disabled students. We made the point that it should not be left to schools to do the developing the young workforce work, but the Government does not respond to that—it simply repeats what it said before. It was a concern for us that schools could end up in a position whereby they could not continue the good work that they were doing.

On the SQA, I pursued the question of commercial work, but the Government’s response simply says that the SQA has to be self-financing. Why would we expect the SQA, more than any other public agency, to find a way of funding its core work—especially given that the argument was made to us that the commercial work is a distraction and is diluting its ability to focus on what it needs to do?

I have two final points. There was a question on panels. We argued that it was important that, if possible, panels should be consistent for a young person. The response says that 99 per cent of those who ask for the same panel have their request accepted, but that is not really the point. It is not about the ones who ask for it as a routine—

I am sorry, Johann, but I have to stop you there. The next agenda item is about the general responses from the Scottish Government; this agenda item is specifically on its response to our report on developing the young workforce. We will deal with your points under the next item.

Are there any further comments from the committee on the response to the developing the young workforce report?

I agree with several of the points that Johann Lamont has raised.

Are we content to write to the Government, drawing its attention to the Official Report of this meeting and asking it to come back with further clarification on the issues that have been raised?

Yes, I think we need further details.

Is that agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

Thank you. That is helpful.