Chamber and committees

In February I informed Parliament that since its launch, the Young Person’s Guarantee has created around 18,000 additional or enhanced opportunities for people aged between 16 and 24 to help them into work, education or training.

Building on this early success and our on-going significant investment in education, employability and skills, we have committed an additional £70 million for the Guarantee in 2021-22. I am pleased to announce our initial allocations for the‎ £70 million are:

• An additional £45 million for local partnerships, in line with our partnership working agreement with Local Government. This resource will be used flexibly to provide a range of support from training, to employer recruitment incentives and locally tailored wrap around support for DWP programmes like Kickstart.
• A further £10 million of direct investment for colleges to deliver around 5,000 shorter, industry-focussed courses.
• £10 million for the Developing the Young Workforce to complete the roll-out of the new school coordinators, recommended by the Enterprise and Skills Strategic Board Sub-Group and to support our employer engagement and communications activity; and
• £5 million for other initiatives including a new graduate internship scheme, increased volunteering capacity and enhancing third sector programmes, such as Inspiring Scotland’s Our Futures Now and Discovering your Potential.

This funding will build on existing local structures and networks to strengthen our support to young people. Our focus on local partnerships will ensure that the funding is able to respond to the diverse needs of Scotland’s local economies and meet the needs of young people. It will do so in a way that recognises the significant challenges facing young people and the changes anticipated within the labour market, such as the phasing out of furlough support.

It will create additional employment, education, apprenticeship, training and formal volunteering opportunities whilst also providing wrap around support to ensure young people are able to progress into sustainable and fair employment.

A central aspect of this investment is working with employers to create more jobs for young people. As part of our activity to implement the recommendations from Sandy Begbie’s initial report in this regard, Scottish and Local Government have agreed and published a new national Employer Recruitment Incentive (ERIs) framework. This framework will provide consistency across the country and set the national minimum standards for new ERIs starting from 1 April 2021.