Examination of Witnesses (Questions 540-559)
MS HAZEL MATHIESON, MS KATIE HUTTON MR KEVIN SWEENEY
14 MAY 2008
Q540 Ms Clark: My next question is really quite a detailed question because clearly you are at quite an early stage in terms of building all those relationships and it really is quite specific about the Future Carrier Programme because we have had a lot of evidence about that as a Committee. First of all, could you tell us what your understanding is of how many workers and how many skilled workers will be required at the peak of the Future Carrier Programme because we have been hearing evidence about that and, from your experience so far, are you confident that we have the skills needs for this programme, that the skills needs have been identified and have been planned for?
Ms Hutton: Our understanding of the numbers, I think there was a submission given by Ian McMahon and I think that was something like an additional 1,400 jobs, I think that is our understanding, and we have colleagues, formerly in Scottish Enterprise who are part of SDS, who will continue to work for the Scottish Marine Technologies Training Programme to look at the job profiles which come up and what is needed to meet the needs of the particular project that you are talking about. In terms of whether we are ready for it, I think having things like the Scottish Marine Technologies team will mean that it tries to bring everybody together to fulfil those carrier orders in terms of the skills that are required, like the colleges, like Scottish Enterprise and like the Funding Council, et cetera. I think that is a good demonstration of working together in Scotland with one aim in mind which is to make sure that we have got a sustainable industry there. There will always be things that we can do better as well, I appreciate that, but I think we do have a strong foundation there.
Mr Sweeney: I would agree with all of that, but at the bottom of that employment pipeline sit the schools and the schools have got two problems. One is a wide problem, a problem with all schools, and that is resourcing technological education; it is expensive. The other one is probably more pertaining just to the Govan area and that would be the fact that very few people who live in the G51 postcode area where BAE and the aircraft alliance is going to be based actually get jobs there at anything above teaboy or cleaner level. Obviously, by introducing engineering, we are trying to address that and we are working with the colleges, so the way it all dovetails together is that the school dovetails with the college and the college dovetails with the other skills agencies, and yes, we will be producing young people who progress up that employment pipeline to fill some of these 14,000[sic] jobs.
Q541 Ms Clark: Do you think you are going to be able to do it?
Mr Sweeney: Not our wee school alone, no.
Q542 Ms Clark: But from your knowledge of not just your school, but the whole of the area and what is going on?
Mr Sweeney: My opinion is that, with the present level of resourcing in technological education, it is going to be a struggle to meet those targets. However, if at policy level there was a change and technological education was to be supported, then yes, it is doable.
Q543 Ms Clark: So you think a lot more needs to done?
Mr Sweeney: Definitely, and a lot more resource has to be poured into it.
Ms Mathieson: In my previous job, I was based in Fife, so I have worked very closely with Babcock in Rosyth and the project that Ian McMahon spoke about with you last time. We have known about the aircraft carrier project for quite some time now and Babcock in Rosyth have worked very closely with the 19 high schools in Fife, so we have been working very closely. We had the recruitment of apprentices on the cards which was then delayed several times and that was a bit of an issue because the contract was not signed for the carrier project, so we built up the estimations of youngsters as to the recruitment and we had to dampen them slightly because apprentices have to be employed and, until the contract was actually going to go ahead, Babcock itself could not employ these youngsters. What has happened is that the two main colleges in Fife have put on much-increased provision, which is pre-apprenticeship provision, so now, probably for the last four years in Fife, what we have had is over 200 youngsters leaving school at age 16 or 17 at the end of S4 or S5 and moving into college, which has allowed Babcock, now that they are in recruitment mode, to recruit 50 apprentices last year and they are recruiting a further 50 this year, there is now a large pool of youngsters available for recruitment to apprenticeship level in Fire. Now, it does not meet all the requirements because they actually have to source from abroad some skills needs for very short pieces of work that are required, but it has actually built up a pool of labour, not just for Babcock in Rosyth, but for some of the supply chain companies which will be supplying Babcock with some of the work as well. Another interesting project that we have got on the dock in Rosyth, where there will be the final assembly of the aircraft carriers, where the dock has to be widened and the contracts have been let now. We are hoping to take on some unemployed people from the local area, to do mainly labouring work, but we are hoping to take some local labour on so there is a benefit coming back into the community as well. I would say, from my perspective in Fife, that there has actually been quite a lot of preparation done and, to date, I think we are supplying what Babcock require.
Q544 Mr Walker: You said that 29% of your youngsters went on to jobs when they left your school. What sort of jobs are they doing?
Mr Sweeney: Typically, they would go to jobs in the service industry. They would be hairdressers, they would be motor mechanics, they would work in the retail sector and a lot of them would go from "Mac-job" to "Mac-job", you know, burger-flipping. Where the school had managed to make appropriate partnerships with certain local companies, we were able to channel young people to higher-level employment, for example, through our ICT courses, and a good number of our kids are now going to pursue that at the further education college at Cardonald and then from there into the ICT industry at sort of technician level, so we are getting quite good at that. Mainly our kids are ordinary kids whom we school to go to ordinary jobs.
Q545 Mr Walker: But they are jobs.
Mr Sweeney: But they are jobs and that is what matters.
Q546 Mr Walker: Yes, that is the important thing because then they go on to get other jobs and they are socialised into the workplace, so some of these jobs come with apprenticeships attached to them and training and so on and so forth. As Members of Parliament, we sometimes live on a diet of human misery and I think what you are saying is incredibly uplifting. You said you have had third and fourth generational unemployment in a family, so can you give us, I am sure you have got some, an example of where—
Mr Sweeney: A success story?
Q547 Mr Walker: Yes, where you have just changed a youngster's life and you have given them opportunities that were denied to so many of their forebears?
Mr Sweeney: I can think of several.
Q548 Mr Walker: Have you got a minute to tell us?
Mr Sweeney: Yes, there was one lad who left us perhaps three or four years back. He was one of the first graduates of our Cisco computer technician course and in fact he got such high grades that we had a little graduation ceremony and Cisco gave him a £2,500 laptop as a prize which he then took off to get his diploma in computing at Cardonald College and this year he is working as a computer technician, and I forget the actual name of the firm, but the point is that he has got a job at technician level.
Q549 Mr Walker: And he came from a background where—
Mr Sweeney: He came from a background of a broken family, brought up by grandparents. I do not think the grandfather had ever had a job in his life, but this chap has been turned around.
Q550 Mr Walker: Does he realise that you have changed his life?
Mr Sweeney: Yes, yes. If he had not realised it for himself, we would have told him!
Q551 Mr Walker: That is interesting. Is he a champion and an advocate? I do not want to place a burden on these young people because they have got their careers and families to get on with, but in a sense, if youngsters can see these people who have achieved, it gives them hope because, "If he can do it, I can do it".
Mr Sweeney: Well, one of the things we do to try to encourage that is we do a really slick, professional quarterly newsletter from the school and the middle part of that always features the successful former pupils and every time it goes out I can put between eight and 20 success stories in there. Usually what happens with our young people is that, because they are handicapped by their backgrounds, they are late developers. They are still clever and they have got skills, but it takes them longer to get a couple of rungs up the ladder on to an equal playing field with people from the posh schools, so our kids will develop later. They will not leave school and go straight to university, but I can think of several young people who would have left school for further education college and then university and then employment, so the skills and the talent are there among our kids. The environment in which they grow up serves to hinder them, but, as a school, although we are small and we, quite honestly, do not have a lot of resource, I think we punch above our weight in trying to do what you are talking about which is change young people's lives and give them a better chance. A mantra in our school among the leadership team of the school is "positive destinations". We know that, if we can get them out of our door into a positive destination, be it a job or a college place, we have given them the opportunity to change their lives, so that is our job. After that, it is up to the other agencies to take them through the rest of their lives.
Mr Walker: I should have been on the visit and I apologise for that. I am sorry I was not, but maybe next time.
Mr Devine: You see, we have the same problem coming from a working-class background, Labour MPs, with Tory toffs who went to public school!
Q552 Mr Walker: That is actually a nice lead into my question because this is what I want to ask: what emphasis do you place on social skills because what I have noticed in parts of my constituency, and I do not represent the typical "Tory-shire" constituency, as Jim will tell you in his more generous moments, what I have noticed is that you have really bright kids who may be brighter than children who go to private schools or the posher schools, but they do not have the social skills and they have more trouble looking you in the eye and more trouble holding a conversation actually in the interview room, as you said, so that will put them at a disadvantage, even though, with a little nurturing, they are probably stronger, longer-term candidates, and this is the same at university as well. Let us be in no doubt that Oxbridge, Cambridge and Oxford, they will always opt, or not always, but a number of times, too often, they will opt for the candidate who is like them as opposed to the one who holds out the best, long-term prospects for achievement.
Mr Sweeney: Social skills development is high on our agenda and we approach it from many different directions at once. Obviously in the school, we have a pastoral care faculty and they are the professionals who have to address that through lessons, personal and social education lessons which are on the curriculum, but we do it in more subtle ways as well. For example, two years ago we built a dance studio and we hired a professional choreographer and we now have a dance troupe that would rival anything on the West End stage, but that is not really for dancing, that is not why we did it, it is about building self-concept. We have young people walking about our school today, the 16- and 17-year-olds who are in that dance troupe, and they walk properly, shoulders held high, and they all look you in the eye and they can speak to you because they have performed in front of hundreds of people. After you have performed in front of hundreds of people, including visiting dignitaries, Nicholas Sturgeon was at our last performance, for example, when you have done that, walking into an employer's interview room and facing three people on a panel is a boardwalk. What we do in the school through the formal curriculum, through personal and social education, we do address these social skills and, through a subterfuge, if you like, in the way that we stage-manage them through the curriculum, the young people learn these skills as well and then, on top of that, we use our partnership working mainly with the colleges and local employers. We are, for example, about to start this programme in engineering and backing it up where BAE Systems will be giving us final-year apprentices to mentor the young people who are taking engineering courses, not specifically to help them with engineering skills, but to help them with the other skills, the soft skills, the communication, the team work, the confidence-building, so I recognise the kind of young person you are talking about because I have a school full of them. We are aware of their existence and we are aware of their needs and, I can assure you, we are very deliberately trying to address that so that we produce young people who can look you in the eye and who can speak in English, even though they come from a Scottish backwater with an impenetrable accent which, if you do come to our school, Mr Walker, I can assure you right now, you will not understand a word any of the children say, unless we provide an interpreter for you, but I hope that answers your question.
Q553 Mr Walker: I will make a statement and then I will shut up. I think drama should almost be compulsory in schools for the very reasons that you have so eloquently said.
Mr Sweeney: Well, in August we launch theatre arts.
Q554 Chairman: Where does responsibility for the Scottish Marine Technologies Training Programme lie after the restructuring of Scottish Enterprise and the creation of Skills Development Scotland in April 2008?
Ms Mathieson: It is led by Scottish Enterprise. However, Skills Development Scotland are now working in partnership with Scottish Enterprise, and others, to deliver the project.
Q555 Chairman: So what are the priorities for this project and what progress has it made?
Ms Mathieson: The project is quite some way in. There are well-developed relationships between school, between college, between job centre, between the careers companies and between now ourselves, Skills Development Scotland, and Scottish Enterprise to ensure that there is a pipeline of skills, so all the agencies are working closely together to identify what the skills requirements are for the industry, specifically the two main contractors, to ensure that we have got youngsters and adults identified at school, identified if they are out of work, and that there is sufficient vocational provision and apprenticeship provision put in place to ensure there is a pipeline through. Specifically, it was recognised when Skills Development Scotland came into existence on 1 April that we are required to change the amount of expenditure on engineering apprenticeship delivery, so we have increased significantly the provision with 500 extra adult places and 500 extra places for youths in both the construction and the engineering areas of activity because we recognise that there is a demand from industry and we are required to shift our spend to ensure that we are meeting the needs of industry, so we are still working very, very closely with Scottish Enterprise to ensure that this project is delivered.
Q556 Chairman: When young people leave school, what skills do you think they should have developed and should employers be prepared to provide training for?
Ms Hutton: I think employers want young people to be work-ready. That is always what they are saying and every two years Future Skills Scotland does a survey and asks, "How work-ready do you think our school pupils are?" I think the response to that is something like 60%, I think that is the figure. I do think that employers do recognise also that they have got to give them the job skills, the technical skills that are required as well, so I think they would want them to be work-ready and they know that they cannot be completely work-ready, so they will invest in some training for them, which is what the Apprenticeship Programme is really about. Just to add to what Hazel said, in the last two years we have increased the number of engineering apprenticeships by 50%, and that is using Scottish Enterprise area figures and usually the figure for HIE is about a tenth of the Scottish Enterprise area as well, so we have put investment in that and obviously the employer also invests in that apprenticeship training.
Q557 Chairman: In your view, do you think that industry, employers, schools, colleges and of course Scottish Enterprise are doing enough in partnership or do you think something more should be done?
Ms Hutton: As I said previously, for this particular aircraft carrier project especially, I think that is a good model of working together. You have got everybody around the table, you have got the employers looking at their forward order charts and looking at the job profiles of people that they want in the future, but also there is a bit of planning in terms of what the education and training system needs to deliver to meet the needs for the workers within the industry, so I think that those kinds of things are very good models of working. I was previously involved in the Microelectronics Skills Consortium which was about bringing four colleges together across Scotland to meet the needs of the industry. The industry donated around £3 million worth of equipment to these colleges and it is about developing centres of excellence across Scotland. Not all colleges could be working with microelectronics, but we were developing centres of excellence and we were making the best of what we had and we had that week-to-week dialogue with the industry about what the future needs were. Now, unfortunately the microelectronics industry took a bit of a nosedive after that, but I think the model is still one that is worth looking at and I think that the Marine Technologies Training Programme does follow that one.
Q558 Mr Devine: This is where I have my concerns about the abolition of the local enterprise zones. The model you are talking about is okay and any big project, like the shipyard, like the microelectronics and the work that was going to bring in, but it does not work anywhere else unless it is a big project, does it? Obviously you do not want it to happen, but, if the aircraft carriers were cancelled, all the work that you are talking about, the joining-up exercise that you are talking about, is for no benefit.
Ms Hutton: I think that what Skills Development Scotland has not done yet is devise its model to approach local projects and get into local projects, but that is something that we are very concerned about and I think our Chairman has said that it is not just all about the central belt, it is about the local projects and responding to local needs, so that is something that we will be addressing. You are right, it is not about big, national projects, it is not all about that, although there will be times when that is required, but there is also an ongoing need to respond to what is happening in the local labour market as well.
Q559 Mr Devine: We have actually had written evidence from people who say that there is a total lack of clarity on the Skills and Lifelong Learning Strategy. I recognise that you have only been up and running for six weeks and it is maybe asking a hard question, but we have heard this as evidence and I just wonder what your views are.
Ms Hutton: I think part of the reason for setting up something like Skills Development Scotland and saying that we had to look at the models of delivery, both local, regional and national, was actually one of the ways that we have seen as addressing that particular criticism that was made of what was happening in terms of the lifelong learning infrastructure in Scotland, so we will hopefully come out with a model very soon in terms of how we will be working at these different levels across Scotland.
Mr Walker: I was just thinking that, if you were looking at your crystal ball over the next 15-20 years, given the amazing strides you are making in your local community, what do you think the infrastructure of your community will look like, the social infrastructure, not necessarily the sort of buses and trains, but the social infrastructure, if that is the right term?
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