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Meeting of the Parliament 06 December 2012

06 Dec 2012 · S4 · Meeting of the Parliament

Item of business

Careers Services

Findlay, Neil Lab Lothian Watch on SPTV

My question is not about whether SDS will eventually get round to seeing all pupils. There are pupils in classes now who are getting no careers guidance at all. That is the real issue. I am also advised by people in education that many pupils are unassigned to any category, but that was denied by SDS senior management when they appeared before the Education and Culture Committee last week. Perhaps, in her closing speech, the minister could clarify the position.

The Government’s approach seems to be underpinned by an unproven and untested assumption that the 100,000 young people categorised as green will use the my world of work website and may not want or need face-to-face guidance. However, the university drop-out rate of 9.4 per cent suggests that young people of all abilities need to be helped into making good careers choices.

In the post-school setting, staff numbers and office opening hours are being reduced, drop-in services are being ended, an appointment-only system is being introduced and advisers are being stopped from carrying out home visits and taking clients to interviews in their cars. How will those actions help to make inroads into youth unemployment?

That is all dressed up in the language of modernisation—a loaded word that is often applied to give the impression that it means progress. Unison, which represents SDS staff, believes that modernisation is a cover for

“budget cuts rather than the drive to improve the service”.

Those cuts have resulted in 200 front-line staff losing their jobs. I have no idea where the minister gets the idea that it has been an increase in staffing.

Unison was so concerned at the changes and cutbacks that it conducted a survey of its members, as other speakers have said. The results are startling. Only last month, 89 per cent of the 400 staff who responded either disagreed or strongly disagreed with the assertion that

“The new service delivery model will result in an enhanced service for the people of Scotland”.

Morale is low, and staff feel deskilled and that their professional judgment is no longer required.

Unison also identifies SDS as having a culture in which there is no room for any debate on the organisation’s direction. SDS has form on that. It does not appear to like to hear other people’s views. As I mentioned, it embargoed the previous research, despite the fact that it commissioned it. The academics who conducted the research are currently engaged in further research, but SDS has ordered its staff not to co-operate with that research. To be frank, that is astonishing and the minister simply must step in and not allow that to happen.

Just because somebody brands something with the label “modernisation” does not mean that it is good or that it is better than what went before. The changes that are being made are untested and unproven.

There is no independent research that states that the more clever somebody is, the less they need to see a careers adviser or the better they are at managing their own career. By the end of October, 83 per cent of secondary school pupils were unregistered. We are very worried about that. The Government should be worried too but its approach so far is complacent in the extreme.

I move amendment S4M-05109.2, to leave out from first “agrees” to end and insert:

“acknowledges that, at a time of high and rising unemployment, careers information, advice and guidance is increasingly important to young people in school and those seeking opportunities post-school; believes that web-based services should be viewed as useful information tools that complement and supplement the careers advice and guidance system rather than as a replacement; is concerned at what it understands are the very low levels of registration by school pupils on the web-based system, My World of Work, and believes that the red, amber and green method of categorising pupils is resulting in many receiving little or no careers guidance; notes the reduction of 20% in frontline staff and the decline in opening hours of careers offices; further notes the results of two recent careers staff surveys that have raised serious concerns about the new service model, and urges the Scottish Government to reconsider its careers strategy and to work with Skills Development Scotland, careers staff, trade unions, academics and other stakeholders to carry out a full and rigorous assessment of the services being provided.”

15:23

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Meeting of the Parliament 06 December 2012

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