Hansard

I welcome this debate, which takes place in the build-up to next week’s Scottish apprenticeship week.

Over the years, I have met many of the training organisations in my constituency and many of the young people who are training towards a future career. Vocational training is important to me just as it is important to Iain Gray because, if my father had not become an apprentice at 15 with Balfour Kilpatrick in Paisley, his life and, in turn, my life might have taken a completely different turn. He was a young man from Ferguslie Park and he faced the many challenges that that community faces to this very day. He failed his 11-plus exam and was put on the academic scrap heap until he walked into the old buroo office in Paisley and was told to go and talk to that company. Later, he ran his own business in the field and he employed many of his friends from his own community.

The shorthand version of that very long story is that that was a defining moment in my father’s working life. That is not unusual, as Iain Gray told us, and no doubt there are many similar stories about how important vocational training and apprenticeships can be. I will skip the part of the story where he tried to pass his engineering skills on to his son, because that does not have quite as happy an ending. Because of his experience, however, I am aware of how important vocational training is and the opportunities that it offers young people in Scotland, and that is why I back the Scottish Government’s vision to develop a world-class vocational education system that matches our world-class higher education system.

There are many challenges, however. The interim report of the commission for developing Scotland’s young workforce states:

“we must move on from our ingrained and frankly ill-informed culture that somehow vocational education is an inferior option.”

That issue keeps coming up during the evidence that we are receiving at the Education and Culture Committee in our inquiry into educational attainment. There appears to be an uneven playing field with regard to academic achievement and vocational achievement. Many schools are focused purely on the academic and are not showing the necessary leadership in offering other careers for our young people.

When during one of the committee meetings I asked some of the business representatives about the inequalities in attainment and in the workplace, Phil Ford from the Construction Industry Training Board Scotland said:

“Some schools measure success by the number of pupils who go to university. We need to challenge that and promote vocational careers as being equally valid.”—[Official Report, Education and Culture Committee, 21 April 2015; c 11.]

Terry Lanagan of the Association of Directors of Education in Scotland said:

“I believe that vocational education is as important to academic young people as it is to others ... The skills that are developed through work-based learning are important to everyone in society. One of the challenges is to persuade Scottish society—and particularly, but not exclusively, parents—to recognise the value of different routes to lifetime achievement.”—[Official Report, Education and Culture Committee, 10 March 2015; c 12.]

That is the challenge that we are dealing with. Many parents see the academic route as the only way forward for their child. I have had parents come to me whose son wants to go on to a practical engineering course but, because he is quite bright and academic, he has been encouraged to go down the academic route. We need to find the right balance to improve the situation.

As the chairman of the commission for developing Scotland’s young workforce states in the foreword to its final report, another challenge is that only 30 per cent of Scottish businesses have any contact with education establishments. The Scottish Government has agreed to take on board many of the things that are said in the report, but that is still an issue—we still have a situation in which many schools and education establishments will not let third sector organisations or partner organisations of the authority in to help with attainment or, in this case, vocational education.

When we visited the Wester Hailes education centre, we were told that it had a connection with local colleges and about how it worked in the area to ensure that young people could go down a vocational route in secondary school. That is impressive, and it is the way forward.

The evidence that we have received also shows that there is a problem with the modern apprenticeship programme because many small businesses need to see a value in the training. They need to see not just that the young person is being taken away from their workplace but that they are getting something back as well. Although that may be only a perception, it is something that we need to address, because we need to support the small businesses that are involved in the modern apprenticeship programme and all forms of training. There are many businesses to which the programme could make a difference, but it needs to be relevant to them.

Last year, when I was involved in apprenticeship week, I went along to Muir Slicer in Paisley. The company has more than 300 modern apprenticeships across a range of sectors, and it boasts an achievement rate of over 90 per cent. While I was there, I met a young woman called Chelsea McGregor who might have dropped out and might not have had a job if it had not been for the modern apprenticeship programme. She told me what a difference it had made to her life and how it had moved things on. We must take on board what a lot of companies are saying, and we need to ensure that their perception is not the reality. We must work with them so that everyone has access to the opportunities that vocational training and apprenticeships offer.

In a similar way to Iain Gray, I can say that if my father had not walked into that buroo office I might not have been here today.