Meeting of the Parliament 13 May 2015
I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate on Scottish apprenticeship week. The commission on developing Scotland’s young workforce rightly highlighted the need for us to do all that we can to ensure that apprenticeships and vocational education receive the parity with other forms of education that they deserve. Not everyone is suited to further or higher education, and not even all those who are want to pursue that career pathway. It is, therefore, right that we take the opportunity this afternoon and throughout the next week to do all that we can to show how important and valuable an apprenticeship is.
In Scotland, there seems to be a level of snobbery when it comes to the aspirations that we have for our young people. When children are growing up, their parents or guardians dream of their going to university one day. I went to university after completing my sixth year at school, along with a number of my friends. When we were in second year at uni, only halfway through, our friends who had left school after their fourth year to start an apprenticeship were fully qualified and had been earning for four years.
I do not know anyone who did not complete their apprenticeship, but I know plenty of people who dropped out of university in the first couple of years. I do not know anyone who completed their apprenticeship who is not still working in their chosen industry, but I know plenty of people with degrees who have struggled to get a job in their chosen area. I do not know a single person who I grew up with and who went to university who now runs their own business, but I know plenty of people who completed their apprenticeships and are now successful small business owners.
Given how successful young people who complete apprenticeships can be, we need to redouble our efforts to ensure that there is equality of access for women, for people from our BME community and for disabled young people. There are clear gender inequalities in vocational education and apprenticeships. A 2013 report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission found that,
“Although men are increasingly moving into ‘traditionally female’ apprenticeship programmes, there is no evidence of an increase of women entering ‘traditionally male’ apprenticeships”.
That is a worrying statement. If the trend continues, the only possible outcome will be that the gender gap between male and female apprenticeship entrants, which sits at 59 per cent male and 41 per cent female, will grow wider.
There is also a massive disparity in the number of disabled young people who start an apprenticeship. Around 8 per cent of the population is disabled, but the percentage of modern apprentices reporting a disability has not even reached a single per cent in any of the past five years. I ask the minister in her closing speech to say how Skills Development Scotland plans to grow that number in order to encourage disabled young people, and how it will encourage employers to hire more disabled people.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission also commented:
“we need to harness the talents of all of Scotland’s people ... we are missing a trick by failing to maximise the potential of all Scotland’s people. We believe that the Government needs to demand greater effort from their contractors to drive up the representation of ethnic minorities and disabled people”.
The focus needs to shift from what young disabled people cannot do to what they can do, to take advantage of their talents and skills.
It has become clear to people in my generation, when we see how successful our peers who have completed apprenticeships have been, that we will not be dreaming purely of academic futures for our children, but we will be telling the stories of our friends who have completed apprenticeships and gone on to be successful business owners. We must do the work right now to ensure that our young women as well as our young men are encouraged to pursue an apprenticeship in any field, and that we are not locking out disabled or BME young people from one of the best opportunities that they will have in pursuing a career.
I support the motion and Siobhan McMahon’s amendment.
16:12