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Appendix 3: Action Plan
ACTION: PRE-16
We are transforming the opportunities for and expectations of all pupils, including and especially those who are at risk of becoming NEET through a mix of action across mainstream education and specific targeted measures. Key actions include:
Providing flexible, personalised learning opportunities and developing employability:
(i) Implementing A Curriculum for Excellence to improve choice and flexibility and develop the wide range of capacities young people need to succeed in the modern world, and ensure they remain fully engaged throughout their school career.
(ii) Implementing Assessment is for Learning to ensure high quality learning and teaching tailored to the abilities, preferences and life circumstances of every child.
(iii) Recognising young people's wider achievements through giving credit to their different skills and abilities.
(iv) Simplifying the structure of qualifications to widen opportunities and improve progression for all our young people through reviewing Standard Grade and its links with other National Qualifications.
(v) Developing suitable models and expanding choice for work-related vocational learning, including Skills for Work courses, within schools, colleges and partner organisations in order that all young people can develop their vocational and employability skills.
Ensuring appropriate support for all learners regardless of abilities, needs and wider circumstances:
(vi) Additional Support for Learning to ensure that the support needs of all children are properly assessed and monitored and appropriate support is put in place.
(vii) Targeting additional action for those groups who currently do not benefit appropriately from school. Including implementing the forthcoming recommendations of the Ministerial working group on improving outcomes for looked after children, in order to improve the achievements and employability of looked after children and care leavers.
Transforming the learning environment:
(viii) Investing in the Schools of Ambition programme to bring about a step change in ambition and achievement to transform the educational outcomes for all children in those schools.
(ix) Highlighting and promoting excellence throughout the system through the adoption of the new excellence standard in school and education authority inspection and supporting that through extensive guidance and good practice resources.
(x) Establishing a broad programme of leadership development to foster talent and improving the training and development opportunities for teachers.
(xi) Investing further new resources for new teachers, including taking account of severe deprivation to allow local authorities to address the link between deprivation and low attainment.
Focus on outcomes:
(xii) Modernising the improvement framework to focus on securing better outcomes for children, requiring the adoption of more flexible performance indicators which track and monitor the achievement of individual children, support a culture of innovation in schools.
(xiii) Ensure better support for children across services through integrated planning, a single assessment framework, and the introduction of inspection of integrated children's services.
(xiv) Careers Scotland will review its current deployment of resources (generic careers advisers and specialist key workers) in order to improve school leaver destinations and pilot an enhanced careers resource for selected schools in selected NEET areas which have high negative school leaver destinations.
ACTION: POST-16
Guaranteeing options on leaving school:
(i) Scottish Enterprise ( SEn) and Highlands and Islands Enterprise ( HIE), including Careers Scotland ( CS), will continue to build on the success of - and strengthen linkages between - GR4W (including Lifeskills) and Skillseekers. SEn and HIE should further consider how the national training programmes can be developed to improve vocational pathways pre and post-16.
(ii) The Scottish Executive ( SE) will review the Youth Training Guarantee ( YTG) with a view to developing a new guarantee for school leavers, together with an improved vocational training model, testing out these approaches in the 10 schools participating in the CS pilot in NEET target areas.
(iii) Local authorities, together with their partners, will collectively plan and articulate the training and support for 16-19 year olds they will guarantee to deliver in their area. Building on their statutory duty to plan for the employability of young people who will cease to be looked after, this will make specific reference to the support and provision available to care leavers.
(iv) Project Scotland will set out its proposals for ensuring that young people NEET/at risk of becoming NEET can engage with and sustain volunteering opportunities.
Losing no-one:
(v) The SE will specify the core management information required - at a national and local level - from CS on young people NEET, recognising that local partners may wish further enhancements.
(vi) CS will take lead responsibility - at a national and local level - for working in partnership with the SE, local authorities and schools to establish and maintain a national 14-19 database.
Supported transitions and sustained opportunities:
(vii) The SE, to build improvements into policies and practices at points of transition and across the post-16 sector, will roll out Post-School Psychological Services to those NEET target areas not currently covered by Pathfinder activity; with a view to further considering national roll out.
(viii) SEn and HIE will support - through contract management and quality improvement processes - the professional development of service providers in order to raise the quality of what's on offer across the board.
(ix) The SE will support the Scottish Funding Council to implement the action plan in Learning for All to continue to improve engagement, retention, and progression in further education.
(x) The SE will develop an employer engagement strategy, complementing other activity with employers, aimed at increasing the range and type of work-related and job opportunities for young people who are NEET or at risk of becoming NEET.
ACTION: FINANCIAL INCENTIVES
Ensuring learning is a financially viable option:
(i) The Scottish Executive ( SE) will review the financial support arrangements for 16-19 year olds in Scotland, in the light of the UK Government's recent review, addressing the specific issue of parity for young people in education and those on vocational training.
(ii) The SE will consider ways to promote progression from informal to formal learning and to improve training for those in low-paid low-skilled work, specifically through the
development and piloting of Activity Agreements and Allowances for 16/17 year olds who are NEET and Learning Agreements for 16 and 17 year olds in work without training.
(iii) The SE will commission further research to test the impact of EMAs on changing outcomes
for young people at risk of becoming NEET and will assess ways in which to maximise the potential of EMAs to encourage retention, attainment and progression for young people in sub-groups who are known to be at risk of becoming NEET.
ACTION: THE RIGHT SUPPORT
Intensive, one to one support from key workers:
(i) Careers Scotland ( CS) will continue to provide a highly accessible, highly skilled, key worker service to young people who most benefit from intensive support in order to progress towards the labour market.
Building the skills and employability focus of a range of providers who deal with NEET and at risk NEET:
(ii) CS will build the capacity of the whole organisation in working with the NEET group and those at risk, recognising that a range of responses is needed in order to meet the needs of these young people.
(iii) CS will take the lead in building the capacity of - and strengthening operational links with - specialist services ( e.g. social and health services, in order to promote employability as an integral part of personal planning - not an add on.
(iv) The SE will support local partnerships to further develop common assessment processes,
and will request details of proposed action to progress this within local delivery plans.
Losing no-one:
(v) CS, with local authorities and schools, will provide a systematic follow-up service for school leavers who do not have a positive outcome on leaving school, and those who do not go to or who drop out of secondary school.
(vi) CS will undertake a follow-up survey of school leavers (a) tracking leavers with negative destinations in the October and then (b) tracking all school leavers, following the annual School Leaver Destination Report, in order to better track progress in the post-school transition year.
ACTION: JOINT COMMITMENT AND ACTION
Focussing on where the need is greatest:
(i) The Scottish Executive ( SE) will establish seven geographic target areas - Glasgow, Clackmannanshire, Dundee, Inverclyde, North and East Ayrshire, West Dunbartonshire - to lead developmental work and take forward a series of local tasks as detailed in para 130.
Losing no-one:
(ii) The SE will set a challenging national target - supported by related local targets - for year on year NEET reduction.
(iii) The SE will undertake research in order to better understand the BME profile of the NEET population in Scotland and the particular barriers facing NEET individuals from an ethnic minority background.
Delivery which can meet the challenge:
(iv) Local partners, using existing structures where possible ( e.g. Community Planning, Integrated Education and Children's Services Planning, Welfare to Work), will collectively plan and develop the service infrastructure required to meet the needs of the NEET group, and those at risk of becoming NEET, as detailed in para 130.
(v) Local authorities will lead and put in place a joint delivery plan, integrating with pre-existing plans where possible, for the local NEET target, and account to the Executive on progress.
(vi) The SE will set up a NEET Delivery Team to support implementation of the NEET strategy by developing and sharing best practice, handling funding incentives, improving the employability focus of specialist agencies, monitoring performance against targets (national and local), and addressing other relevant national issues within the wider Employability Framework.
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