The Scottish Government

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Scottish Executive made a commitment in 2004 to deliver a new programme of qualifications in learning about skills for work by 2007. It announced that Skills for Work ( SfW) courses were going to be introduced to help young people to develop skills and knowledge in a broad vocational area, core skills, an understanding of the workplace, positive attitudes to learning, and employability skills. The courses are intended to provide progression pathways to further learning, training or employment for pupils of all abilities. The new Scottish administration - the Scottish Government - has expressed its commitment to SfW courses. The results reported here are findings from research carried out by the National Foundation for Educational Research ( NFER) examining the piloting of SfW courses over two years. The SfW pilot involved approximately 40 delivery centres in the first year in 2005/06 and 70 in the second year of the pilot, working in partnership with nearly 60 per cent of Scotland's secondary schools - 255 schools in total.

MAIN FINDINGS

• The study revealed four delivery models adopted across the SfW pilot partnerships, of which the in-college delivery model was the most common one. However, delivery centres were increasingly moving towards adopting more diversified delivery models, including delivering courses in schools or in vocational centres.
• Most schools and colleges felt that the pilot had led to stronger partnerships between their organisations.
• Respondents in many delivery centres documented ways in which the pilot had helped them to develop teaching approaches to better suit the needs of younger students. Progress had also been made in embedding the teaching of employability skills into courses since the beginning of the pilot.
• Schools and colleges had made progress in developing more robust selection procedures for SfW courses, which in several delivery centres were seen as lowering student drop-out in the second year of the pilot.
• Most interviewees in schools agreed that the SfW pilot had raised the status of vocational learning among teachers and students and all felt that it had enabled them to offer a more relevant curriculum to their pupils.
• However, some providers still complained that some schools did not give SfW courses the same status as Standard Grades and viewed them as mainly suited to low-ability students. Several colleges and local authorities were taking active steps to challenge such perceptions.
• Respondents in almost all schools and colleges agreed that the courses had had a positive impact on students' vocational skills and knowledge, motivation and behaviour. Most also thought that they had helped students to make better and more informed decisions about their post-school transitions.
• All 41 candidates interviewed were able to identify positive impacts of participating in SfW courses. Almost three-quarters said that they thought it had improved their chances of finding work in the future.
• Student retention on SfW courses was very good in over two-thirds of the 29 schools contacted. Analysis of SQA data revealed that 85.6% of students had passed their courses by the end of the second year of the pilot.

ABOUT THE STUDY

The overarching purpose of the research was to undertake a process evaluation of the SfW pilot courses in order to inform the roll-out of these courses. The evaluation of the SfW pilot was based around a qualitative methodology in order to get to the heart of the implementation process. It consisted of four distinct, but interrelated, research methods. These are as follows:

• Strategic interviews: face-to-face meetings with key stakeholders from the Scottish Qualifications Authority ( SQA), Scottish Executive, HMIe, Learning and Teaching Scotland ( LTS) and the Scottish Further Education Unit ( SFEU) during September and November 2005.
• Telephone survey: of a representative sample of 20 delivery centres and their partners, including 29 schools, 15 colleges and one training provider at two time points (around November 2005 and May 2007), as well as a survey of a sample of ten delivery centres (interviews with 14 schools, six colleges and two employers) who only started delivering SfW courses in the second year of the pilot (June 2007).
• Case study visits: to six partnerships involving interviews with 16 course lecturers, teachers or trainers, 22 school staff (including headteachers, deputes and guidance teachers), six college senior managers and/or programme coordinators, three local authority staff, one employer working with a school and 41 SfW students (between April 2006 and November 2006).
• Analysis of SQA data: from all pilot delivery centres in order to determine student pass rates overall and across courses.

KEY FINDINGS OF THE RESEARCH

Aims and objectives of the pilot

Interviews with key stakeholders at the start of the pilot revealed that one of the key aims of the pilot was to test out the practicalities of delivering the SfW courses. Other key measures of success were seen to be retention and completion rates, pupils' achievement on the courses, and the status the qualifications had with employers and universities. It was also hoped that the courses would be successful at developing young people's general employability skills.

Delivery models

The evaluation helped to identify four delivery models, which included:

• College or training provider delivery off-site (i.e. not in schools);
• College or training provider delivery in school;
• Joint delivery by college/provider and school staff;
• School-only delivery.

The first of these was the most common delivery model for the pilot. Each of the four delivery models were found to have their own strengths and challenges associated with them. Delivery centres were increasingly moving towards adopting more diversified delivery models towards the end of the second year of the pilot. Some delivery centres had adopted two or more models. Other colleges already had or were planning to start delivering courses in schools or in vocational centres as a way of overcoming transport barriers and lack of college accommodation. Some schools were working with private training providers or using school staff to deliver courses. The main issues associated with such alternative approaches included, for some centres, teachers' skills and knowledge, lack of in-school facilities and funding to support the purchase of teaching resources and consumables.

Partnership working

Most schools said they were working with a range of partners to deliver SfW courses, including colleges, training providers, local authorities or other partner schools. Respondents in both schools and colleges felt that the pilot had led to stronger partnerships between their organisations. Significant progress had been made in collecting and sharing attendance data between colleges and schools. Partnership working was seen to be facilitated by two-way visits between schools and colleges, and having a single key contact within organisations to liaise with. Some challenges were identified, though, in relation to college-reporting procedures and insufficient links being made between what students were learning in college and the rest of the curriculum. Employer involvement was also variable across courses and delivery centres, even though several employer organisations were active in the design of SfW courses at SQA level.

Delivering the SfW courses

Most delivery centres believed that the pilot had helped them to develop teaching approaches to better suit the needs of younger students. This included making lessons as practical as possible, keeping students busy and breaking topics into small chunks. Delivery centres had also made considerable progress in embedding the teaching of employability skills into courses since the beginning of the pilot. Most said that they were now a theme that ran through all of their teaching and that they were explicitly built into lesson plans. Almost all delivery centres had shared practice on delivery with other colleges or providers, most frequently via SQA meetings or SFEU conferences. However, several of the ten delivery centres interviewed who only got involved in the second year of the pilot said that they had so far not accessed such good practice or lessons learnt.

Views on course materials

The majority of respondents interviewed as part of the telephone surveys and the case studies were extremely positive about the support materials provided by the SFEU for use and adaptation by colleges and schools. Several interviewees reported that they had adapted the provided materials or developed additional ones to better match their own students' needs and requirements.

Staff development

All providers agreed that the SfW pilot had provided new and valuable opportunities for staff development and most teaching staff in delivery centres were said to have accessed internal or external training. Most commonly this related to teaching and managing groups of young learners.

Student selection

Schools and colleges had made considerable progress in developing a more robust selection process by the end of the pilot. The most common selection approach was for schools to offer the courses to students as a free option choice and then for either schools, colleges or a combination of the two to select the most suitable ones to participate in the courses. There was evidence that colleges were increasingly being involved in this process. There was virtually no evidence that schools were using SfW courses specifically for disengaged or problem students especially in the second year of the pilot, although some colleges felt that higher ability students were often dissuaded from participating in courses. Students' course choices continued to conform largely to traditional gender stereotypes in the second year of the pilot, with only a minority of schools and providers making specific efforts to address this issue.

Impact and course completion

Respondents in almost all schools and colleges agreed that the SfW courses had had a positive impact on students' vocational skills and knowledge, motivation and behaviour. Most also thought that they had helped students to make better and more informed decisions about their post-school transitions. Similarly, all of the 41 students interviewed were able to identify positive impacts of participating in SfW courses. Almost three-quarters said that they thought that participating in the courses had improved their chances of finding work in the future. Student retention on SfW courses was good in most of the schools surveyed. Analysis of SQA data showed that overall 85.6 per cent of the SfW candidates who had been entered to complete their courses in July 2007 had achieved a full SfW qualification. Of those not achieving a full award, more than four-fifths had completed at least one course unit.

CONCLUSIONS AND KEY MESSAGES

Conclusions

The evaluation has shown that the SfW pilot has been successful in achieving the objectives and key measures of success identified by the stakeholders interviewed at the start of the pilot. Schools, colleges and providers are committed to the value of SfW courses and see them as having raised the status of vocational learning in schools; providers have developed and tested out different approaches to delivering courses and overcome various obstacles and challenges; schools and colleges are increasingly recognising the need to work more closely together and have started to implement strategies to strengthen their partnerships; colleges and schools are positive about the impact of courses on students' attitudes and skills relevant to employment, their motivation to learn, and their ability to work with and relate to adults; finally, more than four-fifths of students had passed their courses by the end of the second year of the pilot.

Key messages

The evaluation has provided an insight into a variety of delivery models and highlighted the strengths and weaknesses of each of them, although the evaluation has not identified a preferred model. The study has shown that schools and colleges are increasingly adopting more diversified and flexible models of delivery in order to overcome capacity issues and travel distances in rural areas. These alternative models do, however, have their own issues and challenges and the Scottish Government, local authorities and colleges should consider ways to overcome some of them, including:

• Providing continuous training and development opportunities for school staff teaching SfW courses;
• Supporting the approach planned by some colleges of providing a mentoring and quality assurance role to schools delivering SfW courses.

The evaluation has shown that both schools and colleges believed that the pilot had really helped to make a positive contribution to improved partnership working. Even schools which had previously had strong links with providers were able to identify ways in which it had further improved links. However, there was still some evidence of a need for schools and colleges to work more closely together to overcome some remaining barriers. These included issues related to the timing of the selection of students, college involvement in providing pre-course guidance to students and sharing the recording and reporting of progress on courses. There was also evidence that very little progress had so far been made by schools to make links between students' learning on SfW courses and the rest of the curriculum. Furthermore, even though almost all delivery centres surveyed had carried out some form of evaluation or review of the pilot, joint working between partners on quality assurance and improvement had not been sufficiently developed. The Scottish Government and HMIe should encourage this to happen more often.

Timetabling of courses is an issue in several partnerships - approaches adopted vary considerably across schools. On balance the evaluation suggests that replacing a Standard Grade with a SfW course should be regarded as the ideal approach. The Scottish Government should consider ways in which the awareness and status of courses can be further raised among teachers, parents, employers and universities, which may encourage more schools to adopt this approach. It should also consider providing more guidance to schools on what approaches can and should be used to allow students to take SfW courses.

The Scottish Government, SQA and local authorities also should make sure that new providers and new staff benefit from the lessons learnt from the first two years of the pilot and that staff teaching the courses in schools and college benefit from relevant continuing professional development opportunities. School and college partners could also be encouraged to work more closely together to share ideas on teaching and learning approaches - such links were currently being used mainly to focus on managing groups of young learners.

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