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Section 1: Activity Agreements
1. Some young people are not ready or able to access formal learning as they reach their school leaving date. They may face multiple barriers to participation (health problems, addiction, a history of offending, homelessness), need support to build their confidence and social skills, or benefit from opportunities to develop team-working skills and self-esteem.
2. For those young people, an offer of learning which meets their needs must be as mainstream an offer as participation in school or college or the national training programmes is to young people for whom those are the right options.
3. It is also critical that the right support is available to young people as they take part in this type of learning and development - for the most vulnerable young people, intensive advice and guidance will have to be a central element of their activity - particularly when their learning activity must fit in with other issues such as healthcare. This intensive advice and guidance forms the basis of an "activity agreement".
4. It is important to see this activity as a "first step" towards employment or further learning or training. This is crucial to our implementation of Curriculum for Excellence - where young people will be best able to become successful learners, confident individuals, effective contributors and responsible citizens in a community or third sector setting, we must support them as effectively as those who learn best in a school setting.
5. We recognise that implementing a more coherent approach to this will require investment. Your views on where that investment would make the greatest impact are invited in more detail below.
Context
6. More Choices, More Chances identified some good practice in this area in England, and committed to developing a Scottish approach. Activity Agreement pilots in England began in April 2006 and have centred on the Connexions service (which offers careers advice and guidance to young people), working with young people who have not been in education, employment or training for 20 weeks or more. The young person's Connexions advisor works with them to create a personalised, tailored programme of activity and personal development which might involve a wide range of learning providers and other organisations. An evaluation of the first year of the pilots published by the Department for Children, Schools and Families has showed positive results, with around 50% of participants progressing immediately into more formal education, employment or training 2.
A Scottish Approach
7. It is important to ensure that this new development does not compromise existing good practice, but rather builds on it. There are already many good examples of non-formal learning opportunities which help young people to re-engage and ultimately progress into more formal learning or employment. Our challenge is to make this more coherent, with pathways which are as clear for those young people as the existing pathways for young people in school or college.
8. The aim of this would be threefold:
- The support available to those young people must be as robust, systematic and clear as that available to young people staying on in school, going to further or higher education or entering the national training programmes;
- The learning provision which is right for those young people must be as mainstream an offer to them as staying on in school, going to further or higher education or entering the national training programmes is to those for whom those are the right options;
- The opportunities available to young people for personal and social development, tailored to their needs, must be aligned to and embedded in Curriculum for Excellence.
9. In developing this, the following will be key considerations:
- the range of activity young people might undertake;
- quality assurance and accreditation;
- an appropriate system for monitoring young people's progress;
- funding and administration; and
- the link with DWP benefits and other forms of financial support.
Current relevant activity
10. Current activity which focuses on this type of learning and development for young people includes:
- Community learning and development opportunities including youth work
- volunteering opportunities
- the Life Skills strand of Get Ready for Work
11. Community learning and development opportunities are offered to young people by a wide range of providers. Local authorities, Scotland's colleges and third sector organisations at both a national and local level are of key importance.
12. These opportunities are developed by engaging directly with young people and working with them on what they want to change in their lives, in order to be less threatening to young people who have had negative experiences in school, and more responsive to the young person's needs. Their participation might be in response to other needs such as drugs problems or homelessness.
13. This type of activity has a strong focus on building motivation and confidence. It can include literacy and numeracy learning, local employability programmes, personal and social development, , time management and goal-setting.
14. It is widely recognised that volunteering can provide skills and build confidence and therefore act as a stepping stone into further education, training or employment.
15. Volunteering also helps people feel good about themselves and good about their communities, encourages networks and is especially effective at building "soft" or "entry level" skills such as problem solving and co-operative working.
16. The vast majority of young people who volunteer do so part time. However, full time volunteering can be an attractive option to young people at a transitional point in their life and, where appropriate and high quality, can deliver substantial personal development over a fairly short period of time.
17. The only nationally-commissioned activity which is directly relevant to this area is the Life Skills strand of the Get Ready for Work programme. Unlike young people in the other options described above, participants in Life Skills will already be in receipt of a training allowance, and have access to relevant IAG.
Quality, progression and monitoring
18. The learning and development in which a young person takes part must be the right option for them, with clear opportunities for progression. It will be important to ensure that the learning and support provided to the young person is high quality.
19. It will also be important to ensure that there are appropriate pathways open for young people to progress towards further learning and employment. There is a balance to be struck between ensuring that the opportunities available to an individual young person are tailored, flexible, and supported, and ensuring that those opportunities both allow the young person's achievements to be recognised and facilitate progression.
- How do we ensure that the learning and support that young people engage in is of sufficiently high quality?
- Please give your views on how a balance many be struck between flexibility and accreditation and what approach/structures should be adopted to ensure that this is the case.
- How could we develop a coherent measure of success for organisations engaged in this type of activity with young people?
Establishing non-formal learning as a mainstream option
20. AA must be focused on activity that helps young people to develop the four capacities which are central to a Curriculum for Excellence - to be effective contributors, successful learners, responsible citizens and confident individuals. For some young people, the path towards employment will be a longer one, and learning and personal development activity which are focused on confidence and social skills will be needed before they are ready to engage with formal learning.
21. However, young people in a community or third sector setting currently do not enjoy the same level or consistency of financial or other support as those young people who sustain engagement in school. We need to move towards a model where the support available to young people is dictated by their needs rather than by the institution in which they are learning.
22. The first significant change we could make would be to extend the same type of support and monitoring arrangements to those young people learning in a community or third sector setting as we already make available to young people in school. Improving this, through the use of AA, would depend on effective communications between the partners involved in delivering activities and support organisations.
- Which types of existing activity should we include in our development of an Activity Agreement approach? Please comment on the proposal to include (a) community learning and development opportunities and (b) volunteering opportunities.
- Do you think there are any important subcategories or distinctions to be made?
- Do you think there are any other learning options or opportunities for personal and social development which should be available to young people that have not been discussed above? What are they?
Commissioning bespoke activity
23. For some particularly vulnerable young people, the existing landscape of learning options will not include anything which is fully responsive to their needs. The English pilots of AA include the commissioning of specific interventions and activities on behalf of a single young person by an advisor. There is currently no similar process in Scotland.
24. Such activity would require intensive advice and guidance to be available to the young person, with a detailed knowledge of the young person's needs and aspirations, an understanding of the opportunities available locally, and a discretionary budget with which advisors could commission relevant activity for the young person, as part of a pathway towards engagement with formal learning or employment.
- Would some young people benefit from a "broker" to negotiate the right opportunities for them? Should that broker be able to commission services focused on individual young people? Please explain your answer.
- Do you think that commissioning services on behalf of individual young people would assist in enabling access to a range of options? Would there be any constraints for providers in responding to this model of commissioning?
- Do you have any views on how that might operate in Scotland?
Longer-term resourcing and investment
25. The Life Skills strand of the Get Ready for Work programme is currently the only approach to first-step engagement in learning and development which attracts a specific funding stream. Other relevant funding streams will include local authorities' approaches to community learning and development, college investment in community provision, ESF, the Big Lottery fund and other independent donors, and the new Inspiring Scotland fund.
26. The implementation of Curriculum for Excellence requires, in the longer term, local authorities and other funders of learning activity to consider the needs of young people and the responsiveness of the provision they fund to those needs. AA could be used as a model, over time, to build up a picture of the needs of young people and the effectiveness of interventions.
- Do you think this more strategic commissioning role would add value?
- How might this operate?
- Do you have any further comments on the type of activity which might qualify for Activity Agreements or how such a programme might operate?
- Given the particular needs of the young people who would be involved in activity agreements, how might the scheme be most effectively administrated?
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