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The research aims and approach

The study was commissioned by the Scottish Government to highlight good practice in delivering practical, applied or vocational learning provision for all pupils. The findings are intended to inform a paper on the delivery of skills for learning, skills for life and skills for work being prepared as part of the implementation of Curriculum for Excellence ( CfE). The study had several key objectives:

• To identify and select five case studies of good practice of the delivery of skills for learning, skills for life and skills for work.
• To gain a detailed understanding of the activities and achievements of the organisations, partnerships or programmes within the case studies.
• To identify the factors influencing success in each case study and assess how any challenges had been addressed.

The five case studies were selected to illustrate a range of provision in different contexts, and identified as examples of good practice by a range of key stakeholders across Scotland. Within each case study the research methods varied to suit the different contexts, but generally involved interviews with providers, pupils, and parents, and scrutiny of providers' own evaluations and monitoring information.

Main Findings

• Successful outcomes for young people include improved performance, broader skills, increased confidence and aspirations, greater awareness of employment opportunities, and increased positive destinations
• Successful outcomes also include personal factors such as improved behaviour, better team working and communication, increased motivation and improved attendance
• Features of good provision include: engaging, flexible, practical high quality programmes
• Good provision is founded on close partnership working
• Appropriately skilled and highly motivated staff are a significant feature of good provision
• Challenges to provision include sustaining and developing infrastructure, resources and capacity
• Common perceptions regarding the status of vocational learning and qualifications need to be challenged
• There have been a number of perhaps unexpected social benefits including improved employer attitudes towards young people, stronger links among schools, employers and their communities, increased parental interest in school, and a reduction in territorial rivalries and increased tolerance in the community.
• The five case studies

The case studies are not intended to be definitive or exhaustive, rather they aim to be illuminative, highlighting examples of good practice from across the range of provision, to provide ideas and stimulate debate to help inform policy and practice. The five selected are as follows:

• North Lanarkshire Council: Local authority-wide partnership between schools and college.
• Highland Council: Local authority-wide partnership between schools and local employers.
• Glasgow City Council: Local authority-wide Vocational Learning Strategy, including specific unit to provide strategic guidance and broker school/ college partnerships and university links.
• Angus Council: School Cluster model involving bespoke vocational learning centres to facilitate and sustain provision of vocational learning.
• Oatridge College: College-school model with outreach provision for schools via skill centre and significant support for councils and vocational providers in rural/remote areas of Scotland.

Policy context

Curriculum for Excellence (Scottish Executive, 2004a) is a major programme for ensuring improved delivery of learning and teaching for children and young people between the ages of 3 and 18. This programme seeks to ensure that all young people, on leaving school, have acquired the relevant skills for learning, skills for work and skills for life. Curriculum for Excellence provides the framework for the values, purposes and principles of education in Scotland, and aims to ensure that pupils develop the four capacities enshrined within it to become: confident individuals, successful learners, effective contributors and responsible citizens. Skills for Scotland, A Lifelong Skills Strategy (Scottish Government, 2007) highlights the importance of Curriculum for Excellence in the development of individuals' vocational learning and employability skills needed for the world of work, and in providing the foundation for skills development throughout life. It sets out the Scottish Government's commitment to ensuring that Curriculum for Excellence provides vocational learning and the employability skills needed for the world of work, and is the foundation for skills development throughout life. These skills should be embedded across all curriculum areas including more practical or applied learning and specific opportunities such as Skills for Work qualifications.

In this study we have used the word 'vocational' to cover such learning opportunities because this is the phrase which is most often used by those delivering such learning. In this context the word covers the delivery of a range of skills which young people will need in their life and work, including the development of pre-vocational, enterprise and employability skills, personal skills, high levels of cognitive skills and the opportunity to put learning into a practical context.

The new relationship (or 'Concordat') between the Scottish Government and local government has important implications for local authorities, schools and partner organisations. Rather than specific ring-fenced funding allocations being provided for particular education objectives, local government will contribute directly to the delivery of key commitments that relate to agreed National Outcomes. Giving more school pupils opportunities to experience vocational learning is one of twelve specified commitments in the concordat with COSLA and the Spending Review settlement to local authorities reflects this.

Funding for the Scottish Funding Council also reflects its responsibility to fund college courses, including courses for school pupils and it is expected that local authorities will continue to work in partnership with colleges, local employers and others as appropriate to deliver more vocational opportunities for school pupils.

Models of vocational learning

a) Schools mainly sending pupils to partner colleges to participate in courses delivered by lecturers (Glasgow, West Lothian). Colleges involved in this model were often involved in supporting pupils with additional support needs, including social, emotional and behavioural difficulties, to deliver limited but focused vocational learning programmes. A variation of this model included a central unit to co-ordinate the demand from schools for vocational learning and match it with available college provision, high levels of demand being a major issue across the case studies.

b) Schools mainly providing vocational learning in school with college lecturers teaching courses, sometimes jointly with teachers (North Lanarkshire, Angus Council).

c) Schools working with a range of providers, but mainly employers, to provide vocational learning and experience for pupils (Highland Council).

While these were the main models, in each category there were also variations according to local need. The research also found that colleges were sometimes supporting vocational learning provision that was geographically distant. Much of this input concerned helping providers in remote areas to set up quality assurance systems and providing internal verification and induction.

Purpose of vocational and skills learning

Stakeholders generally noted that, while vocational learning should promote vocational skills and employability, it also had to articulate with the four Curriculum for Excellence capacities, not only preparing young people for the world of work, but also promoting wider interests and helping them to 'find out about themselves and express themselves'. Key policy and strategic informants reported that employers frequently mentioned the importance of 'soft' skills, and motivation and attitude to work, as objectives for effective vocational learning.

Outcomes of vocational learning

Across the case studies, a wide range of reported outcomes were attributed to vocational learning in the case studies:

• Improved performance in modules and units of work.
• Gaining broader skills, particularly team working, communication skills and self-confidence, thus increased employability and generic life skills.
• Increased vocational skills relevant to local economy.
• Increased aspirations and awareness of employment opportunities.
• Improved behaviour in and out of school, improved attitudes to school and motivation to learn and marked improvement in school attendance.
• Increase in positive destinations, including employers often create jobs for suitable young people following a placement.
• Improved employer attitudes towards young people, greater employer awareness of school provision and stronger links between employers and schools and their communities.
• For employers, an opportunity to promote their business to prospective employees.
• Increased parental interest in school work and involvement in the life of the school.
• Where pupils from different schools and communities learn together in a college, vocational centre or host school, this has helped to reduce 'territorial rivalries' and promote tolerance.

Positive outcomes for pupils were particularly evident where school-college partnerships had been established for some time, and staff, pupils and parents had become familiar with what vocational learning could offer, and how schools and other providers could best work together.

Features of good practice

Across the vocational learning case studies there was consensus among key informants on what characterised and promoted good practice in delivering skills for learning, life and work through vocational learning. Such provision should:

• Be engaging, relevant and credible to young people.
• Be flexible, holistic, integrated and designed to meet the needs of young people, their communities and employers.
• Provide practical skills and experiential opportunities with work- related activities.
• Offer progression routes.
• Include partnership work between schools colleges, training providers, employers etc.
• Involve staff who have the appropriate skills to deliver vocational content and are motivated to work with young people.
• Offer creditable accreditation for young people and be accredited with nationally recognised qualifications.
• Have appropriate guidance, rigorous selection criteria and interviewing of pupils.
• Be inclusive and accessible.
• Be quality assured, including using integral monitoring and evaluation that informs planning and delivery.

Some strategic stakeholders and teachers argued that quality vocational learning should also be school-based where possible, and delivered in partnership with others such as colleges where not possible. However, other stakeholders believed that vocational learning was enhanced when delivered in colleges or facilities outside of school.

Across all of the case studies, colleges and their partners drew on their links with relevant Skill Sector Councils, the SQA, HMIE and other key bodies to ensure provision reflected recognised standards and articulated with the curriculum and local and national policies.

Challenges

The research highlighted a number of challenges facing vocational learning provision. Perhaps the most significant of these, for providers and their partners, was developing sufficiently responsive programmes, with appropriate infrastructure and resources to meet the rapidly increasing demand for vocational learning. Other challenges included:

• Time taken for pupils to travel to/from college can negatively impact on wider timetable.
• Capacity issues: i) a limited number of students can go to college because of colleges' capacity to meet demand for certain vocational course; and ii) schools' ability to provide vocational learning courses in-house depending on facilities and teachers' vocational learning expertise.
• Rural schools can have limited access to colleges to enhance their vocational learning provision.
• Perceptions concerning the parity of esteem of vocational courses compared with 'mainstream' academic subjects. Stakeholders across colleges and schools believed that while parents' and teachers' attitudes to vocational learning courses were becoming generally more positive, there was still a need to tackle the broad cultural perception that vocational learning is a lower priority than acquiring academic qualifications.
• Recognition of achievement: vocational Skills for Work courses were often seen as having 'less parity' compared with other assessments in that they were 'just pass or fail' which led some to argue that pupils, parents and employers could not assess the 'level of achievement'.
• Vocational learning provision was generally effective in engaging with young people of various abilities and from a range of backgrounds and circumstances. However, gender differences in course choice were evident with girls being much more likely to participate in care courses, beauty and hairdressing, and boys to choose construction, crafts and automotive maintenance.
• CPD issues concerning subject knowledge and the skills required to deliver vocational courses and content: pupils referred to the need for lecturers or teachers to have vocational experience in the subject they were delivering in order for them to have relevant knowledge and skills, and thus, credibility. Joint teaching approaches with teachers and college lecturers working together can build their respective capacities to teach vocational learning for young people.

Sustaining good practice

Given the increasing demand for vocational learning provision, those involved in planning and providing such learning were exploring ways to build capacity and infrastructure to respond to increased demand, as well as looking at strategic planning to explore ways to embed and sustain vocational learning provision. However, some strategic stakeholders' comments suggested that people at all levels were having to develop a new mindset on funding and sustainability within the context of the Single Outcome Agreement. A theme emerging across the case studies was that schools were looking to promote sustainability of vocational learning and integration within their curriculum by promoting the capacity of teachers to deliver vocational learning and developing greater levels of joint delivery and partnership working between teachers and lecturers.

Some issues for consideration

Across the case studies there was evidence that vocational learning was promoting positive outcomes for young people. The research findings demonstrate that key stakeholders responsible for planning and delivery shared the view that, while vocational learning should promote vocational skills and employability, it must also articulate with the four Curriculum for Excellence capacities, to promote broader skills; particularly team-working, communication skills and self-confidence, employability, and generic life skills.

To provide vocational learning with these characteristics effectively, at a time when the demand for such provision is growing and the funding landscape is changing, local authorities, providers and their partner organisations are increasingly looking to a more coordinated service infrastructure, to deploy provision, expertise and resources effectively. Links with relevant Skill Sector Councils, the SQA, HMIE and other key organisations are helping to ensure provision reflects recognised standards, and articulates with the curriculum and local and national policies.

There is an, as yet unresolved, issue concerning vocational Skills for Work courses being seen as having 'less parity' compared with other qualifications, in that they are assessed as 'just pass or fail', which some argue, makes it difficult for pupils, parents and employers to assess the 'level of achievement'.

Finally, the key themes arising from the case studies of vocational learning and the initial sensitising research raise a number of questions for those professionals, particularly practitioners, interested in promoting the skills of young people. A number of these reflective questions are highlighted below:

• What helpful lessons can I take from the case studies presented in this report?
• Are there elements of these approaches that I am already following in my own practice?
• What changes would these approaches mean for me, in practice?
• What lessons can I learn from these in terms of dealing with challenges and obstacles?

Online copies

The research findings is web only and can be downloaded from the publications section of The Scottish Government website: http://www.scotland.gov.uk

If you have any enquiries about social research, please contact us at:

Dissemination Officer

Email: recs.admin@scotland.gsi.gov.uk
Website: www.scotland.gov.uk/socialresearch

This document (and other Research Findings and Reports) and information about social research in the Scottish Government may be viewed on the Internet at: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/socialresearch

The site carries up-to-date information about social and policy research commissioned and published on behalf of the Scottish Government. Subjects covered include transport, housing, social inclusion, rural affairs, children and young people, education, social work, community care, local government, civil justice, crime and criminal justice, regeneration, planning and women's issues. The site also allows access to information about the Scottish Household Survey.

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