Entrepreneurial Education Pathways Fund 2024 to 2025: form and guidance

Eligibility

The fund is open to:

• any organisation registered or head office in the UK, although projects must be delivered in Scotland only

Your organisation must:

• be solvent
• hold a UK bank account
• have control over income expenditure
• provide a hard copy, pdf, or web link to most recent Annual Financial Accounts
• meet our Fair Work First criteria
• have robust safeguarding policies and procedures in place to protect vulnaerable adults and children
• meet our children’s rights awareness criteria

Ineligible costs

Successful applicants will receive a grant letter with details of ineligible costs. Please note Value Added Tax (VAT) cannot be claimed by the grantee. Nor will any employment costs arising from the Grantee’s legal obligations to its employees, for example parental leave, sick leave or redundancy.  

Fair Work First criteria

Fair Work First is part of our commitment for Scotland to be a fair and equal society. You will be asked how your organisation will commit to the Fair Work Framework criteria over the period of funding.

Fair Work First is the Scottish Government’s flagship policy for driving high quality and fair work, and workforce diversity across the labour market in Scotland. Through this approach the Scottish Government is supporting employers who adopt fair working practices, specifically:

• payment of at least the real Living Wage
• provide appropriate channels for effective workers’ voice, such as trade union recognition
• investment in workforce development
• no inappropriate use of zero hours contracts
• action to tackle the gender pay gap and create a more diverse and inclusive workplace
• offer flexible and family friendly working practices for all workers from day one of employment
• oppose the use of fire and rehire practice

The Fair Work First criteria seek to address particular challenges in Scotland's labour market, to make a real difference to people and their communities, business and other organisations and the economy.

All grant recipients awarded a public sector grant are required to pay at least the real Living Wage and provide appropriate channels for effective workers' voice as a minimum standard.

The Scottish Government asks that organisations accessing grant funding provide a short statement on their own website highlighting their commitment to advancing the Fair Work First criteria, including the real Living Wage and effective voice conditions. The statement should be agreed jointly by the employer and an appropriate workplace representative. This representative should be from the relevant trade union(s) where one or more is recognised, alternatively where there is no union recognition, it should be another appropriate workers' representative.

Safeguarding policies and procedures

All grant recipients must have robust safeguarding policies and procedures in place to protect vulnerable adults and children. These should include whistleblowing and monitoring and complaints processes.

Successful grantees must also have in place a clear procedure which must be followed if it becomes aware of any specific safeguarding incident.

Any policies and procedures shall comply with the relevant current national guidance in Scotland, including the National Guidance for Child Protection in Scotland (August 2023) and the Adult Support and Protection Code of Practice (Scotland) (July 2022), where relevant.

Where any grant recipient is working directly through a partner organisation, the Grantee is required to have undertaken due diligence in relation to safeguarding arrangements.  This includes obtaining evidence of satisfactory safeguarding policies and procedures by the Grantee’s partner organisation.

The Grantee must report all and any cases of suspect abuse or malpractice relating to anyone involved in delivery of the Project or any beneficiary of the Project to Scottish Minister and the relevant authorities immediately. The Grantee must report to Police Scotland, without undue delay, if it suspects a crime has been committed.

Any successful grantee must, upon request from Scottish Ministers, provide copies of the adult and child protection policies and procedures referred to in this section.