Scotland's careers strategy - moving forward: equality impact assessment

Executive Summary

Scotland's Careers Strategy: Moving Forward highlights the important role that career education, information, advice and guidance (CIAG) services in Scotland can play in helping to address future skills demands and deliver inclusive growth.

The strategy has an impact on: all users accessing careers services; employers whose workforce will have the opportunity to access an all age careers service to help them make informed choices about upskilling and retraining opportunities; and careers professionals and organisations that deliver and support the delivery of services.

The Scottish Government, as per the public sector equality duty of the Equality Act 2010, is required to assess the impact of any proposed new policy or revised policy/ policy changes.

As such, this Equality Impact Assessment (EQIA) is reviewing high level principles of the Careers Strategy document. It will be central in shaping future policy develops and the implementation phase of the Strategy. Further consideration and EQIA's will be undertaken for action points during the implementation stage.

This EQIA has been carried out to assess the equality impacts of Scotland's Careers Strategy: Moving Forward and the impacts it has on the following characteristics: age, disability, sex, pregnancy and maternity, gender reassignment, sexual orientation, race, religion or belief, and marriage and civil partnership.

As part of the EQIA, we have considered the potential impacts of the new careers strategy which is presented in the Key Finding Sections below. The findings were based upon extensive desktop research, consultation undertaken with a number of Scottish Government policy areas, and a session on disability that was facilitated by the Scottish Government's Disability Employment team.

This impact assessment has evidenced that the policy within the strategy does not directly or indirectly discriminate under the Equality Act 2010. However, a further EQIA will be conducted on the action points of the strategy at the implementation stage.