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

Background

Policy aims

The vision of the new careers strategy is for a world-class, professionally-led, aligned and flexible system of career information, advice and guidance services which delivers for every citizen, regardless of where they live in Scotland, their age or circumstance. We want to see a system through which citizens can expect a high standard of support that meets their needs when they need it most, a system that is fully interconnected to ensure citizens access the right people and services which include employability and skills support. Effective careers support will assist young people in making decisions about future education, training and jobs. In addition, the new career strategy aims to support individuals consider their careers, to reflect changes in personal circumstances, changes within the labour market and the wider economy. Helping these individuals to respond and adapt to such changes supports economic inclusive growth. This links with the national outcomes that "we are well educated, skilled and able to contribute to society" and "we have thriving and innovative businesses, with quality jobs and fair work for everyone."

The Strategy also supports the delivery of the Scottish Government's Programme for Government, Fair Work Framework, Race Equality Framework, Disability Delivery Action Plan; Scotland's Labour Market Strategy, The 15-24 Learner Journey Review and Fairer Scotland Action Plan, STEM Strategy, Commissioning of Widening Access, A Fairer Scotland for Women: Gender Pay Gap Action Plan, Strategy for Our Veterans and Scottish Veterans Commissioners Report: Employability.

In particular it will contribute towards achieving the following outcomes:

Scotland Performs

National Performance Framework

• Improve the skill profile of the population.
• Reduce underemployment.
• Reduce the proportion of employees earning less than the Living Wage.
• Reduce the pay gap.

Developing the Young Workforce (DYW)

• Increase the employment rate for young disabled people to the population average by 2021.

The Learner Journey Review (15-24)

• The Child Poverty Delivery Plan identifies the steps the Government is taking to meet the ambitious targets set out in the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017. The new Careers Strategy includes actions that seeks to provide people with career management skills and access to high quality career information and guidance to manage their careers in order to help to improve income from work and progression within employment.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates that one-third of UK jobs can be expected to either disappear or radically change due to automation over the next 10 to 15 years. The adults already in work who are at greatest risk of getting caught out by this change are often those currently working in lower skilled jobs. This is a group already facing significant challenges related to in-work poverty (Institute for Fiscal Studies, 2018). In the near future, a large proportion of the population will need to make new and more frequent decisions about retraining and upskilling. Already one adult in three can be expected to make use of career information every year – that demand can be expected to grow. The Careers Strategy aims to ensure all individuals in Scotland have access to career support, employability and skills development that focuses on the needs of the individual first and foremost. A system that builds on an individual's strengths and capabilities, is more joined-up and enables everyone to fulfil their potential.

Framing

The development of the Strategy was undertaken in collaboration with stakeholders and partners across the entire careers system. To help develop the EQIA and Strategy, extensive desktop research was undertaken. This included researching: Career Information, Advice and Guidance in Scotland - A Framework for Service Redesign and Improvement (March 2011); using evidence gathering conducted by SDS for their Equality & Diversity Mainstreaming Report 2019 – 2021; The Fairer Scotland for Disabled People Employment Action Plan; Scottish parliament Committee Enquires into the Gender Pay Gap and Race Equality; and researching data and published reports on the labour market experience of people with protected characteristics; and analysing other countries career strategies such as Australia's National Career Development Strategy.

In developing the Strategy and undertaking the EQIA there was also consultation undertaken with a number of Scottish Government policy areas including: Business Engagement & Regional Economic Division: (Strategic Engagement and Co-ordination Policy, Economic Partnerships Policy, Cities Policy) Enterprise and Innovation Division, Directorate for Learning: (Senior Phase Policy, Curriculum unit) College policy, Higher Education Governance Policy, Post-16 Programmes and CLD policy, (Employability Division: Employability Policy, Service Design and Delivery Team, Employability Disability Policy), Skills Division, Fair Work Division, Industrial Sectors Policy, Manufacturing Policy and NMIS

Skills Development Scotland, as Scotland's national skills body, maintain an on-going focus on ensuring diversity and equality is at the core of all CIAG services delivered through equality colleagues in the national CIAG team. They also have responsibility for ensuring CIAG colleagues have the professional training and resources to work effectively with customers from across all the equality groups. They also work collaboratively with the other two distinct equality teams within SDS: the HR equality team who are responsible for the implementation of mainstreaming within SDS and their national training programmes (NTP) equality team who focus on ensuring that underrepresented groups can participate and achieve within apprenticeships in Scotland. As such, SDS provided evidence to identify impacts and any data gaps within this EQIA.

In addition, all public bodies including SDS, Colleges, Universities, Schools and Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) involved in the delivery of careers services have a duty under the Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) Scotland regulations 2012 to conduct their own equality impact assessments to ensure that their services take steps which assist with equality and meeting people's different needs, encouraging participation, and do not disadvantage anyone.