���˿���

Ian, did you have any thoughts on that?

This is my last question, if the convener will indulge me. Ian, in your opening remarks you mentioned the system being at breaking point. Is now a good moment to elaborate on those thoughts?

Yes, you are back.

I have two questions, if the convener will allow them, but I will go for the bigger one first. My background is in electromechanical engineering, and certainly when I was an engineering student, we had the same problem then that we have now, in that the field is heavily male dominated. In various evidence sessions, we have heard that we have not made progress because of the parents, that we do not get the kids young enough, or that it is the employers. There is a lot of, “They are not doing enough in this space.” It seems that we, collectively, do not have a handle on why this is a problem, particularly in the UK. Other countries do better in engineering. I know that construction is probably a problem everywhere. Do you guys have any thoughts on why we have a persistent gender imbalance, particularly in construction, engineering and what we are calling green skills, such as those that the Energy Training Academy offers?

I have three questions, which I will try to get through.

One of the challenges faced by not just SDS but everyone delivering apprenticeships is meeting the target of 25,000 apprentices with a fixed sum of money. Anecdotally, one of the criticisms that I have heard is that it means that there is a focus on quantity rather than quality.

I would love to hear your interpretation of that challenge—that is, that we are spending public money training young women to be hairdressers and to work in retail, and trapping them in low-wage jobs, instead of spending money getting more people into engineering. I understand that part of that is the trade-off between the target that you have to meet and the amount of money that you have available, and I know that an engineering apprenticeship costs more to deliver than a hairdressing apprenticeship, but are we not trapping those young people in low-paying careers?

Did you look at careers advice or anything like that? One of the challenges, anecdotally, is that everybody says that careers advice is terrible. When you speak to careers advisers, they say, “Oh, but we have to be neutral. We can’t direct children.” However, as you have just described, children are coming to that stage of their life, the teenage years, with ingrained biases, and if careers advisers are not working against those biases—if they are letting the children lead—we cannot undo the damage that society has done. Would you say that careers advice is one of the areas where we may be able to make inroads?

My final question goes back to apprenticeships. How do we achieve parity of esteem between apprenticeships and the highers and university route? One suggestion that I have heard is that we should change the name from “highers” or make apprenticeships higher equivalent. What are your thoughts on that?

Thanks for that.

My next question is about the delivery of apprenticeships through colleges versus other training providers. I realise that there is some push and pull in that respect: colleges are always desperate for more funds, so they would like to take on more of the apprenticeship training role, but employers including Lothian Buses, which the committee has visited, say that colleges are inflexible. They work to the academic year, which means that, if you employ someone in January, they cannot start training at the college until September. Moreover, colleges have trouble getting lecturers to do this kind of work, and it can mean an apprentice having to go to college three mornings a week instead of one day a week, which disrupts their work.

How do we deal with that balance? Colleges definitely want more money, but they do not seem to be up to the job of delivering the skills in the way that businesses need them to. They cannot keep up with the tech, and they cannot deliver on the timelines.

Is there an issue with the funding model for colleges, too? Colleges seem to be very fixed when it comes to the academic year, with the struggle to get lecturers and so on. One of the things with apprenticeships is that the funding is only available once you have achieved a certain outcome, whereas colleges get their funding every October, no matter what. Would conditionality of funding on outcomes for colleges help them shift faster?

Thank you.

Finally, I have heard good things about the expertise in SDS with regard to supporting apprenticeships, particularly from the trade unions, which are very concerned that that expertise will be lost with the move to the Scottish Funding Council. I forget how many staff you have working on this—I think that it is in the region of 100 or so—and we do not yet know how many of them will be moved over. The trade unions are very worried about losing the skills and expertise in delivering apprenticeships when that funding is moved to SFC.