THE REVIEW OF CAREER SERVICES IN SCOTLAND

The latest Review of Career Services in Scotland by SDS has been released –

Delivering a world class career service together, as part of the Young Person’s Guarantee.

Today marks an important milestone as Skills Development Scotland publishes ‘Careers by Design’, the final report of the Career Review Programme Board. 

You can access the report here. 

After months of evidence gathering, insight sessions and stakeholder engagement, the report makes ten recommendations designed to ensure Scotland’s career services support young people to thrive in the future. 

These include: 

• a greater emphasis on career education within the curriculum at school, college and university 
• more opportunities to experience fair work, exploring jobs in different ways 
• more consistent entitlement to career support across the country 
• greater coordination of services to maximise impact and minimise duplication 
• establishing a Career Services Coalition where young people, practitioners, employers and stakeholders are represented 

The recommendations represent an ambitious redesign of the career system that will “ultimately help make Scotland a better, fairer place to live and work” says Graeme Smith, Chair of the Review Programme Board.

“This redesign has the potential to make a significant contribution to achieving the vision and outcomes of Scotland’s COVID Recovery Strategy, the OECD recommendations for the future of Curriculum for Excellence and the emerging National Strategy for Economic Transformation.”

Alongside publication of this comprehensive report, the Scottish Government has published its response to the Career Review. 

This response accepts all of the recommendations and tasks the Programme Board with progressing plans for further development.

Graeme Smith states “The Programme Board is committed to continuing the collaborative approach to this next stage of development. We will continue to work with a wide range of stakeholders across the career system to co-design proposals that deliver on our recommendations.”

The Career Review microsite has a range of resources designed to help partners and stakeholders understand the intent and detail behind the review. These include: 

• A summary report 
• A video overview 
• A series of expert opinions 
• Details of the review approach
• The evidence and insight gathered 

Dr Deirdre Hughes was pleased to recently provide advisory support to Graeme Smith and James Russell (Director of Careers Information, Advice and Guidance Operations) in advance of the new report being published.