Lifelong Learning Directorate
Employability and Skills Division
In March 2006 the then Deputy First Minister for Scotland (Nicol Stephen) announced that Careers Scotland should move out of Scottish Enterprise (but not necessarily HIE) and much work has been undertaken since then with respect to the future structural position of Careers Scotland.
A consultation was launched on 16 June and ended on 10 September 2006 and officials consulted a wide range of stakeholders. The consultation received 145 written responses (65 individuals and 80 from organisations). In addition to the web based consultation, 60 organisations/groups were invited to attend a consultation event either on their own or as part of a group event. The purpose of the consultation events was to explore issues and give added context to the consultation exercise.
As part of this ongoing appraisal the Scottish Government required information on the financial implications of number options regarding the future of Careers Scotland. A tendering exercise was undertaken and PA Consulting was awarded the contract. Their report provides the background and outputs from the investigations undertaken and contains the high-level assumptions used by PA to calculate indicative costs and benefits. This level of information was sought as it was recognised in the period before the election in May 2007 that the incoming administration could well have formed ideas on the future position of Careers Scotland. The manifestos for the various political parties bore this out.
While the report was not given to Ministers from the current administration, information from it was used to help inform Ministers in the new administration (putting the history surrounding Careers Scotland into context) and assist thinking on the future direction to take for the organisation.
The Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning announced on 10 September that Careers Scotland in both SEn & HIE were to be merged with learndirect scotland to form the nucleus of a Skills Body. On 26 September it was further announced the skills and training responsibilities which focus on individual employability, skills and training currently located within the Enterprise Networks would also be merged into the skills body.
On the basis of these decisions, the estimates provided by PA Consulting have been revised to calculate more realistic costs and benefits for the option that Ministers are taking forward. The options that Ministers are pursuing is closest to a combination of options 7 and 9 in the PA Consulting report but does not match exactly any of the options. On this basis the estimate for costs would be £35.5m and of benefits £4.7 - £5m. Further work with the parties involved in the merger to bring about the skills body has given an overall cost of £20m with benefits offsetting some of this so that we estimate that only £16m of additional funding will be needed. Therefore, we consider it prudent to half the costs and benefits identified in the PA Consulting work for the purposes of considering the options.
Employability and Skills Division