To ask the Scottish Government what action it is taking to ensure that students are supported throughout their educational journey with career advice that aligns with the future economic need for specific roles and skills. (S6O-04084)

Career support is informed by skills and labour market information, with businesses and employers providing intelligence on opportunities and skills needs. However, we recognise that we need to do a lot more, and ministers have set out their intentions to improve the current offer, including by working with the career services collaborative to ensure that students are more aware of the wide range of economic opportunities in Scotland, the skills that are required and the pathways that are available to achieve their goals.

Alongside that, we have committed to taking responsibility for national skills planning and to strengthening regional approaches by better aligning them with the career support system.

The careers advice that is given in schools does not reflect future opportunities in Scotland’s green economy, in the blue economy, in the rural economy and—specifically in my area—in engineering. Ayrshire College provides fantastic engineering apprenticeships and has even opened its own aeronautical engineering apprenticeship facility at Prestwick airport.

We have the demand for and the capability to deliver apprenticeships. What will the Scottish Government do to ensure that those opportunities are marketed in schools and that there is enough investment in our colleges to meet the demand for those highly paid, highly skilled and long-term jobs?

I suspect that this will worry Brian Whittle, but I genuinely agree with what he has said. We are actively working on an upgraded role for the career services collaborative, whose membership includes not just Skills Development Scotland and Developing the Young Workforce but colleges, universities and local authorities. Good work is being done in that space, but we need to pull all of it together to ensure that we have a fully cohesive and coherent careers offering for people of all ages.

I will pick up on Brian Whittle’s specific point. Just this morning, I held an employers round-table meeting, where I spoke to a representative of the aerospace sector from Ayrshire. He made the same points as Brian Whittle has made about access to apprenticeships, but he recognised that it is not just about new recruits, because it is difficult to get the numbers that people are looking for. In all of this, we need to do a lot more to upskill and reskill the existing workforce.

I absolutely get the points that Brian Whittle has made. I give him the commitment that we are alive to all those issues and are working towards improving the situation.

The minister recognises the importance of the alignment of skills advice with the skills gaps that are found in some sectors, and the need to encourage young people into some of those professional groupings. I am aware that Skills Development Scotland recently completed a survey of young people on their career aspirations. Does the minister feel that the findings from that survey align with the approach that Skills Development Scotland has taken in working with young people to give them careers advice? If not, what action could be taken to ensure that that is the case?

I read the survey with interest and thought that there was some fascinating information in it about the aspirations of young people. As I said earlier, we aspire to improve the offering, and this is one area in which we need to better articulate to young people all the opportunities that are available to them, based on their interests, skills and performance in school. There is more that we can do, but I thought that the survey was a useful piece of work to inform our thinking.

To be frank with the member, one of the things that has informed my planning for improvements in this area has been the conversations that I have had directly with young people about their expectations and what they are looking for out of the system. That is why we are looking to make some of the changes.