Moray sees increase in education and employment participation amongst young adults
Skills Development Scotland (SDS) has published the 2023 Annual Participation Measure, which provides a picture of the education, employment and training activity of Scotland’s 16-19 year olds between 1 April 2022 and 31 March 2023.
The Annual Participation Measure highlights a huge improvement in Moray in a number of areas.
Moray has seen an increase from 91.4% participation in 2022 to 95.4% in 2023, the greatest increase across all Scottish local authorities. Work undertaken across the partnership (Skills Development Scotland, Moray College UHI, Moray Education, DYW Moray, Moray Pathways and CLD Youth Work) has helped to strengthen the Annual Participation Measure and resulted in the success we are seeing this year.
Additionally, there has been a reduction across Moray in the unconfirmed status rate of young people in education/employment, from 5.3% last year to 1.6% this year. This is the highest reduction across the whole of Scotland, with the area going from the highest unconfirmed rate in 2022 to the lowest this year, a massive stride forward for Moray. All partners played a role in this reduction with a focus in contacting young people directly and consistently following up on where they were in terms of education/employability was key to the improvement in Moray.
An across-partnership ‘Annual Participation Measure’ sub-group linked to the Local Employability Partnership (LEP) created an action plan to review processes and approaches to ensure young people were fully supported. An accurate recording of what young people in Moray are engaged in, with regards to education and employment was deployed to assist with the progress.
Chair of Moray Council’s Education, Children’s Services and Leisure Committee, Cllr Kathleen Robertson, said: “We’re delighted to see such positive results across Moray this year. To have such a high percentage of young adults participating in education, training, or employment is testament to the hard work put in by the agencies involved in the partnership. My hope is that we continue to see this improved trend in future years and that young people across Moray continue to be supported into activity and roles that suit them.”
The report can be viewed here.