Summary report of baseline study of employability related activities in Scottish colleges

Providers report strong support for the development of employability skills and attributes,including core and 'soft' skills, both as discrete units and embedded within course provisionalongside other learning goals. Career education and guidance, including employment seeking skills, are addressed to a lesserextent than 'employability' through the inclusion of discrete units or embedded in other courseunits. While some providers include specific units in courses, student development in these areasis often addressed through central student services. Advice and guidance is most likely to beprovided at the pre-exit stage of students' programmes although it is important while students areon-course. Post-exit guidance is least likely to be supported, with colleges indicating thatobtaining progression information was difficult. Enterprise is the least likely aspect to be addressed, either in relation to business start-up or as afocus in developing enterprising skills and attitudes. College staff indicated that there was a needfor clarification on what was meant by enterprise and enterprising approaches and how theymight be incorporated into other units. There was strong support at institutional level to provide resources to enable students to reflecton issues related to employability, with course providers reporting wide use of personaldevelopment review and planning, though a wide range of terms was used to describe this.