Career Education Standard – Learning Resources: An SDS update
Marie Lloyd works in Organisational Development at Skills Development Scotland and is part of a team working with Education Scotland to develop Career-long Professional Learning (CLPL) modules built around the Career Education Standard: “We all want young people to go on to fulfilling careers when they leave school.
Every day, through Curriculum for Excellence young people are learning skills for life and work. Supported by teachers and practitioners like you, they are making connections between what they learn in the classroom and how it applies to the world of work.
You are their support and Skills Development Scotland can be yours.
We are working closely with Education Scotland to develop a series of professional learning resources linked directly to the Career Education Standard. These will help you develop and maintain your awareness of the labour market, different learning and career pathways and the employability skills young people need to develop.
Whether you’re working at a nursery, in a primary or secondary setting, at a college, as a private training provider, a social worker, as part of the third sector or community learning and development, or in a specialist learning or residential setting – these resources are for you.
You can now access the first of what will be a suite of four modules through Education Scotland’s website.
It will help you to understand the purpose and aim of the Career Education Standard, the entitlements for children and young people and the role you’re expected to play along with parents and partners.
Two further modules will be added in April.
The first looks at Labour Market Information (LMI), the facts and figures that show us where job opportunities will be, and in what sectors in Scotland. For example, LMI tells us a predicted 11,000 
new jobs will open up each year until 2020 in Scotland’s digital technology sector. The module will provide you with an understanding of LMI, how to access it, how to use it in the classroom and the benefits it brings for a young person’s learning.
The second is on Career Management Skills (CMS). These are the skills that young people need to help them make informed career decisions throughout their lives. SDS Careers Advisers focus on identifying an individual’s career management skills, and those they need to develop further, during coaching sessions. These are also skills that can and should be developed across the curriculum as a day-to-day aspect of learning.
By the end of May the fourth and final resource will look at My World of Work and the resources it offers teachers and practitioners. My World of Work is already widely used by pastoral care and guidance staff but this resource will explore how all teachers can use it to access valuable information about learning and career pathways and the current and future labour market.
These four learning resources can be used independently, relatively informally with a small group of self-selected colleagues or more formally as part of an agreed area for improvement across a department or the whole school.
Through this process of awareness-raising and individual or collaborative reflection, we hope you will be better able to consider how the entitlements and expectations described in the Career Education Standard relate to your current practice and better equip you to more fully integrate learning about the world of work into your lessons in a way that is proportionate, manageable and sustainable.”
