Borders College Shortlisted for leading the way in Data Science learning

An innovative partnership programme funded through the Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region Deal is benefitting students across the region, by allowing not only full-time students to learn about Data Driven Innovation (DDI) but also those who are unemployed or facing redundancy. 

The programme at Borders College has been shortlisted for a national award at the annual CDN (College Development Network) Awards – one of the most prestigious awards in the sector. Core Skills staff at Borders College developed a project-based approach to their course delivery and assessment. This approach has enabled the lecturers to develop the digital, data and meta-skills of the learners that relate more specifically to the needs of the employers. The shortlisting recognises a college that has anticipated the importance of wider skills development and reflected this across the curriculum. The winners will be announced at a virtual celebration on Thursday 3 December 2020.  

Borders College Principal Angela Cox said: 

“I am delighted that the creativity and hard work of the staff is being recognised in this way. Borders College prides itself on providing our community with the skills they need now and in the future. Accessing and interpreting data is an essential skill irrespective of the sector you want to work in and we are delighted to be working with University of Edinburgh on developing these skills, alongside other City Region Deal partners.”  

Alison Muckersie from University of Edinburgh, the Data-Driven Innovation Skills Gateway lead, commented: 

“The team at the Borders College has embraced the opportunity provided by the significant City Region Deal investment to prepare their students for the fast-changing world of work. Data skills are becoming increasingly important across all jobs and sectors, and are key to ensuring ongoing competitiveness for businesses. By embedding data literacy in their core skills programme the College is recognising this trend and is helping their students to be better equipped for the world of work, regardless of the roles they move into.” 

The programme consists of a pilot group of unemployed individuals that are developing data literacy skills online and meet up with their tutor on a weekly basis for support and advice. This pilot group is learning about Data Citizenship, Data Science, Information Technology Skills and Communication. The group will complete their course in December, with the hope that they will have the skills to gain employment in an increasingly competitive and changing jobs market.  

The digital technology and data revolution has put data at the core of many things, from personal privacy to public health, wealth creation to environmental protection. This is particularly important for employers, whether large or small businesses, public sector organisations or charities, because using data to create or improve products and services is key to unlocking economic growth and job creation. 

By moving to more digital solutions and using data to update business models, organisations can develop and take advantage of new and innovative ways of operating. To do this successfully, businesses need to have a workforce that is fit for purpose. 

Rapidly evolving technologies like artificial intelligence and robotics are increasing the demand for highly-skilled workers, but every type of work is affected. It is estimated that 90% of jobs already require digital skills. And while some jobs will disappear altogether as automation spreads, new jobs and whole new areas of work will emerge. 

The college has recognised the importance of developing these skills and has embedded the programme into their core curriculum. It is currently being taught online to over 170 full time students across a range of subjects (Construction, Business, Hospitality, Hairdressing, Beauty Therapy, Sport and Horse care). 

Covid-19 Jobs Support Portal is a Success

The sudden onset of Covid-19 in March this year caused an immediate major economic disruption across the region, with the sudden closure of businesses and uncertainty for many citizens.

Employers and employees were navigating a quickly changing landscape to prevent job disruption. Many of those affected are not known to local employability systems, including those working in low skilled jobs and the gig economy, and employers unprepared for cutting contracts and hours. While the Job Retention Scheme was introduced it became apparent it would not necessarily prevent on-going job losses and the need for further economic security for many.

Regional partners noticed a surge in job opportunities with sudden growth sectors, including take-away food and beverages, logistics, supermarkets and the NHS / care sector, agriculture, among others and saw a gap for a job promotion service to meet the needs of both employers and at-risk employees as well as jobseekers with an opportunity to match skills to opening opportunities.

The Covid-19 Jobs Support portal was quickly developed by Hanlon Software Solutions as a regional offer for employers still recruiting and Covid-19 impacted employees facing job losses, and launched on 3 April.   

The portal gives support that is specific and clearly visible and captures the scale of the challenge as we also collect data through registration details of those affected. It offers additional links to local services across the region and manage the considerable information flow currently being generated, including welfare rights support and links to PACE activity and Business Development support for employers.

The portal was promoted via a maximum impact marketing campaign through the region. The site has now welcomed its 14,500 unique visitor with over 70,000 page views. With 305 employers promoting over 796 vacancies.

In the site’s infancy the majority of roles were within customer service in the retail and logistics sectors, but as time has progressed these vacancies have reduced and a steady increase in health and social care roles are becoming available daily. A total of 476 health and social care vacancies have been advertised which amounts to 60% of all advertised roles, confirming the need for ongoing support for this ever-growing sector.

HMRC who are relocating their service offices from multiple locations within the city region to their new purpose-reconfigured facilities welcomed the introduction of the Covid-19 Jobs Support site to support their mass recruitment drive. They have since received 900 job applications from across the travel to work area.

A local care employer said:

 “Following advertising on wwwc19jobs.org, we were overwhelmed by applications received in March and April and had to place a hold on recruitment for all of May. It was not a position I ever expected to find us in I can tell you!”

Manager, Odeon Cinema said when approached by the employer engagement team:

“During such unprecedented times, reaching out to others has never been more crucial, as an employer but also in society. Although we do have an employee assistance programme within our company, to know that there are options for my team is beneficial to their wellbeing. I feel much better knowing there is support there for them through this portal, whatever happens during these uncertain times”

The site has also been well received by jobseekers across the regions, one job seeker from the Scottish Borders who registered with Covid-19 Jobs Support has secured a contract with NHS Borders. Another jobseeker in Fife has secured a role with Amazon.

Following the launch of Covid-19 Jobs Support, the Integrated Employer Engagement team has actively engaged with a number of other Scottish local authorities through the Scottish Local Authorities Economic Development Group (SLAED) to promote the software and functionality of the site and to date three other local authorities are rolling out this product within their areas, with a further eight in discussions with the developer Hanlon.

For more information please contact c19jobs@capitalcitypartnership.org

City Region Deal launches Covid-19 Job Support

A Job matching service has launched today for the Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region, in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

The COVID-19 Job Support website will match live vacancies with job seekers who have registered for alerts. Information and support advice for employers, employees and jobseekers will also be available.

The City Region Deal partnership had been developing a job matching website, but fast-tracked the plans in response to the pandemic.

East Lothian Cllr Norman Hampshire, Chair of the City Region Deal’s Joint Committee, said: “We’re committed to using our collective strengths and resources to help the region recover and respond to the huge challenge that COVID-19 has created. The job support website marks the first of what I hope will be more initiatives that our City Region Deal network can quickly mobilise to help employees and job-seekers in the coming months.”

There are immediate job opportunities across the City Region in essential and sudden-growth sectors, including the NHS, supermarkets, home deliveries, take-away food and beverages.

Steve Grimmond, Chief Executive of Fife Council and Chair of the City Region Deal’s Skills and Employability group, commented: “Thanks to the agility and dedication of all our partners, I’m delighted we were able to fast-track the job matching service to help mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on the City Region’s workforce. I hope the online portal helps meet the urgent needs of both employers and at-risk employees, as well as existing job-seekers.”

The re-purposed site – developed free of charge by Hanlon Software Solutions - will also help capture the scale of the jobs challenge through data collection from those who register. 

Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Infrastructure and Connectivity Michael Matheson said:

“City Region Deals are designed to bring people together to work in partnership and this is a great example of the benefits that can come from those new relationships.

“This initiative will create new connections helping link those seeking work to employers in our vital services ensuring they have the resources required.

“I would like to thank those involved for their quick action and initiative. We would encourage partners in all city regions to look at what they can do to support their local economy and communities through these challenging times.”

The website is available at: www.c19jobs.org

For further information, email: c19jobs@capitalcitypartnership.org

Academic profile: Sarah Galey-Horn

Sarah Galey-Horn is a Post Doctoral Research Fellow in the University of Edinburgh’s Moray House School of Education, whose specialist area of research is family social capital and network interventions. The City Region Deal recently spoke to Sarah about how she’s helping to evaluate the Deal’s intensive family support proposals.

Sarah Galey-Horn, University of Edinburgh

How did you get involved with the City Region Deal’s intensive family support work?

I heard about the Train@Ed fellowships and was interested in the opportunity to work in a non-academic setting. After looking into different areas of activity in the City Region Deal, I recognised the intensive family support (IFS) work would be an ideal area to get involved.

I wrote a Train@Ed application based on helping to evaluate the IFS proposals. I have prior experience in network interventions in real-life setting from when I lived in the US, and the City Region Deal IFS project has offered a chance to expand that part of my professional repertoire.

Through this, I’m hoping to build on my previous research in social data use, which is also called ‘network intervention’, within the context of a significant policy intervention. Through colleagues at the University of Edinburgh - who were already involved with the City Region Deal - I contacted the IFS project lead Adam Dunkerley, from Fife Council, and have worked with the team closely since the beginning on the IFS proposal.

How did you become involved in this field of research?

I came to the fellowship from the educational field.  I started as a high school teacher, which I did for five years before going back to school to get my PhD in education policy. In my programme at Michigan State University (MSU) I was fortunate enough to learn from and work with a leading social network scholar, Dr Kenneth Frank, who was also one of my doctoral advisors.

Dr Frank introduced me to network intervention concepts through a lot of his own work. I ended up working on some of his network intervention projects, and not all of them were in education. This gave me a lot of practical experience applying network concepts in policy interventions. It also helped me to learn how to do research outside of my specialisation and work with people from outside of academia.

 Can you provide an overview of the IFS work?

In social and education policy, policy makers tend to focus on individual attributes and measurements, but the problem with that is a lot of the outcomes we are concerned with are the product of complex social phenomenon.

Relationships with other people, are one example. But how do you measure the impact of a relationship? While analysing social networks, which is a widely used method in social science research, is one way. This project uses social network analysis to better understand the influence of relationships on extreme poverty and deprivation in families.

Social networks, such as family relationships, but also workplace relationships and friend circles, are important predictors of individual behaviour because they are conduits for social capital, which are non-material resources. Positive social interactions with others, for example, provide individuals with a sense of meaning, purpose and dignity and provide a barrier against feelings of isolation and rejection associated with economic deprivation. Yet these kinds of social factors are usually not considered by policymakers or programme evaluators when crafting and assessing social programmes; partly, because there has been no way to capture and track social capital empirically.

In part, the IFS programme is about changing that. We want to show how social capital impacts progression for those citizens facing extreme poverty or deprivation and, therefore, that it is a key ingredient for understanding the effectiveness of social policy interventions.

The IFS project is due to start in April 2020, and I’ve been working closely with the lead delivery agency, Capital City Partnership, on how to integrate social network data use. Social network data use has been written into the specifications of the IFS business case.

I’m also working with colleagues at Capital City Partnership and organisations who’ll be delivering the IFS services, helping develop implementation guidelines and training activities. In the longer-term, we are hoping to get funding to develop software for social network data use.

We’re trying to assess the existing IFS measures across the six local authority areas within the City Region Deal, and how we can help to build on that. There will be a period of data collection of about one year before moving on to an initial evaluation of social effects within the IFS programme. We also want to train the relevant service delivery teams in collecting and making use of that data.

What will be the main outcomes?

As far as research goes, the main outcome will be an analysis on the effects of social capital on IFS intervention outcomes. For policymakers, this will provide evidence to support the use of social network analysis to understand the effects of the IFS programme. And I also plan to publish in academic circles as well.

There are practical outcomes are probable but more important and interesting. Mainly that means developing network intervention tools to support service delivery. And that is both at the organisational level and the service delivery level. At the organisational level, we are developing network visualisation techniques to help partners understand how community assets and professional interactions support the IFS programme implementation. Then we want to be able to help IFS use that data to build more supportive and effective networks.

At the practice level, I hope that innovation in practice will be one of the outcomes of increased use of social network data. Social network analysis offers a great model for the study of the diffusion of innovation; how does innovation travel through organisations, why do some people adopt innovation and others not? I want to capture the fact that social workers will be innovating and problem-solving – perhaps not in the traditional technological sense. But innovation can take place in a very practical way in ordinary workplace environments, addressing real-world problems. It’s important to understand small innovations in practice that make a big difference can exist at a micro and localised level – but they can be genius.

This has been a great learning experience for me to find out more about the front-end delivery of social services. Because my previous research has been based on the study of policy interventions, the IFS work has helped me realise the importance of consulting with those at the front-end of delivering services.

Have you ever worked on research for projects within the region where you live before?

This feels like a natural progression for me personally and connects two important areas of my life; my community work for the area I live in and my professional life.

How would you like to develop the work in future?

Further down the road, we want to apply for grant money to scale up our work. If successful in achieving funding for software development, this could be used by social care workers and others. I’m also aiming to develop a series of professional development modules in social network data use. At the end of the process, we hope to have new capabilities to collect this type of data and build a database on social networks. The goal is to have funding secured and modules launched within a year or two of the IFS formally starting.

City Region Deal makes key appointment for data skills targets

The City Region Deal is gearing up to help people across Edinburgh and South East Scotland improve their data skills.

The Data-Driven Innovation (DDI) Skills Gateway has appointed Anna Scott as its Project Delivery Manager, to take the lead on Data Education for Work activities.

ANNA SCOTT - project lead manager

Anna will be based in The Data Lab, Scotland’s Innovation Centre for Data and AI, but will work with a wide range of stakeholders from across the region, including employers and training providers.

The Data Education for Work project will develop a suite of programmes to help empower at-risk employees and low-paid workforce across the Edinburgh and South East Scotland City Region to prepare and equip themselves with the skills to take advantage of jobs that will be shaped by data-driven innovation.

Commenting on her new role, Anna said: “I am delighted to be joining the programme at this exciting time and look forward to working with the DDI Skills Gateway team and colleagues at The Data Lab to bring the Data Education for Work programme to life. Automation is changing the way organisations operate and I'm really excited by the opportunity to lead on the development a new employee-focussed skills programme that aims to empower workers in Edinburgh, South East Scotland and beyond to take full advantage of the changing world of work and the data training opportunities available to them to upskill or retrain.”

The DDI Skills Gateway programme is aiming to enhance data literacy across the skills pathway, including working with school pupils, college and university learners and those in work. A range of approaches are being developed including working alongside teachers to enhance the data curriculum in schools, developing short courses for college learners including women returners, and embedding data skills in undergraduate courses.

Anna joins the DDI Skills Gateway from the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science (Scotland's ESRC Doctoral Training Partnership), where she led on programmes of activity designed to connect doctoral research with policy and industry. This included working closely with the Scottish Government and Skills Development Scotland on a national internships programme, the creation of a mentoring scheme with the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and the delivery of industry-focused skills training initiatives to increase business engagement with the social sciences.

Relevant links:

• Data Driven Innovation website

• The Data Lab website