Cognitive acceleration or the ability to think or higher order thinking skills is a strategy based on the philosophy of Jean Piaget, a Swiss psychologist, whose methods were first adopted in the UK in the 1960’s. Higher-order thinking skills include the ability to analyse and make connections, to reason, solve problems and think creatively. Now, more than any other time it is the combination of these skills which will promote self-determination, self motivation, self advocacy and lead to Enterprise and Innovation in all that the individual wishes for their future life.

In more recent times these theories have not figured in our Teacher Training curriculum or in Further or Higher Education or in our community programmes.
Maybe these will be used and should be used more?

Piaget identified two periods of rapid brain development that need to be utilised if people are to attain higher-order thinking skills.
The first ‘critical window’ occurs when a child is at the age of 5, when children are able to understand such concepts as ratio and time sequence.
The second, commences around the age of 11 years and continues to be perfected until the age of 15, taking children from the concrete to the abstract.

The bad news is that unless you take advantage of Piaget’s critical windows, your ability to engage in higher-order thinking is irretrievably lost.
After the age of 19, the agility of your intellect goes into inexorable decline.

So, the most important thing to do is to train the mind to process information and tackle concepts while it can. You can continue to acquire knowledge, but unless you have developed higher-order thinking skills, it will not be able to apply it as effectively.

What do we do to enhance our clients and students progress in these areas?

There are number of stages which we can address:
- Introduce the higher-order thinking skills as early as possible in our programmes such as those for School Leavers, Modern Apprentices, those with multi-barriers to employability and Job Seekers
- Learning to Learn must feature prominently in all introductory sessions
- Motivational programmes such as the Pacific Institute programmes, PX2 and Steps enforce the concepts of higher-order thinking
- Use of the Bridges to Employability Soft Skills Assessment Framework can facilitate the embedding of higher-order thinking and promote the use with employers, clients and tutors

Once the client has recognised the importance of higher-order thinking skills we witness accelerated progress in all areas of their life, from career progression to personal development.

For more than 20 years I have heard people discuss the enhancement of communications for their contracts by using new technology, multi-media and film - why has this never really been achieved?
• Because of the price of making and distributing film?
• Because of the lack of expertise in these techniques?
• Because it is too difficult?

We have been using film with all our programmes both for clients and for funders in a variety of ways for a number of years now. Film is a major tool for use with clients in Community and Economic Development and what is important here is the ability to secure a production company who can understand the processes, the clients and the range of what we deliver in employability.

We have developed a relationship with Enterprise Screen Productions, a sister company (www.enterprisescreen.co.uk), which is working very well and is giving us considerable options and benefits for our clients and funders .

Examples of this include:
CVs on film – a short 30 second working life stories for people who find it difficult to tell their work history on paper. This is a tool which can be sent to employers as a file attachment or by as a single line link.
Case Studies - we can follow the progress of our clients and actually see the ‘distance travelled’ in their programmes.
Promotional Films – for our company, on-line clips showing a variety of our courses and projects.
Dissemination - of good practice, current progress, shared experiences and role models.
Presentations – to use at presentations with Powerpoint at conferences or seminars.
On Line – we have examples of all our work with clients, staff, partners and funders on short films on our web site.

Visual examples and case studies are the way forward to record, excite and stimulate the wider audiences for our programmes.

Why do we always look to new techniques and ideas when the tried and tested ones have worked so well in the past?

Isn’t it time we concentrated on a ‘back to basics’ approach and set employment and enterprise at the heart of all our education strategies? How we learn, basic skills and employability coupled with respect for all technical training can lead to a society where ‘I’m just a….’ no longer prevails.
Colleges are now all academic institutions and promote Higher National Certificates and Diplomas with an emphasis on articulation with Universities instead of the valuable Technical Colleges of the past. Why?

The following are quotes from a paper bag, which I received from a bakers shop called La Mie Caline in Cognac when I purchased some bread there recently.
La Mie Caline roughly translates as the Honey Bun in Scotland – we may recognise the same kind of shop here as Greggs the Baker but without many of the assets of its French equivalent!!! I noticed that not only are the staff in all French businesses and shops proud of their position as a worker, but also the management recognise their achievements and role in the company – therefore the statements below about their staff are provided for information for their customers, pride in their staff and testimony to their achievements.

Victoria: I have worked for La Mie Caline in Normandy for 6 years. With my qualifications CAP-BEP in Sales and Customer relations, I am returning to being in Sales. At 26 years old, I am responsible for a team of 3 people in Sales.

Damien: I have always wanted to work in business. I like the action and the contact. I started as a sales person at 18 years old in a Mie Caline in Poitou-Charente. I am 25 years old now and I am responsible for a Mie Caline in a town of 15,000 people.

Florence: I am 35 years old and I am dedicated to the work of bakery products. I have worked for 5 years at the Mie Caline in the Midi-Pyrenees region in the post of preparation. Having succeeded, I am now part of a dedicated and motivated team

Employability is all about the 4 stages – the skills required to Access, Achieve, Sustain and Progress in employment – and, in addition to these, I believe that we need to add Respect.

• It is respect for one’s own aspirations and success.
• It is a respect won from application, motivation and dedication.
• It is respect from the management, staff and customers with whom we work.

Scotland has a greater number of young people who are not in employment, education and training which was referred to as the Not in Employment Education or Training or NEET group. This has changed now with the drive for ‘political correctness’ to become defined as the More Choices More Chances group. But by changing the name it has not been enough to stop the drift of increased numbers of young people languishing in Scottish communities with no opportunities of finding work and little chance of this improving over the next 5 years.

This figure has risen from 12% of the numbers not finding any progression from schools and, in some areas, can reach almost 50% of school leavers.

In one area where we work the resulting action from the local authority was to close the school and move the children to other schools. The costs calculated to taxpayers for supporting these young people, including benefits and their failure to contribute taxes is £3.5 billion pounds

Of the 60,000 young people leaving school, around 30% went on to University and 25% on to Further Education Colleges – 25% found work.

The problem facing our young people today is one which centres on the definition of employability. Education has moved so far away from this central requirement that it no longer considers or plans for the progression from a school environment to a work environment. Work experience and employability skills are given low priority and funding mechanisms do the same by concentrating only on qualification achievement statistics.

What use are league tables when the qualifications gained cannot be utilised with employers and in the community? Academic progressions are of course important but not of general use for a large proportion of those who are leaving school.

CBI surveys have repeatedly found that employers are dissatisfied with the level of skills among young people. In 2008, 40% of those questioned said they were unhappy with the literacy and numeracy skills of school leavers - 17% had been forced to provide remedial help for school leavers.

This is perhaps hardly surprising when you consider that only 25% of young people leave school to go into jobs when they are 16. They are likely to be among the lowest achievers. More than half of 18-year-olds go on to higher education these days, so even those who leave school to enter the workforce at 18 are likely to be among the lower achievers.

In 2008, 40% of 16 year olds failed to pass their maths qualifications and 37% failed to get English. Even by the time they have reached 19, around 25% of young people have still failed to get five good passes of any sort.

Isn’t it time to concentrate on some of the basic ingredients, which will give our young people the chances they deserve, and to strengthen our communities accordingly?
Priority has to be given to the 50% of all young people leaving school to help improve basic skills, achieve qualifications and progress into technical careers with respect for these as fundamental roles within our communities.

As we move deeper into the digital age there may be related issues, which will cause us to be separated from the key factors which keep our mind and body together.

After all it was only 600 years ago that Gutenberg invented the printing press and accessible knowledge to a wider population. (Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1439 – 570 years ago) The native North Americans believed that photographs taken of them captured their souls. And in the last century, the father of nuclear fission, Albert Einstein asked what was the use of remembering his own telephone number when he could look it up in the phone book.

We learn by Memorising, Understanding and Doing – a combination of these key learning styles. But information to be learned has its pitfalls and today around 33% of under 30 year olds don’t need to retain information when they can ‘Google’ it. Information about themselves is readily available on Facebook, on Friends Reunited or Twitter for their friends or whoever gains access.
Are they separating and fragmenting their valuable ‘self’ information and leaving it disintegrated on scores of web sites to be undervalued by others? Are they forgetting how to learn about themselves and why?

The Organisation guru David Allen is known for his insight in proposing that we get stuff out of our heads, which will lead to mental calmness. Everyday stress results from the mind trying to forget everything which is worrying it. So he suggests you keep your to-dos in a ‘trusted system’, which can be a notebook, a computer file, a list, etc. and you will gradually relax.

The dancer Twyla Tharp offers one elegant idea in her book The Creative Habit where she says ‘I start every dance with a box. I write the project name on the box and as the piece progresses I fill it up with every item that went into making the dance…. The box makes me feel organised, that I have my act together even when I don’t know where I’m going yet…Most important though, the box means I never have to worry about that, because I know where to find it. It’s all in the box’

With us at work we try to copy what I learned from Stuart Cosgrove of Channel Four Television and BBC Scotland Sports broadcasting fame – his company always had 3 levels of work-in-progress files on his desk. Now for us there are the Green files, which are ready to go; the Amber files, which are on hold but ready to be progressed to Green; and Red files, which for the moment are at stop.

The Renaissance revived the ‘method of loci’ or Ars memoriae, the art of memory. Its roots lie in ancient Greece, although much of what is known about it comes via the Renaissance from Roman sources. At its simplest, the art of memory was a technique to assist a person to remember long tracts before printing was invented e.g. officials, politicians, messengers. The technique required the individual to visualise a building, particularly the rooms within it, with which they were familiar. In each room they ‘placed’ or pictured mentally, articles that prompted an associated idea or image. The object selected as they entered each room would often be striking in some way, again to strengthen the image – grotesque, crude, rude, brutal, colourful as best suited the subject. To remember the text, the person would mentally enter the building and ‘walk’ through the rooms on a predetermined route.

The success of the technique owes much to the fact that the human mind is not always logical in the way it processes information and, in order to understand how it worked, it may be useful to divide memory into two types; natural and artificial. Natural memory is untrained and almost unconscious whereas artificial memory is trained to have had thoughts, ideas and facts more forcefully ordered within it.

Where is this technique today? Is it used in learning? Does it have an application in the digital age?

We teach the key principles of encouraging ambition and expectation for all our students. We look for progression in self-development towards self-fulfilment and self-actualisation. The search for happiness is based around the individual’s determination for achievement of Self Purpose.

The Philosophers of the Renaissance in their attempts to achieve ‘oneness’ with the divine spirit or self, harnessed the art of memory.

So in the key learning styles it is not enough to do and understand. I think there is a place still for memorising and not just tables and chemical symbols.

Earlier this month the Scottish Government announced 7,800 new Modern Apprenticeship places for Scotland. This sounds good for employers and trainees alike but there are huge gaps in the reality of the situation, which are obviously not apparent to the Scottish Government, Labour politicians who have put great emphasis on increased numbers of MA’s and the media observers.

Modern Apprenticeships are for young people (and now Adult apprenticeships) who are EMPLOYED!!  Where are we going to find an additional 7,800 new jobs?

In addition to the Modern Apprenticeship madness, the Leader of Glasgow City Council has pledged an offer of a MA place to all school leavers who fail to secure progression to education or employment – again, where is he going to find the companies which will employ the 1,000’s of young people on the MA’s?

If we look at the figures behind the Modern Apprenticeship programme we find some very perplexing statistics. Look at just 4 or 5 of the 110 framework categories from 2009 Skills Development Scotland’s own figures;

Industry                   Starts     In Trng   Achieved    £ per MA
Construction            2,366       7,644       54%         £7,500
Engineering             1,340        3,627       68%        £9,000
Car Mechanics           806        2,269       57%         £7,500

The above 3 framework areas account for 42% of the total MA places started, of those young people in MA training 51% are on these 3 vocational areas above.

Of the 4512 MA places started in the 3 framework areas, only 82 are female.
13,540 young people are currently on training in Construction, Engineering and Car Mechanics, which is 51% of the total of ALL MA’s in Scotland – and of the 13,540 places only 191 are female.

Why are we additionally funding a programme, which averages 57% achievement for these 3 vocational areas? Are there jobs available for 13,540 young people in these industries? What happens to the 43% who do not complete their MA? Is it cost effective to pay £7,500 - £9,000 per person for this training?

Another example from SDS statistics is a comparison between 2 other smaller vocational areas.

Industry                                Starts   In Trng   Achieved    £ per MA
Sports Performance Football      127      222        7%        £5,500
Dental Nursing                          105      229      82%        £6,000

There are no females on the Sports Performance Football programme and the achievement level for this MA is 7% - maybe we would not find this so unreasonable if the results filtered through to the performance of the National Team!!!
In Dental Nursing, there was 1 male on the programme but the achievement level was 82% - value for money.

The conclusion I have to reach is that we are funding policies which were fine in decades past when employers wanted financial support in training young apprentices but today I find that they want trainees who are employable first and who can be trained on the job secondly – not the other way around.

Would we not be better assigning funding on this scale to securing basic employability skills for all our young people in order that they can enter employment, sustain the job and then progress onto Modern Apprenticeships, further education and industry specific training courses?

The Training for Work programme which has been provided by Scottish Enterprise (now Skills Development Scotland) for more than 10 years is now in danger of collapse.
Why?
It appears that recruitment for this very important provision is being stifled by Job Centre Plus offices throughout Scotland and Training Providers are finding it incredibly difficult to have individuals referred onto the programme. This means that we and other Providers cannot secure employment for these clients — and we have employers who are very keen to offer work placements leading to real full time jobs!!!
So why is the recruitment becoming so difficult? Are there not many people looking for jobs? Are the total numbers on the Unemployment Register falling? What can be offered for those searching for jobs?
The word on the street is that Training for Work monies are being earmarked for other purposes such as the large amounts required for Modern Apprenticeships even although the CBI and employers have clearly said that their recruitment for MA’s and College leavers will be reduced this year by 50%.
The success rate for those achieving Modern Apprenticeships is not impressive with those in Construction for example securing only 40% of the qualification.
Last year our Training for Work clients achieved full time jobs for over 75% of those who were recruited.

What amazes me is how far away from the world of reality our Prison system has removed itself.
Is the system designed to punish or to reform offenders?
If the purpose is to punish then it clearly isn’t working as there were 60,000 people incarcerated in 1997 and today there are in excess of 80,000.

10 years ago the statistics showed:
• 60% of offenders released from prison were reconvicted of another offence within two years.
• 58% of offenders who received a probation order were reconvicted.
• 42% of offenders who began a community service were reconvicted of further offences
• 40 % of offenders who received fines were reconvicted of further offences

In 2002, in Scotland, over 80% of sentences were for 6 months or less and 70% of individuals were re-offenders.

In 2009 the statistics show that the position has deteriorated again and that the system clearly still isn’t working.

If the system is designed to reform the offender then why are there now over 70% of prisoners who re-offend within 6 months of their release?
In Scotland more than 30% of those who are locked up have committed minor offences, which include motoring offences, petty theft and non-payment of fines – around 2,500 people!!!

Each prisoner in Scotland will cost the taxpayer £35,000 each year to keep in prison.

For prisoners who are serving a ‘short’ sentence of less than 3 years there is little or no provision for employability preparation for their release and therefore the great majority have no job, no income and no home to go to on their release.
Is it any wonder that they re-offend?

Is it any wonder that when asked, over 70% of young offenders would opt to stay in prison rather than being released - because perhaps it is a better life in prison?

In a recent survey it was found that employability reduces the risk of re-offending between a third and a half. Over 70% of young men leaving prison have no job to go to on release.

It has also been shown that 39% of women prisoners had not worked for a year prior to imprisonment and 23% had not worked for over five years.  It is clear that employment is a major factor in improving the chance of successful resettlement.

It is essential that work opportunity and training be provided to enhance employability while prisoners are in custody.  However it is essential that when they are making the transition from custody to outside prison that the support be maintained.

This can be done through:
• Individual Action Planning to work towards achieving employment goals
• Employability training to enhance skills for the work place
• Work Placement opportunities while in custody to begin to prepare and train prisoners in employability skills
• Close links with local companies to enable quality work placements and training for all prisoners
• Intensive support when ex-offenders move from custody to freedom to enable them to achieve their employability goals
• Aftercare Support when participants gain employment and enable them to sustain employment

Perhaps as Kenny MacAskill, the Justice Minister has proposed, those offenders who commit minor crimes should have an alternative to Prison – employability training is one approach.

Companies are often asked what is their ‘mission’ statement? And for companies like us this is usually followed by ’so you can make lots of money?’.

We work with lots of different people in the Scottish communities who need our help with employability because this is our prime objective. The welfare and continued employment for our expert staff is our second priority and thirdly we need to make a financial surplus or we cannot have the security we need to continue the work.

What are the results of this approach?

This year we will work with over 2000 people in Scotland who need our services and we will secure jobs for almost 500 of these people. EEC will work with a variety of partners and funders to achieve this - and these are partners who believe as we do that we can make a difference by supporting those who need the greatest help in securing employment.

Our staff are highly valued and will be rewarded for these huge efforts with whatever them inform us is important and valuable to them. So over the past years they have asked for increased salaries, more generous expenses, promotion, greater range of duties, extended holidays and development programmes. We have responded with average pay increases over the past 4 years of 7% per annum; expenses increased by 25% and opportunities for many into promoted posts. Our Investors in People audit last week found that we were working along the lines of the above principles and that we had firmly established the framework for continuing to do so as a company.

And surplus? We like many other companies are experiencing the hard effects of the Economic Recession and have had to fight to keep ourselves afloat — we will continue to do so. Because like all at EEC we believe that what we are doing is important and does make a difference. We want to make a contribution to the communities we live and work in.

We will contribute a large sum of money to the Exchequer every year and we will always strive to build a greater service for the communities we work in –our Mission is to achieve the eradication of Poverty of Ambition and Expectation for those we work with in our communities

A little more about what we do to tackle the poverty of ambition and expectation is on our web site –and I hope that this week to have a short film describing what we do on this site
www.employmententerprise.co.uk

We deliver programmes for a wide range of people in central Scotland who have many barriers to finding work - personal, location, skills, communications, alcohol/drugs misuse, disability, homelessness, health and so on. All are able to progress to far better futures if we can spend a short time with them to enable them to do what they want to do. We achieve the outcomes required for our funders and we also achieve the personal development outcomes for individuals who participate.

I believe that there are 3 major pillars in the construction of a society which can set its aims to eradicate the poverty of ambition and expectation — Employment, Enterprise and Education

Our education system is designed to take students through a ’sausage machine’ and come out the other side able to proceed on their journey through life with qualifications. This does not happen very often though, with all the personal aspirations for their lives which students wanted at the start –consider that still more than 50% of our graduates go on to work in an area in which they did not study!! How many Modern Apprentices achieve the Vocational Qualification - fewer than 40% in the construction industry. Around 16% of school leavers in Scotland go on to nothing –and this figure is rising daily.

I have said that the path which we could follow begins with establishing what an individual ‘wants’ to do –to consider this carefully and to build ambition and expectation. Then encourage self enterprise, community enterprise, social enterprise and business enterprise in our society in order to enhance the ambition and expectation.

Education is then only a tool to provide the necessary skills to achieve the goals.
Many people in our society including politicians do not fully grasp the situation facing us, that perhaps as many as 25% of the working population are ‘workless’ in those communities which are described as ‘deprived areas’
When the overall Unemployment figures say that it is 6% of the country who are affected by unemployment, the politicians, media and public assume that because 94% are working then everything is ok — it is the human trait of  ’I'm all right Jack’ which causes this response and so the problems faced by 250,000 people in Scotland for example and their families, is a subject not to be worried about for long
If I am wrong then where then are the programmes designed to help this situation? Is funding being increased to meet this problem where the official unemployment figures for the UK are predicted to rise over 3 million?
The answer is no.
Our company will endeavour to raise funding from all sources possible to facilitate the return to work for so many of the communities we are able to assist.
There must be recognition of the facts that millions of our populations will be forced to live in poverty, debt, isolation and hopelessness for many years to come –many do already.
There are many other priorities in our society today, I accept.
But is there any more important than the welfare and future of our own people?

I know that this may not apply to all Colleges in Scotland but I would be surprised if this opinion did not cover 90% of them –they will all be empty for the next 6 -8 weeks. Why???

I worked in Colleges over the past 20 years and it was always thus –the staff go off for the summer and these enormous community assets close down. In fact College usage for the year barely gets over 40% of the time available I remember being told –evenings, weekends, public holidays, summer time etc are times when most are closed

Isn’t it time that the Scottish Government came up with another funding mechanism for Further Education? What if Colleges had to achieve employment target destinations for their students?

75% of our students still are out of work after 1 year

50% of our graduates still find work, eventually, in a vocational area OTHER than they were qualified in –and this is the figure I remember being quoted 20 years ago!!