Latest blog from our Director Liz:

"Before I start, I want to say that I admire and respect our hairdressers. It is not an easy job; it is a highly skilled one. The hairdressing staff that we have in Scotland’s colleges run some of the most efficient programmes and departments out there. They work incredibly well with businesses, and they provide great support for their students too. Earlier in my career, I oversaw the hairdressing section for a year when I worked in the college sector, seeing how highly skilled the profession is - though really, they ran themselves (did I mention how terrifyingly organised they are?).

I am going to go out on a limb and guess that every college in Scotland has a hairdressing department. Most run a school programme, and in total they support around 1000 apprentices, plus 2500 students in full-time and 3000 in part-time (including school-based provision) education. This helps provide the staffing for 4000 hairdressing businesses in Scotland and about 12,000 hairdressers.

The nature-based sector makes a significant contribution to the Scottish economy, with 195,000 jobs making up 7.5% of our workforce in 2019. (This is likely to be an underestimate, given the difficulty in separately identifying several key nature-based sectors)[1]. Of this, the HTA reports that horticulture and landscaping employs around 42,000 people, and there are 1.1 million regular gardeners in Scotland. It’s been estimated that there are 67,400 people working in agriculture, 34,100 working in forestry and 2,300 working in aquaculture.

And yet, only a handful of colleges have any curriculum relating to the environment. Yes, we have SRUC but operating from a reduced number of campuses they currently support just 2,500 full-time FE and HE students. That’s roughly the same number as we have of full-time hairdressing students, despite Scotland needing 16 times more people with nature-based skills.

I know, I am probably being unfair, focussing on a single sector. But it’s one that I know suffers from its own popularity. Many, many girls (and it is mostly girls) who join hairdressing courses will never become hairdressers but can be described by their schools as entering a ‘positive destination’. It’s a department that can always fill a new course, and so when the colleges need some more students, it’s an easy win. But then this also reinforces the notion that it’s an easy career path. It isn’t.

It’s not anyone’s fault as such, rather a side effect of the funding system (currently under review), and the deep-rooted (mostly) unconscious bias, where girls are encouraged to pursue a career path based on their interests, whilst boys are encouraged to find a trade. The problem will not be solved overnight, but it’s worth remembering that if we are to support more young people into considering careers in our nature-based and land-based sectors, we will also need to significantly increase support for those providing the associated training and education."

^[1] Supporting a Green Recovery: an initial assessment of nature-based jobs and skills