Building inclusive apprenticeships through partnership
To support Scottish Apprenticeship Week 2026, Chief Executive Director of Diversity Scotland shares why the SDS model of partner engagement helps effect change.
Diversity Scotland is one of the UK’s leading workplace culture, equity and inclusion consultancies. We work with boards, executive teams and senior leaders to transform organisations into accessible, inclusive and high-performing workplaces. Led by over 30 years’ experience, our team brings deep expertise across people strategy, organisational development and inclusive practice, partnering with organisations across the public, private and third sectors to deliver measurable, impactful change.
SDS Disability Focal Point Group
I joined the Skills Development Scotland (SDS) Disability Focal Point Group in 2020 because I believe that disabled people and the organisations that support them must be central to shaping skills and apprenticeship policy.
The group brings together organisations including SUSE, ARC Scotland, SCLD, RNID, Leonard Cheshire and Enable Scotland alongside SDS colleagues to inform and influence how services are designed and delivered for disabled people across Scotland.
Apprenticeships play a vital role in widening access to opportunity. For disabled people, who continue to face a significant employment gap in Scotland, apprenticeships offer a structured route into meaningful work that combines earning with learning.
Positive progress
It’s encouraging to see progress: the proportion of modern apprentices declaring a disability has risen to 16.8%, up from 14.7% just two years earlier. Inclusive apprenticeship programmes are transformative, both for individuals and for the employers who benefit from genuinely diverse workforces.
Over the years, the Focal Point Group has contributed to a wide range of SDS work. We’ve fed into the development of inclusive recruitment guidance for employers, consulted on the accessibility of My World of Work, explored how best to support neurodivergent young people in career transitions, and contributed to the Equality and Diversity Mainstreaming Report.
More recently, the group has been working on improving support for disabled young people transitioning from school, drawing on real scenarios to shape more person-centred practice.
Best practice model
I’ve been sharing the Focal Point Group model with other organisations because I believe it represents genuine good practice in stakeholder engagement.
SDS runs four Focal Point Groups, covering disability, race, care experience, and women and girls, and the model creates a structured, meaningful way for external voices to shape the work of a national body.
It goes well beyond a tick-box exercise, and I’d encourage other public bodies to consider adopting a similar approach.