Agenda and draft minutes

Please introduce yourself and outline the roles and responsibilities which your post involves.

My current role is as the KEB Skills Manager, but I have previously taught for more than 20 years in secondary, further and higher education.  I have also run small businesses and employed 9 staff, so have experience from both the provider and employer focus. My current role is as an interface between businesses and educators, and my experience has enabled me to reflect on these connections in the short-, medium- and long-term.  By short-term, I mean the day-to-day issues in staffing a business, maintaining staff turnover, etc.  Medium-term planning would be to look ahead and plan for developments likely to occur over the next year, e.g. opening a new facility. Long-term planning would be to look at the future investments from the business that required new skills and start to build now those skills which would be needed to achieve this future direction.

In my role within KEB, KCC and with other partners, we have arranged 3 sector-themed business growth events; for the rural economy, construction and low-carbon energy generation sectors. These have been well received, with more than 400 business in attendance.  More are planned, to cover health and social care, digital and creative media, advanced manufacturing (engineering manufacturing) and partnering with VisitKent on one for the tourism/leisure sector.

From these events, trends are emerging around the shortages of certain skills which are both generic and specialist.  Generic skills so far identified include leadership, management and ‘attitude’, and specialist skills include technician skills and ICT as well as skills which apply more specifically to particular industries. For example, businesses at the rural event reported a shortage of trained chainsaw certificate holders. There is a strict minimum-age limit on being able to train for and hold such a certificate, and hence few colleges offer these courses.  Also, young people aiming for jobs at a wind farm will need a very precise mix of hydraulic and electrical qualifications, working at height and working in confined spaces. Whilst these are available separately, few providers are currently offering them as a package.  Generally, employers identify the skills they require to fill a post and then seek to attract good candidates by using competitive salary levels, etc. Business is telling us that there is generally a shortage of young people qualified at levels 3 and 4, and that there is a shortage in research and development.

New certificated training courses are difficult to introduce and establish. There is a long and involved process to gain funding, ratification and accreditation, and it can be several years between starting to set up a course and turning out the first students ready to take up jobs.  In some industries, much can change in that few years, and there is a danger that the skills of new students might already be partly out of date, especially in fast-changing sectors like computing.  One way to bring courses online quicker is to combine existing ratified modules  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.

Please can you introduce yourself and outline your role and responsibilities?

I am the Head of the 14 -19 Entitlement Team at KCC. My role is to steer strategy and give strategic leadership. My team was formed 5 years ago to address the fact that vocational education was not being sufficiently covered by the secondary school curriculum.  It was not applicable for the needs of those pupils who were not able to pursue an academic route, and did not prepare them for employment.  KCC invested £20 million, which set up vocational centres (of which, there are now 25 in the county), but this provision was for 14 – 19 year olds only. KCC was praised in the Wolf report and also by the Audit Commission for its approach. It introduced a new Diploma course to enhance the employability of young people, and some 8,500 14 – 16 year olds have so far benefitted from it. 

When the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) was disbanded, their staff also came into the KCC and my team expanded, although no funding has materialised for any additional activity. We have now gained the Connexions contract, so the team changed again and we now have a broader role.  The Connexions role we took on was to provide IAG to a targeted group, ie those who were at risk of disengaging, and support young people at key points, and to work with those who are NEET.

We need to look after and meet the needs of learners and employers.  We also cover the careers service IAG role, for which there is £15 million in government grants to influence the offer and build capacity, although this funding will cease in March 2012.  We have to track all 16+ learners and ensure that all partners (schools, employers, etc) are involved in shaping the programme.  KCC has put in £10 million for this extra work but this might end when the government funding ends.

Our key role is planning and working with providers on the offer to young people of 16+.  We look at the locality and the entitlement and use data, including the economic profile of the district.  From this we can identify mismatches in needs and provision.

We provide a high-quality IAG website, which we know is used by 91% of year 11 pupils, and for this we broker good quality data.  We also provide a helpline service for young people and their parents and carers.  We find that October is a busy time for young people coming for advice and guidance, as they have dropped out of a course and need support to make new choices.  My team bridges young people and colleges, and the service we offer has to be very personally tailored.  We manage the 25 Vocational Centres I mentioned earlier.

The new Education Bill in October 2011 will affect what we do, as well as the introduction of the National Careers Service in 2012, and we must be ready for these major changes.  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

Please introduce yourselves and set out your roles and responsibilities.

(WG) I am the Interim County Manager of the Supporting Independence Programme (SIP). I used to work for Shell International in London in a social investment role.  Shell had a scheme which supported young people between the ages of 16 and 30 to start their own business. I then worked for Canterbury City Council in a Scrutiny role, and in KCC as a Staff Officer to the Communities Managing Director.

(LAB)  I am a social inclusion officer in the SIP.  I joined KCC 7 years ago as part of the graduate programme. Apprenticeships are a big part of the SIP, along with delivery, partnership working and welfare reform.  We run employment programmes for young people, including the delivery of the Future Jobs Fund, through which we found 6 month work placements for 890 long term unemployed young people.  We also run 9 work clubs in libraries in Kent, which offer IAG.  We work with Tomorrow’s People, a national charity which helps families who are out of work.

(LAB)  There is a draft Apprenticeship Strategy, which will go to Cabinet on 20 June.  This sets out plans for the next three years. We would like apprenticeships to be seen as the skill option of choice for the young people of Kent, and we need to raise the level of understanding of apprenticeships and what is involved. They are currently seen as a second class option.

We will support businesses so they are ready to take on an apprentice. Currently, only 3,500 of the 48,000 employers in Kent take apprentices, so we need to identify the barriers to them taking up this option. We ran a pilot to help employers to recruit young people, and this has been very successful. Employers have acknowledged this as a good service.

We support young people with IAG in what can be a confusing landscape. We help them to look at their options seriously and take on the commitment of training for and choosing a career.

We also have a Vulnerable Learners project, which has 80 places to support young carers, young parents, young offenders and young people with Learning Difficulties or Disabilities.  Our aim is to make apprenticeships more accessible to these groups.

Kent Success has been very successful, having supported over 400 young people and shown a 76% achievement rate. 87% of the young people who take part in this have gone on to full time employment.

We need to streamline our services and make them more efficient and seek to sell our innovative work to the rest of the public sector.

We are also looking to develop apprenticeship career paths in Kent where there is a skills shortage, such as social work, trading standards and health visitors.

We have a strategic development role, related to the National Apprenticeship Service (NAS) role in Kent.  This only works with companies which have more than 250 employees, so does not include small and  ...  view the full minutes text for item 8.