Agenda and draft minutes

The Chairman and Members welcomed Mr Brading to the meeting and thanked him for the written response to the questions that had been forwarded to him in preparation for the meeting.

1.             Interview with Andy Brading, AB Consulting

(Item 1)

The Chairman and Members welcomed Mr Brading to the meeting and thanked him for the written response to the questions that had been forwarded to him in preparation for the meeting.

Mr Brading gave a brief introduction on his working background that lead up to him in his role in AB Consulting.

Q – When do you introduce the world of work to young people?

A – A lot of schools were unable to take on more ‘support’ especially those schools within high deprivation.  In his opinion the teaching staff felt beleaguered by the number of initiatives and the different elements they need to incorporate into their schemes of work.  He felt that in those schools there was, rightly, a focus on numeracy and literacy.    He explained that in his role he was trying to help teaching staff understand that enterprise was about good teaching.

Q - Were the schools that you were in supporting the students that were very good, and left the other children?

A – There was an element of that.  In most schools the children were streamed or set and often those viewed as the least engaged were involved in other interventions such as the Increased Flexibility programme. I was more than happy to work with those students.

Q - Did you find evidence that business people felt that young people had poor numeracy and literacy when they came to them for a job?

A – Mr Brading said that they did and in particular commented on the importance of the young people’s spelling and basic grammar when it came to job applications.  He then referred to the Wolf report agreeing with the importance that the report attaches to raising the level of reading, writing and use of number. He felt that this was an important element to focus on in addition to the wider employability skills.

Q - Were the schools listening to you?

A – As a rule, the schools were already aware of the need to focus on Maths & English; it was my task to talk about the wider skills base and raise awareness of that agenda.

Q – If you took 6 months off to give some thought to what you were doing in your role and were then given a pot of money to improve things what would you do?

A – Mr Brading said that it did come down to funding.  He felt that there was a disconnection between education and work.  He said that until you engage employers properly, making sure that they viewed getting involved with schools was worthwhile and meaningful, and also provided an easily accessible process for schools to engage, it would not happen.  He considered that this would need to be brokered well to become  ...  view the full minutes text for item 1.

The Chairman and Committee welcomed Ms Newton to the meeting and thanked her for the comprehensive written evidence she had submitted in answer to questions that had been forwarded to her in preparation for the meeting.

Ms Newton gave a brief introduction explaining that the Institute of Employment Studies (IES) was a charitable organisation and seeks to undertake research.  It often carried out work for government projects.  The IES had a small network of 15-20 companies.  The network had suffered in the recession.  Ms Newton said that her work area tended to be based on public sector policy. 

Q – Do you carry out age profiling in the public sector?

A – We do but I do not specialise in this area.   My work is based on young people engagement.  IES does 14-19 years and post 19 years level research.

The Chairman advised that KCC employees were currently an average age of 54 years.  The 24 years and under age group was dropping, which was never meant to happen.

Ms Newton said that she came into contact with KCC when she was doing a project on flexicurity (a concept which combines flexibility and security in employment for employer and employee) in the EU and she wanted to gather a case study.  She came across the apprenticeship scheme that KCC had been running and was aware of the actions that KCC was making to try and improve the situation for young people.

 Ms Newton explained that IES work expanded to unemployment, 14-16 element in schools and graduates and health and wellbeing. 

Ms Newton considered that Information, Advice and Guidance (IAG) was absolutely critical and needed to start at the earliest age possible.  In her opinion students should be thinking about the world of work from primary school. 

Q - What type of guidance can KCC give to that age group?

A – At that age it is more about opening their eyes to the world of work. Young people are influenced by their parents, if their parents do not have particularly wide horizons then neither would the child, by the time they hit their work placement at secondary age often that would be brokered through their parents unless they are affluent or well networked.  It was about opening their eyes to get the sense of what they needed to do to get to be say a nurse or doctor.  Do they know what stages that would take?

IES has explored intergenerational unemployment and its effect on young people and is also involved in reviews of the impacts of the changes introduced by the Employee Support Allowance (ESA) which replaces incapacity support allowance and seeks to transition ISA claimants to job seekers allowance should they be capable of work.  Ms Newton explained that she had been carrying out work on the Evaluation of the Activity Agreements, which were targeted at young people, where she had

encountered young people from intergenerationally inactive families.

Q – Moving from Primary to secondary how do you  ...  view the full minutes text for item 2.

The Chairman and Committee Members welcomed and introduced themselves to Lindsay Jardine and her colleague Mark Easton, Chief Officer for KATO to the meeting.  Ms Jardine provided notes to the questions forwarded to her in preparation for the meeting.

Q – How do you fit in with the secondary school educators? And how can you influence young people and are you finding your influences too late in the process or are you ok with it because you are asked to come in at an earlier stage?

A – Mark Easton introduced himself as the Chief Officer and Treasurer of KATO. He also managed the skills part of community learning and skills, which was Key training and traditional Adult Education.  Ms Jardine introduced herself as the Network Manager for KATO supporting 60 training providers, including 6 FE colleges and supporting their work based learning agenda acting as a conduit for the schools funding agencies, YPLA, AELP, KCC and Medway Council and sharing information on both sides.

Q – A tutor in a FE college advised that he was still waiting for assignments from last year from students. They were receiving the best practical and written advice but the tutor felt that he was getting nothing back. The students were not engaged.  Are there real issues in Further Education (FE), funding and people not finishing courses?

A – There were a plethora of offers available to young people from the private public and independent FE sectors.  The FE landscape was quite traditional and from experience in talking to learners, the FE sector was less flexible than perhaps the independent providers.  There were cases where young people come out of secondary education at level 2 academic standard then went onto  a classroom based vocational course eg BTEC and had to commence that course at a level 1 position.  There would be a question on the skill base that young person had so would commence at a rudimentary level.

Q – A young person could switch on or off at this point if you get it wrong?

A – It depended on giving them an expectation, stretch and aspiration.  They were more likely to be engaged and retained and achieve.

The Chairman commented that the tutors view was that there was a problem with the classroom based learning, that it seemed less about the industry.

A – There was a case for classroom based activity especially for those who had been disengaged with secondary education and did not academically achieve at school.  A lot did not feel that they fitted into the academic structure whether that was because of their home environment or something else.  Each young person needed to have a position of their own to be taken account of when they were initially engaged in any form of training or education.

Q – Was anyone doing psychometric testing on the young people?

A – Not in the purest sense but for those coming onto a work based programme there was an in-depth  ...  view the full minutes text for item 3.