Agenda item

Please introduce yourself and describe the roles and responsibilities that your post involves.

I am the Chief Executive of Connexions Kent and Medway, a post which I have held since September 2010. I have previously worked with Connexions in Oxfordshire and the Thames Valley.

 

Connexions is a charitable body which is run on a not-for-profit basis.  Its focus is the delivery of Information, Advice and Guidance (IAG) to young people. Connexions has a contract with the KCC, by whom it is commissioned as service provider.  The contract was re-let in 2009 for a 3-year period.   Its brief is extensive – to supply IAG to all young people in Kent, via schools.  It targets particularly those in vulnerable groups (those with Learning Disabilities or Mental Health issues, young offenders, looked after children and care leavers, and teenage mothers).

 

There is a universal IAG offer, to all young people in Kent between the ages of 13 and 19 (up to 25 if they have Learning Disabilities), and a targeted offer, to those who are at risk of becoming NEET.  The universal offer has been reduced due to cuts in government funding.  We work with all training providers, including schools and colleges, and we are impartial in the advice we give about career paths.

 

Kent Connexions has work-related learning in its contract. We drew together careers IAG and liaised with employers about work-based learning.  We also did work-related learning, but this has since been removed due to lack of funding.  We now have a challenge about how to pull these threads together. The work-related learning that we used to deliver was made up of work experience and packages which brought employers into schools to give work training.

 

Under the Connexions contract, every school in Kent has free IAG, and we negotiate annually the number of days each school receives.  This number is calculated taking into account the school population and the percentage of pupils who are likely to become NEET.  We do the same with colleges, to ensure an even spread of IAG availability.

 

What sort of things should the Select Committee be asking about the Young People’s Learning Agency (YPLA)/Schools package?

You could ask why YPLA funding was withdrawn at two days’ notice this March, giving no time for a transition period, and where this withdrawal fits with the Wolf review’s support of a switch in work-related learning from under-16 to post-16 next year.  Also, why are current Year 11, 12 and 13 pupils left with no provision, and how are schools meant to address this?

 

The Wolf report had said that work-related learning was expensive but ineffective, and the government seems to agree with that view.

I agree with Wolf’s view about the switch but there needs to be a transition period.  When we lost out on £600,000 of funding and had to discontinue the service, knowledge was lost as experienced staff were made redundant, but we will need to gather that knowledge together again later to run whatever new service comes along.  This is not good practice as it increases the risk of young people getting an inconsistent or interrupted service, and misses out on making links. The Wolf report included a move from Year 10 work placements, but in my view there is a place for these if a young person is at risk of becoming NEET. 20% of 17-year-olds and 25% of 18-year-olds are not in a learning place, and there needs to be targeted work experience provision for these groups.  Work experience for 16- and 17-year-olds has fewer costs and there are fewer Health and Safety issues.  One-week placements cover lots of work for a young person, but you would have to ask how meaningful just one week could be.  Work experience could instead be timetabled as a block-release from school, or perhaps one day a week for 6 or 10 weeks, as part of extended studies. This would involve a longer-term skills development plan, and would be an easier system for many SMEs to plan for and engage with.

 

From other interviewees, we have heard that good IAG is essential but that provision has drifted from what was planned. Where are the gaps, and what will you be doing to address them?

You have to look at it in context.  We have a 3-year contract but the funding has been reduced from £12m to £10m this year, and will go down to £9m next year.  We are a contracted public service and we need to work with KCC to minimise the impact of this reduction. We have reviewed our costs to minimise the impact on front line services as far as possible, but there will still be a 20% reduction in the number of people available in schools to speak to young people.  Since I came to this post in September 2010 I have found some aspects of the job in which we could increase efficiency and good practice, so we will move ahead with those. 

 

I am a Director of Careers England, which is a national trade body for careers and employment professionals. We originally endorsed the proposed National Careers Service in principal but have not been as supportive of it as the detail has subsequently become clear through consultation.  What is proposed is not an inclusive careers service for all ages – it is simply a re-naming of the existing two-tier service, with different services for young people and adults. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills continues to meet its commitment by funding Next Step by £88m, and the Department for Education funds some of Connexions Direct, which is web-based and links to the Direct.Gov website, but has not committed to Connexions funding.  The result is that we will not end up with an all-age careers service.

 

Under the changes to the Education Bill, the responsibilities of local authorities will be split between a duty to vulnerable groups (already part of our contract – the client groups I listed earlier) and Section 139A assessments for learners with Learning Disabilities and those at risk of becoming NEET, which will stay with the local authority, and the duty to deliver independent, impartial IAG to all students between the ages of 14 and 16 (instead of 13 and 19, as at present), which will pass to schools and academies, using existing funding. The government is proposing to consult in autumn 2011 on reverting to the broader age range of 13 - 18.

 

I am concerned - how independent or impartial can IAG be when it is delivered by schools?  Might over-16s be given the advice which best suits the school rather than them?

I share your concerns.  It is unclear just how independent it can be, and who will police it.  The Connexions contract will run to April or September 2012 – it is unclear as yet – and very few schools will be wiling to pay for the gap in provision for terms 5 and 6 next year, despite their statutory obligation to do so. Their NEET targets will be adjusted to take account of this.

 

This change has come about due to legislation, but we need to ask if it improves the prospects of young people. Probably 80% of young people in Kent will not be affected, but they are the ones who make good choices.  The ones who will be affected are those who make poor choices and follow their friends rather than make their own decision. However, there will always be a few of the 80% who will make a bad choice, and we need to be clear that they will be able to access IAG on their own terms, as and when they need it.  They could be directed to a website for information and advice, but guidance has to be given face to face, either as a one-to-one interview or in a small group session.

 

From what the Select Committee has heard, I think many young people have plenty of information and less advice, but no guidance.

It is part of our role to ensure the quality and standard of IAG. We work with schools and colleges to do this, and we find a wide range of standards; some have the highest quality IAG and some have a very poor standard. This variance in standard is a national pattern and is not peculiar to Kent. We can give 30 - 40 mins’ guidance to each young person but the young people have to get information and advice elsewhere. Young people need to be well prepared to get the most out of this limited session.  If they come well-prepared, they get a better quality experience. There is no panacea - you just have to target resources appropriately.

 

What recommendation would you like to see to address this issue?

In the Education Bill as it stands, the inference is that careers IAG will be removed from schools as a duty, but it implies thatIAG will be embedded into the curriculum and no longer be a bolt-on service.  But the whole purpose of IAG being in schools is that it should be part of school life.  I would welcome this as a Select Committee recommendation.  We need to seek a solution in which every young person has a progression route which best meets their needs.

 

Does Ofsted address this issue?

It is part of their remit, but it is unclear what priority they will give it.

 

Are you saying that Careers IAG should be embedded in the school curriculum?

Yes, in its own right, not as part of Personal, Health and Social Education (PHSE), as it is at present.  It should not be prescriptive but should be about an appropriate outcome for each young person.

 

In academies, which have direct government funding and so autonomy from the KCC, some Head Teachers might wish to introduce phased psychometric testing to help identify early a likely careers choice for a young person.  Can you give a view on this?

There is a market-testing approach which gives a useful way of identifying a young person’s skills and interests and an indication of the type of career which might suit them.

 

How many of the lowest-achieving 20% of young people get this service?

All of them.  Our target is that all young people should have good quality advice, but we target especially those who are at risk of becoming NEET (which are mostly in the bottom 20%) as that is what is measured in government targets.

 

The Select Committee has heard anecdotal evidence from other interviewees of the importance of IAG, but how do we get facts about the value of IAG, to back up a recommendation?

I can leave the Committee some statistics which will give you this information.  Kent’s performance in terms of getting 16 – 18 year olds into apprenticeships has dipped, as a percentage of population, while the national trend has increased.  Our challenge is to get 10% of 16 – 18 year old learners into apprenticeships with training.  If we do not set a bold target, we will not reduce Kent’s number of young people who are NEET.

 

Who should set and enforce the 10% target?

KCC should do this, as KCC is our contractor. We should be at 10% attainment by 2013. Many young people are in employment but do not have a training element, so we need to liaise with those employers to convert these placements into apprenticeships.

 

Is it possible to identify the costs of young people being NEET?

A study by York University showed that it costs £16,000 to make the interventions, via school, that are needed to help cut the risk of a young person becoming NEET.  The financial implications are different for different cases.  For example:-

• For someone of 16 plus who drops out, the cost is £16,000 for interventions plus £43,000 for the opportunities which are lost to them if they become NEET.
• For a young person with Learning Disabilities who cannot hold down anything more than low-pay short-term employment, the cost is £75,000 for interventions and a total cost to the public purse of £120,000.
• For a young offender, the cost is £125,000 for interventions and a total cost to the public purse of £300,000.
• For every 1% of the population that is NEET, the cost over a lifetime would be £3,000,000 – and in Kent 5.5% of the population is NEET.

 

Can you comment on young women seemingly choosing teenage pregnancy as a career choice?

In the York University study there were 143 pregnant young women, some of whom were NEET.  There were 369 teenage parents who were NEET, and about the same number again who were in employment.

 

How could we change or influence IAG targets?

There is much partnership working going on around the UK, and Kent has a good record of collaborative working.  Partners could offer a voluntary target on the basis that all participants contribute to it.  Learning providers have the principal objective as they need motivated learners to work with.

 

I will leave the Committee some headline statistics.  More data can be gained from Career Net Kent, which is web-based and available to all schools and colleges to augment the information provided by Martin Blincow’s team.  This extra data is collated nationally and will give a regional and national perspective.

 

Mapping of work experience placements in the last year, plotted against market sectors, shows an under-representation of manufacturing and distribution sectors and an over-representation of public administration and health sectors, compared to the size of the job market.  Personal advisors use this data when they are advising young people.

 

Do schools have a responsibility to come to you for information?

They have a responsibility to seek independent, impartial advice; where they get that from is less important.

 

When the Committee speaks to young people about the IAG they have received, we can test out what you and others have told us and see if the system is working properly.

 

Summing up, your three key actions which you’d like the Select Committee to recommend are:-

• Getting careers IAG embedded in the curriculum
• A KCC contract with learning providers to address the target of getting 10% of 16 – 18 year old learners into apprenticeships with training 
• Establishing targets to tackle the number of NEETs

Are there any more you would like to add?

 

There are two more:-

• Connexions are leading on a European Social Fund bid by 40 learning providers for a learner-led programme which will tailor a package of work-based skills training to make young people work-ready.  This programme would be adaptable, to meet young people’s needs, and funding would follow the learner, with each year’s allocation being based on the previous year.  Learner funding is a national issue but if Kent wants to do something which differs from the national norm then it has the commissioning powers to do so, although there would need to be an assessment of Kent’s spot-commissioning ability.  Unless someone challenges the system it will just continue in the same way.
• We are contracted to the KCC to deliver government objectives but our ethos is to do the right thing for the young people of Kent, and we need to challenge and see if we are achieving the right level of employability.  We have been part of the problem so we now need to be part of the solution, and will focus on the bottom 10% rather than something for everyone.