Agenda item

(1)       The Chairman welcomed Sue Dunn and Richard Little to the meeting.

 

(2)       Sue set out the context of the County Councils work on Apprenticeships.  Apprenticeships had been a priority for the County Council over the past 6 years. Kent was seen as being in the forefront of work and innovation in relation to the Apprenticeship agenda.  This built on the work carried out by colleagues in Customer and Communities prior to this work moving to the Education Directorate.  Sue referred to the Richard review of Apprenticeships and the changing funding for post 16 year olds giving employers more say in how the funding is used if the 10 recommendations from the review get adopted unchanged.  The Skills and Employability Service (S & E service) was established on 1^st April 2012 and came into effect on 1^st September 2012.  The Service brought together all of the Councils services in this area, including all of the work with employers as part of the One Council approach. 

 

(3)       Sue stated the Team had very strong links with the Economic Development and Regeneration Teams.  The Employability and Skills Team consisted of 30 officers.  She informed the Committee that the 14 to 24 Strategy was just about to be published once it had been approved by Cabinet.

 

(4)       Sue stated that the role of the Local Authority in relation to education was changing daily and therefore they had a different role to play in the skills agenda which was identified within the 14 to 24 Strategy.  She set out the 4 strands with the Strategy:

 

            i)          working with schools and colleges agenda

            ii)         looking at the training offer, within that sits vocational centres and apprenticeships. 

            iii)        participation and employability – setting out what the learner journey looks like and where it takes young people.  In relation to Higher and Further Education consideration need to be given to the employability of 18 year olds.    A question to be asked of schools in relation to post 16 year olds is how many have good employment opportunities at 18.  There is also a signification unemployment issue for graduates.

iv)        Vulnerable Learners was a key area of the County Council’s work.  These young people often need a bespoke programme.    Officers were working with groups at the moment looking at employment profiles of young people who were vulnerable in order to take them into assisted employment.

 

NB - Committee to be supplied with copies of the 14 – 24 Strategy.

 

(5)       Sue stated that in terms of the work of the Select Committee she referred to the evidence from the work that has been carried out by District Councils to support apprenticeships in their area.  District Councils, such as Swale and Shepway, have been active in their areas re apprenticeships and they have established good links to local employers.  It was important for the Committee to talk to schools and training providers and get positive feedback on how to deliver on challenging targets.  An example of one of these targets is to reduce unemployment in the 18 – 24 age range by 4000 by 2015(?) This was a tough target, although some youth unemployment was on a downward trend. 

 

Question – A Member expressed disappointment in the lack of involvement of a couple of schools that he was aware of with apprenticeships and asked where there were barriers or disadvantages for schools in relation to apprenticeships.

 

(6) Sue replied that there was the issue of competition for learner numbers, the more young people that a school had the more funding they received.  She referred to the seismic shift that was going to take place in relation to careers guidance for young people.  From September 2013 schools would be responsible for providing impartial careers guidance; this should include apprenticeships or jobs with training. She explained that the S & E Team had 6 dedicated officers who would be raising the profile of these options with schools.  There were currently 33 Secondary Schools employing apprentices in Kent and they had a target of 50% of all schools including Primary Schools employing an apprentice.  A big piece of work for the Team was to make sure that young people got the advice and guidance that they needed to make informed choices.

 

Question – I thought that I knew what an apprenticeship was.  Doug Richards had said that an apprenticeship was only an apprenticeship if there was a job at the end of it, otherwise it was just work experience.  What is the definition of an apprenticeship?

 

(7)       Sue said that she was clear that the definition of an apprentice was someone on the payroll.  Work experience was not an apprenticeship.

 

Question – if there is not a job at the end is it an apprenticeship.

 

(8)       Sue stated that what had been announced national that morning was traineeships, which included making sure that young people had an adequate skills including a certain level of English and maths to enable them to access an apprenticeship.

 

Chairman – throughout our discussions we will consider possible areas for recommendation, one issue emerging is that of the potential gap in information, advice and guidance, it is important to get to the bottom of this and if necessary have a firm recommendation to help resolve this.

 

(9)       Sue stated that apprenticeships were currently closely linked to youth employment but previously they had also been about ensuring that there is a qualified workforce for the future.  It was also about high quality training programmes for example British Aerospace’s apprenticeship programmes produces some of the more highly training aerospace engineers in the world.

 

Q – I have spoken to two Further Education colleges and an issue is that schools are desperate to retain pupils.  However, schools do not generally have the critical mass of pupils or staff for apprenticeship training - is this the case?

 

(10)     Sue stated that she was not aware of any schools that ran apprenticeship programmes with the exception of Sittingbourne Community College. Any school wishing to run an apprenticeship programme would have to do it in partnership with a training provider.   It is more likely that schools would be running vocational courses.

 

Chairman – need to look at who is doing what , are they doing it well, are they the best ones to be doing this.  It is important that students are clear about this and know where to go.

 

(11)     Sue identified 5 key strands to the work of the S & E service:

 

            i)          the vulnerable learner project

            ii)         issue of career advisors for 16 - 18 year olds

            iii)        18+ Kent EmployMent Programme – which was a grant for employers who took on a young person who had been unemployed for 3 month.

            iv)        make sure that the County Council demonstrated best practise in relation to work experience, apprenticeships etc.

            v)         graduate programme – there had been positive feedback from universities.  100 employment opportunities have been identified for Kent graduates.

 

Under the banner of Kent Jobs for Kent Young People there were two key pieces of work which were (i) work with 16 to 24 year olds and (ii) work with employers.

 

(12)     Richard Little provided statistics around five areas of S & E service work.    He undertook to provide these statistics and more importantly the figures behind them for the Committee.

 

(13)     Richard stated that there was a dedicated officer for each of the five strands identified above by Sue. 

           

(14)     In relation to apprenticeships within the County Council, Richard stated that this was a challenge as, although there was a mandate for the number of apprenticeships that there should be across the Council but these depended on the Head of Service deciding that their area of work would benefit from an apprentice.  He believed that it would be better if there was a mandate requiring every Directorate to have apprenticeships at different levels, and especially at the higher levels.  He referred to District Councils who had apprenticeships targets, it was important to talk to them about how best to support local apprenticeships.

 

Question – Are there any jobs at the end of the apprenticeship for KCC apprentices?

 

(15)     Richard replied that all KR1 to 3 posts at KCC should be filled by apprentices.  The team were working to embed the view that there should be KR5/ KR7 and higher jobs open to apprenticeships.  He stated that the number of high level apprenticeships in Kent was low.

 

(16)     Sue explained that there was a need for a cultural shift in KCC.  Training apprentices added value over a period of time, it was not about a 6 to 9 month placement, it was about talent spotting and succession planning.

 

Question – what types of job do we offer apprentices?

 

(17)     Richard replied that it was mainly business administration, although there were also a raft of other apprenticeships in Highways.  The organisation and development team in KCC were identifying the entry points for apprentices.

 

Question – How do young people access apprenticeships?

 

Charman – KCC has a role;

 

            1)        We as organisation want to set up a collection of apprenticeships so that we can set the standard for best practise for other employers in Kent.  But how far have we got with this?

 

            2)        We should set an example which can then spread to District Councils and the NHS

 

We need to see all the figures and identify the gaps.

 

(18)     Richard highlighted two points regarding his role:

           

            i)          support small businesses, the team were the main point of contact for businesses under 100 employees

            ii)         advisory role to young people and parents – signposting role and via the Kent Association of Training Organisations (KATO) whose role was impartially to give best advice to young people and businesses.

 

(19)     Richard stated that there were two options, one was to be an exemplar of best practise and the other was to use short cuts to get people into employment as quickly as possible.  He believed that KCC should be the former of these and should always aim to show best practise.

 

(20)     Richard reported the headline statistics for apprenticeships in Kent and was asked to supply these, and the numbers on which they were based to the Committee.

 

(21)     In relation to vulnerable learners, Richard stated that officers had met with other agencies in Kent that worked to get vulnerable learners into apprenticeships.  He also wanted to promote apprenticeship opportunities within primary schools, the teaching assistant role lent itself to an apprenticeship.  This was being promoted via Head Teacher’s breakfast meetings.

 

Chairman – we need as a committee to have a paragraph in our report on vulnerable learners.

 

Question – How do you work with small businesses, my experience of trying contacting you when we have had vacancies but we have not got anywhere.  Also how do you go about matching the potential apprentice to a vacancy?

 

(22)     Richard stated that colleagues would be coming to the Committee to talk about the details of their work.  When the workstream had moved from Customer and Communities there had been a number of communication streams for employers, which was not helpful.  Now that they were all within the brand “Kent Jobs for Kent Young People” they were in one place with one website and they were in the process of developing a number of resources with Corporate Communications.  The Leader had drafted a letter to be sent to business and schools highlighted the new Kent Jobs for Kent Young People.

 

(23)     Sue stated that in relation to the process for matching young people to apprenticeships, her team had been involved in the Kent Employment Programme for 18 year olds who had been out of work for 3 months.  The scheme was dependant on the quality of the young people put forward by Job Centre Plus, however the preparedness for the work place of these young people had not been good.  Sue has had to go back to Job Centre Plus and say that we cannot put the paperwork from these young people before employers.  A key question is whether Job Centre Plus have the right staff to work with young people, this depended on the Job Centre and the manager.  At the moment we have more pledges from employers than we have young people to put forward.  Sue gave the example of an ICT Web design apprenticeship opportunity at Level 3 where Job Centre Plus had only put forward one applicant.  Part of KCC’s role in the programme was to quality assure the applications coming forward before they were submitted to the employer.  She acknowledged that there was work to be done with Job Centre Plus to improve the pre employment support for young people.

 

Q – What issues does the Committee need to needs to address?

 

(24)     Richard stated that there was a huge partnership network via KATO.  We have our own partnership group including Job Centre Plus, National Apprenticeship Service etc.  The Kent Strategic Forum and Colleges have development meetings.  We work together with District Councils.  Another partner in this is the Kent Youth County Council, they tell us how important apprenticeships are to them and they can be good advocates for them.

 

Chairman – this session has pulled together quite a few issues including:

• the importance of Information, Guidance and Advice
• SME’s how to engage them with apprenticeships to foster their growth.
• Job Centre Plus and consistency/quality of applicant for apprenticeships
• Opportunities for vulnerable young people