Examination of Witnesses (Questions 540
- 559)
MONDAY 15 MARCH 2004
MS CAROLYN
CALDWELL, MR
CHRIS HEAUME
AND MR
KIERAN GORDON
Q540 Mr Turner: Over a period of—?
Mr Gordon: Over the first two
years of Connexions operations, so that is very encouraging figure.
You can then segment it in different ways. For example, in my
own area, in Liverpool we have developed a joint team working
with young people living in public care with social services,
and we put personal advisers into that team and set up a support
system with a commonalities platform. We have seen the number
of young care leavers at 19 in Liverpool from 2000 to 2002 almost
double from 30% to 57% going into education and staying in employment
and training. It is not about initially getting them into it but
it is also about retention, and that is a big struggle, not just
for Connexions but many partners in this, whether we can keep
young people in learning and progress and achievement. Participating
alone is not enough; it is about them achieving their potential.
Q541 Mr Turner: You spoke of the
law of diminishing returns. There comes a point obviously where
the return is not worth the investment. Can you measure that?
Can you tell when the return ceases to be worth the investment?
Mr Gordon: You have to do it on
an individual level. We are talking, again in my area, of 144,000
young people. We have a NEET population of about 11%; it was 17%
when we started. We know that we will not get it down to zero
because there will be some young people, no matter how much resource,
support and encouragement you give them, they will not go into
employment and training. It is about managing the resources you
have well, and acknowledging where you can make a difference.
Q542 Mr Turner: How do you make that
judgment?
Mr Gordon: It is on an individual
level. What we have had to do is deal with some young people who
we realise it is very difficult to move on, usually because of
other factors at play. It might be that another profession or
another agency needs to be, and often is, working with that university;
it might be that they are facing a custodial sentence, or other
issues which might be outside our immediate skill remit. We then
bring in partners. Maintaining contact with some of the harder
cases is the most you can hope to achieve in the hope that, at
some point, through a joint effort working with other partners,
a result can be achieved.
Q543 Jeff Ennis: David Chaytor earlier
asked you about the changes that have taken place over the years
and the structure of careers advice, etc, and this was referred
to in the evidence given by one of our previous witnesses, Ms
Hughes, in terms of this seeming to be a head of steam building
up to perhaps the Scottish and Welsh model of having one careers
advice service in England rather than the two we currently have
where we have the differentiation between young people and the
rest of the workforce, as it were. Is this a head of steam that
needs to be developed, or should we turn the heat off, shall we
say?
Mr Heaume: We have a lot of young
people who need continued advice post-19. For some things are
settled but for quite a lot, particularly the vulnerable, they
need that support and to have two separate services does not help
that. However, the danger is if we are not careful we are going
to lose the focus we have been developing on teenagers. The teenage
years are years that are quite particular; there are huge issues
in going through the transitions, and if we do not protect the
work with that age group and we risk watering it down then I think
we are doing a disservice to young people. We need to make sure,
therefore, that we are protecting that as well as offering an
extended service to those who need it.
Mr Gordon: We run our own guidance
services as well from separate funding that comes in from Europe
and single regeneration project funding and so on. We run the
two aspects of the service distinctly because we need to audit
them separately, etc, but there are distinct needs. Sometimes
young people will not use a service that is branded for adults
and vice versa, and you have to be clear on your branding so that
you can offer an accessible service and attract people. In answer
to your question, I do think that it should be looked at in terms
of at least providing the range access to services for adults
that there has been the investment in for young people.
Q544 Jeff Ennis: One government initiative
has been quite successful in improving staying-on rates, particularly
in deprived communities like the one I represent in Barnsley and
Doncaster, namely the education maintenance allowances. Are education
maintenance allowances making the job of careers advisers easier?
Mr Gordon: We have had EMA pilots
in our area since they started, and we have seen an increase in
young people at the same time opting to stay in learning. I do
think from that point of view it creates a certain value to the
individual of learning because they are putting a financial value
on it as well. It has created some tensions for those young people
when they go into work-based learning, which is an equal option,
in that if they go into work-based learning with a work-based
learning allowance they lose other family income supplements that
may be coming into the family, and that creates problems.
Q545 Chairman: What do they lose?
Mr Gordon: If the family they
come from has income support coming in through other means to
parents then it gets taken account of in the calculation of income
support or housing benefit for the family. So you can find that
some people who go to work-based learning set the family back
in financial terms, which does not apply with the EMAs.
Q546 Chairman: So that would affect
the demand for modern apprenticeships, for example?
Mr Gordon: Possibly it could do.
Q547 Chairman: Does it?
Mr Gordon: It does.
Q548 Jeff Ennis: So this is an issue
we need to refer to, like a joined-up government initiative?
Mr Heaume: Absolutely.
Q549 Chairman: Would you like a roll-out
with EMAs available to all?
Mr Gordon: I think some form of
financial support and incentive to all young people is critical.
The question is the level at which that is pitched. Young people
have views on that. They feel that the current offer is probably
not sufficient to encourage them towards some forms of learning.
Q550 Jeff Ennis: Just one other issue,
changing the subject slightly: what is the interface between the
Connexions partnerships and local education business partnerships,
or is there none?
Mr Heaume: It is often very strong.
As we have developed we have had to set a line up to people we
need to involve and get into a stronger relationship with and
EBPs have been high up the list there. Clearly all the issues
about work-related learning being part of the key stage core curriculum
and people's experience of the work place are really important.
If we can get that right then it helps us know where they are
heading, and be more prepared to do it.
Q551 Jeff Ennis: So all Connexions
partnerships should have a strong relationship with local education
business partnerships?
Mr Gordon: Yes. Some actually
run education business partnerships.
Q552 Chairman: Looking at my own
region of Yorkshire and Humber recently and at how many cross-cutting
working parties and groups there are, it must be an enormous strain
on you and other people in Connexions to attend all of those.
I see the Regional Assembly now has two or three different cross-cutting
skills bodies that they draw everyone into. Is this a great demand
on your time?
Mr Gordon: Yes, increasingly,
and I think it needs to be rationalised in some form. We have
an increasing number of people going to an increasing number of
partnership meetings, and at some of those you see the same faces
as at the next, so we do need to rationalise that.
Chairman: Remind me to look at the regions
just to see what the delivery in a rural region is.
Q553 Paul Holmes: I spent some time
last year trying to establish some comparisons between the Learning
and Skills Councils, how many people they employ and spend, compared
to their predecessors like the TECs, and that was difficult. If
we were looking at Connexions, who should we compare your staffing,
budgets and registration costs with?
Mr Heaume: Previously the careers
companies. We inherited the careers companies' budgets as before
and were given additional funding to develop additional work,
so in our case it is very clear what that was.
Mr Gordon: You would have to go
beyond that, though, because Connexions is delivering a much wider
range of services than careers service companies were previously.
There are elements of services now that we provide like working
with care leavers, with young offenders, teenage mums and pregnant
teenagers and so on, and you need to disaggregate what kind of
funding was going into that previously and what comes in currently—not
just what is going into Connexions but the wider partnership funding.
Ms Caldwell: You also find that
some Connexions partnerships are really youth services on behalf
of local authorities, so there are models in different places.
It is quite convoluted.
Q554 Paul Holmes: On the general
background and organisation, who oversees or polices the 47 different
partnerships? How independent are they? A constituent of mine
who works for the Sheffield Connexions partnership who lives in
Chesterfield wrote to me a few weeks ago about all the concerns
in Sheffield about cuts to budgets and frontline services. Who
do I write to apart from the Sheffield partnership itself to say,
"What is going on?". Can you tell me what is going on?
Ms Caldwell: The DfES and government
offices are the structural people to whom we are accountable.
We are accountable to provide management information and to hit
targets, through our business planning and through the government
office, to the DfES and, in return for that, the DfES issues grants
to the partnership.
Q555 Paul Holmes: But, for example,
the chief executive of the Learning and Skills Council has said
in response to a question I asked that there has been a small
number of people who have been moved out of their jobs and regionalised
because they were not doing the job. Would anybody do that to
the partnership? Is that a role that the National Association
plays? Is there nobody who does the equivalent?
Ms Caldwell: We are not responsible
for the quality or the delivery of the service. We are a membership
organisation so it would be my job to support the partnerships.
Q556 Paul Holmes: So the buck goes
purely and simply straight back to the Minister? There is nobody
in between?
Ms Caldwell: Yes, ultimately.
Q557 Chairman: Where does the regional
development agency come in? They have lots of figures in the skills
area.
Mr Heaume: They are very key partners
locally but, particularly through our work with the LSCs, we link
with them through the LSCs, and they are not involved in terms
of hierarchy in any sense. We relate directly to the DfES and
the Minister.
Q558 Chairman: Would you send us
an organigram of who you relate to in your different regions,
because I think we need that, and who are the players?
Mr Gordon: I could describe the
local structure because that is important as well. In an area
such as mine where there is a sub-region of six local authorities
we have local management committees in each of those six local
authorities, and the key players are on those. They are chaired
by a senior member of the local authority, either the chief executive
or invariably the director for education and lifelong learning
for each of those areas, and they have other key players from
health, the youth service, the social services and from the voluntary
community sector on those local scrutiny committees. They report
to the board of directors, because we are invariably established
as private companies of one sort or another, usually limited by
guarantee although one or two are accountable to local authorities,
and the board of directors is made up of key local authority personnel
and the director of the Learning and Skills Council, a voluntary
community sector representative, an employers' representative
and so on.
Q559 Chairman: Safety skills groups?
Mr Gordon: Not on our particular
board but some do have, yes.
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