Memorandum submitted by Nacro
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1. Nacro welcomes the opportunity to give
evidence to the Committee's hearing on post-16 skills training.
As a large national special-needs work-based learning provider
as well as the crime reduction charity, Nacro considers all types
of skills development as central to enabling people to lead constructive,
law-abiding lives.
2. Our key points are:
— it is essential that the needs of
all learners are taken into account when considering funding and
other structures for skills training: some groups will have additional
support needs;
— providers working with these groups
should be enabled to provide adequate and appropriate support
to learners, including addressing the full range of barriers to
learning; and
— efforts need to be made to avoid
creating a hierarchy of programmes which encourages/requires providers
to select learners according to ability.
INTRODUCTION TO
NACRO
3. Nacro, the crime reduction charity, has
been designing and delivering resettlement programmes for disadvantaged
people—offenders and people at risk of offending—for
40 years, including education and training programmes and programmes
to improve people's employability skills.
4. During 2005-06, Nacro helped 81,000 people
through our practical services—largely education, training
and employment services, youth engagement programmes, supported
housing and information and advice services. During the year,
we provided work-based learning programmes for 8,500 people and
provided employment and training advice to many more, including
15,000 offenders. We ran alternative curriculum and other education
programmes for over 2,000 young people and outreach programmes—to
make contact with those not in touch with any other agency—with
over 1,700 people.
OUR SUBMISSION
5. Nacro is not submitting evidence on every
area to be covered by this hearing, but would urge the Committee
to take into account the needs of all learners in considering
post-16 skills training structures and content. We work with people
whose offending behaviour and/or risk factors make many mainstream
training programme and providers unsuitable, at least in the first
instance. Our experience—gained in nearly 40 years in this
field—has been that funding and other structural systems
have militated against achievement by those with special needs
and disadvantaged those who provide training opportunities for
them.
6. Do current funding structures support
a more responsive skills training system? How could they be improved?
There are some ways in which the funding for Entry to Employment
(E2E) could be improved, but Nacro is not convinced these changes
would create a more responsive skills training provision. One
improvement would be for the Learning and Skills Council (LSC)
to recognise that NVQ Level 1 programmes, with added key skills,
do have a value to learners and employers. It is now possible
for work-based learning providers to offer this sort of programme
again, since the LSC has clarified that E2E can be for as long
as a learner needs, but there is no real incentive to providers.
7. Does the LSC need to be the subject
of any further reform? A Nacro suggests that a significant and
helpful reform for work-based learning by the LSC would be to
recognise "specialist providers" for Foundation Learning.
It would be equally useful for the LSC to recognise
that allowing providers to deliver both the Foundation and the
Apprenticeship programmes, with higher targets each year, only
serves to create, by default, "E2E Plus" and an "E2E
Minus" programmes. Those providers that deliver both E2E
and Apprenticeships can recruit young people to E2E for a short
period, prior to moving them to an apprenticeship, thereby achieving
higher outcome targets from E2E and increasing funding for their
programme—they, in effect, use E2E as a pre-Apprenticeship
programme and select their learners accordingly. We do not want
to condemn this, but it does cause problems where LSCs then think
that those providers perform better than those that do not deliver
both, and impose the same outcome targets on those working with
the hardest to help. The providers are then left with those young
people who are not taken on by the "quick-fix" providers
and are then penalised for not achieving the same, high outcome
targets. This has the result of making them select learners who
are more likely to achieve. This has the effect of leaving more
and more young people, especially those who need additional support
in training, in the NEET group.
Were providers only allowed to deliver one or
the other, they would achieve a more level playing field. Take
Nacro as a provider which only delivered E2E, almost as a lead
provider. We could identify those who may be suitable for an Apprenticeship
outcome early on in their programme, and work with the Apprenticeship
provider to secure an early transition. That would allow us to
offer longer programme length of stay to those who need it. And
were the Apprenticeship providers to be set a target of E2E graduates
to recruit, that would be the icing on the cake!
8. Higher education, offenders and those
at risk. Nacro is convinced that a "mixed economy" of
providers is essential to meet the education and training needs
of the wide range of offenders and those at risk. Nacro is keen
to see the chance exist for these people to progress to education
opportunities at all levels, but we know that for most of the
people we work with in our education and employment projects,
and for many other offenders and the at-risk, a college environment
is not suitable. Care must be taken not to alienate those for
whom this setting is intimidating or unappealing.
Our experience is that many young people leaving
Nacro to attend college (often lured by the idea of attending
a higher-status provider) often return to our programmes after
a short time, having found the environment, teaching methods and
lack of holistic, specialised support impossible to deal with.
9. What is available for those with the
very lowest skill levels, who are outside of education, training
and the world of employment? Nacro's experience is that a significant
number of people in this group will veer between casual labour
and long periods of unemployment, with the possibility of supplementing
their low incomes or benefit with some criminal activity. Many
of the people Nacro works with, including those contacted through
outreach programmes, lack fundamental life skills. They are likely
to have dropped out of school and will struggle to live independently.
In many cases, they are ill-equipped to engage in vocational training,
or to hold down a job, without additional and ongoing support.
10. We understand that, in theory, people
in the NEET group can access a whole range of FE courses, as well
as E2E. But for the latter to be effective, the situation we described
in paragraph 7 needs to be resolved. The "hardest-to-help"
are often wary of schools, colleges and statutory authorities;
voluntary organisations can be better placed to engage very disaffected
people in services. The college environment can be less attractive
to people who have been out of education and out of touch with
other agencies for some time, and who may be wary of "official"
bodies. Any provider would need to provide an assessment and referral
service in a safe and accessible setting, and be in contact with
the complete range of services available in an area, so that the
most appropriate referral can be made.
11. The identification of any complementary
services necessary to address barriers to employment, such as
problems with drug or alcohol misuse, health issues or housing
difficulties needs to be incorporated into the provider's way
of working. Any efforts to improve vocational and employability
skills will be futile without addressing these issues at the same
time. Setting someone up in a training programme or with work
for which they are not equipped is likely to be counter-productive
and may embed them further into disadvantage or the criminal justice
system. Providers for this group therefore need to have links
with support and specialist services in the local area to enable
appropriate referrals to be made.
Any system for determining a learning offer
needs to recognise that there are learners who have had very negative
experiences of education and learning and may, in fact, not know
how to learn. There have to be ways of creating and sustaining
engagement and motivation. Nacro's experience in working with
disengaged young people, including offenders and those at risk,
has enabled us to develop techniques to do so. Flexible programmes;
an approach to teaching and learning that caters for different
learning styles; breaking learning tasks down into small manageable
steps; recognising achievement, ideally with an accredited qualification,
early in the process; basing learning tasks around areas of interest
such as sport or music; treating participants with respect and
a positive expectation of change; linking learning with real job
opportunities: all these techniques will make engagement and motivation
more likely.
12. We realise there are trials underway
in a few pilot areas for Foundation Learning Tier courses, but
do not yet have enough information to judge how well these are
working and what lessons may be learned.
RECOMMENDATIONS
13. Nacro would make the following recommendations:
— that any funding and other structures
for the provision of post-16 training allows for a "mixed
economy" of providers;
— that the LSC recognises the value
of NVQ Level 1 programmes and structures their funding systems
in a way that encourages providers to offer them;
— that the LSC recognises that providers
offering only E2E are disadvantaged compared to those offering
both E2E and Apprenticeships (and that consequently their learners
are also disadvantaged), and addresses this situation;
— that the Department for Education
and Skills and the LSC recognise that there is currently very
little provision for those in the NEET group, and little support
for providers working with this group, and take this into account
when considering future structures for post-16 training; and
— that the LSC makes public the experiences
of the Foundation Tier pilots to allow providers to make suggestions
on modifications.
January 2007
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