Select Committee on Education and Skills Minutes of Evidence


Memorandum submitted by VT Education and Skills (VTE&S)

  VT Education and Skills (VTE&S) welcomes the Committee's two inquiries into skills and is pleased to have this opportunity to submit our views on post-16 skills training. We have also submitted a response to the inquiry into 14-19 specialised diplomas.

LEITCH & NATIONAL POLICY/ISSUES

  VTES broadly welcomes the final Leitch Report and, whilst still examining the detail, we wish to comment in general terms on some of its key recommendations.

  1.  Routing adult vocational funding through Train to Gain and Learner Accounts—VTES agrees with the Leitch Report's position that funding should support a demand-led system as far as practicable. Train to Gain is an existing structure and would therefore provide a useful route for funding whilst maintaining an element of continuity to the system.

  2.  Increased employer engagement—This is very important in ensuring that the benefits of increased skills are fully realised for the UK as a whole, as it ensures that employers make use of those increased skills and that the skills that are gained by individuals are those that are economically valuable.

  3.  The extension of Train to Gain—VTES holds Train to Gain contracts in seven of the nine English regions. We welcome the Leitch report's view that Train to Gain is a positive innovation that represents a shift to a demand-led system. We agree that it is important that this approach be embedded across the system and look forward to working with partners across government, the Learning & Skills Council, local authorities and others to take this forward.

  4.  The integration of skills and employment services—Through our contracts for Connexions services VTES works to reduce the number of young people not in education, employment or training (NEETs). Key to achieving this is a combination of improved skills, addressing individuals' barriers to learning, and good quality information, advice and guidance services. There is a need to recognise the role that training has in improving self-esteem and soft skills which can help to make the transition to employment sustainable. From our experience, we support the recommendation to integrate skills and employment services.

  5.  New universal adult careers service—Clearly there is shared concern about the rather fragmented nature of IAG provision for young people and lack of access to a universal adult careers service. We comment on this further below.

SUPPLY SIDE

  As Sir Andrew Foster has recognised and government has accepted, there is a need to raise the bar for the whole further education and training sector and to tackle inadequate and coasting provision. As well as this drive for higher quality and better performance, there is a need to increase the capacity of the sector in order to reduce the numbers of people with poor skill levels. Good quality providers from all sectors should be able to expand and we support the Government's proposals for commissioning alternative provision to secure better performance.

  At the same time, government needs to avoid further segmentation of the sector. For example, DfES' current consultation on personalisation implies that this is only for those on skill-based courses. All young people need this approach whatever their pathway and a unified, integrated personalised approach across all post-16 education and training would deliver benefits. Therefore, the (generally good) approach to personalisation should not be aimed at vocationally related or skills based courses in FE but should be developed as part of the 14-19 curriculum with schools and colleges across all types of qualification pathways.

  In addition, we believe that the best practice that already exists in schools and colleges (such as Beacon schools) should be shared and developed in local partnerships so that learners may progress through levels of learning with a coherent and integrated model of learning support centred upon them rather than the institutions in which they learn.

DEMAND SIDE—EMPLOYERS

  VTES agrees with Lord Leitch's observations that central prediction and planning for skills has not worked well in the past and that a demand-led system is needed. This will not only deliver greater economic and social benefits for the UK, it is also essential if employers are to contribute more, financially, to training. This financial partnership is key to unlocking greater investment in skills—itself crucial to the UK's competitiveness and productivity in the global economy.

  VTES is already set to act as a major partner with the Government in delivery of the Train to Gain initiative. We believe that for employers to take more responsibility for training, as the government and the Leitch report are pointing towards, businesses need to see very clearly the improvements that such training will make to the financial returns of their business. We believe that this could be addressed by modifying the existing brokerage system.

  At present, although the brokerage system has been designed to help the employer to step over the threshold of training by forming relationships with them and providing impartial guidance with regard to training provision, the brokers themselves are not charged with demonstrating overtly the commercial benefit to the employers' business that the training will deliver. The role of skills brokers could usefully be expanded so that they can examine the business of each employer with a view to proving how training will make it more successful. This would require a simple tool kit which we ourselves have used to analyse the "Return on Investment" of training in VT's shipyard.

  Necessarily the additional expectations would place more of a burden on the broker but the potential outcome, along with greater commitment from the employers is so powerful as to make such a burden a creative one. Any scheme designed to address the longer term skills needs of our economy will work if sustainability is built into its core. Therefore it is well worth the extra pain and investment in getting the Train to Gain model right, from the outset.

DEMAND SIDE—LEARNERS

  We wish to focus our comments in this section on the provision of information, advice and guidance (IAG). There is recognition that in England this is somewhat fragmented, and many are comparing this with the more coherent approach to careers information, advice and guidance in Scotland and Wales.

  The patchy nature of careers education provision, the lack of a sustained approach to workforce development for those involved in delivering IAG (through from front line tutors, careers co-ordinators to specialist personal advisers) and poor use of labour market information all mean that IAG is an area that needs consistent investment and improved national leadership. DfES needs to plan sufficiently ahead to allow the development of CPD packages to support the IAG workforce.

  IAG is very important to the skills agenda. The Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) notes in guidance to its members that:

    "There is evidence that learners who receive good quality IAG achieve better and are less likely to drop out of learning or change course after they are 16. [1]There is also evidence that effective CEG [careers education and guidance] programmes contribute to ... raising aspirations, increasing motivation, challenging stereotyping and enabling young people to make the most appropriate choices ... "

QUALIFICATIONS

  Government is naturally concerned primarily with qualification and success rates but we would also stress that the real benefit of personalisation is the ability of the learner to become autonomous which leads to life-long learning and supports employability in the long-term.

  It is also very valuable that information, advice and guidance (IAG) has been recognised as one of the core areas that must be developed for young people to benefit fully from the roll out of the specialised diplomas.

ABOUT VT EDUCATION & SKILLS

  VT Education and Skills (VTES), a division of VT Group plc, is a private sector company working almost exclusively in the public sector where our major customers are the DfES, LSC, Home Office, Local Authorities and government agencies.

  VTES is among the largest and fastest growing private sector providers of education services in value, range and quality. We are the largest provider of independent careers guidance in the country and one of the largest providers of work-based learning. VTES' main areas of activity are information, advice and guidance (IAG), work-based learning and school support services, each delivered by a separate business unit. This coverage is unmatched in the private sector in the UK.

  VT Careers Management is one of the leading IAG companies in England, delivering high quality and innovative services under contract to the DfES and LSC to seven Connexions Partnerships and managing eight Nextstep agencies.

  VT Training is the largest work-based training provider in the UK, specialising in delivering NVQs and workplace assessment in five main sectors: hospitality; social care; engineering; active sport and leisure, retail and business administration. VT Training holds work-based learning contracts in each of the nine regions across the country and Train to Gain contracts in the South East, South West, London, East of England, East Midlands, West Midlands and North East.

  For the last two years we have been involved in a unique partnership with Surrey County Council—VT Four S—to deliver school and Local Education Authority Services across the UK. It combines the best commercial practices with the values and principles of the public sector. Already this new partnership is one of the largest school support service organisations in the country, providing consultancy, advice, training and development

  Most recently, we have become involved in the Building Schools for the Future programme, and in the last few weeks have been appointed as the long-term strategic partner of the London Borough of Greenwich. We are looking forward to starting work on this exciting project which will see the renewal of 13 schools within the borough in a way that will transform educational opportunity for young people in the area, and for the wider community.

January 2007






1   Bowes, Smith & Morgan, Centre for Guidance Studies, University of Derby (2005). Back


 
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