Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-64)
MS LIZ
WALLIS, PROFESSOR
GEOFF LAYER,
DR ROGER
BENNETT, MR
GARY WILLIAMSON,
MS LINDA
FLORANCE, MR
MARK ANDREWS,
MR TOM
SMITH AND
MS RUTH
ADAMS
14 MAY 2008
Q60 Chairman: It has been doing that
for the last 30 years to my knowledge.
Mr Williamson: I know but you
have two universities in Leeds that work closely with the FE sector,
the vocational degrees and progression. I would question whether
or not the lifelong learning group is actually working because
they are still talking about how many points from a Leeds Met
degree is equivalent to a Leeds University degree, and the Bradford
degree is different again, but they are talking.
Q61 Mr Marsden: Can I come quickly
back to you because, like it or not, we do have all these new
structures and these new funding arrangements. In specific terms
how is that going to affect your ability at Yorkshire Forward
to deliver the skills agenda in the region? Is it going to do
it negatively or positively or do you simply not know?
Ms Adams: As a purely internal
thing we are looking at our structures to be able to deliver this.
One of the newest challenges is the idea that we will co-chair
the group that signs off the 14 to 19 plans. We have never had
a formal remit in education before and that is quite new and that
presents us with some challenges. We are taking over the skills
brokerage from the LSC and looking at how we integrate that with
Business Link and these are new challenges. What we will do is
look internally and we will look at what we need to do to deliver
this. At the minute our biggest "ask" would be that
we have some stability with the Regional Skills Partnership through
this process because whilst for the time being we have got a secure
future as a quango, obviously we know that the LSC are going through
major structural upheaval which could disrupt the system and the
bulk of skills activity is not on our agenda to lead it, it is
on the LSC, so in terms of planning and steering we would really
want it to say that we have lots of stability with the Regional
Skills Partnership.
Q62 Mr Marsden: Can I come back very
quickly to you, Mark, because you waxed lyrical earlier on, in
fact I thought you were going to blow a gasket when you mentioned
Connexions, does it worry you that the bulk of information, advice,
guidance, the training money and all the rest of it is going to
move from the LSCs to the local authorities? Does that affect
you in terms of your visions for leading the RSP?
Mr Andrews: For me it is a case
of it being managed properly and intensively. I have not got any
bias towards it being in the LSC versus the local authorities.
To me I think the more of these things that are joined up, the
more sensible it is.
Chairman: I am going to have stop you
there. Joined-up and sensible is a good phrase to finish with.
Mr Marsden: Short and sweet.
Chairman: Very sweet.
Q63 Mr Marsden: At the student end
of this, I have two points. Firstly, the new Adult Advancement
and Careers Services; are you happy to work with them, and is
that going to be an advance? The second one is skills accounts,
this is people doing their own thing rather than going through
the Train to Gain mechanism; is that going to be an important
counterweight to the so-called business-facing or business-driven
area?
Ms Adams: We have got lots of
enthusiasm for the Advancement Service. The one caveat we would
have is some concern that it is exclusively focusing on the engagement
point and getting careers advice for people that maybe are not
in employment and it is not so much about how we progress people
through the system. One of the offers we wanted to make to government
there is we have put quite a lot of investment—as every
region will have done—in graduate careers advice and postgraduate
careers advice, and we would not want to see that lost but perhaps
we could say this is something that is already working, it is
established in every regional context, can you use this service,
and again going back to the regional flexibility point, so that
it is not reinvented but we can use and we can align to that service,
and that is quite positive. On skills accounts, I think one of
the great shames was when individual learning accounts were stopped.
They were obviously stopped for the right reason because there
was abuse in the system, but I think it is a real positive thing
when people feel that they have got a little bit of purchasing
power, in this current climate with what else is happening, that
they can take that time and spend some money on their personal
development, and I think that is really positive.
Dr Bennett: I would echo that.
I think it is a good move. It had a negative impact when it was
withdrawn and coming back in this guise we are looking forward
to working with it in the colleges.
Q64 Dr Blackman-Woods: Have you made
any assessment of the impact of the Regional Skills Partnerships
on different groups of learners like women, ethnic minorities,
part-timers?
Ms Adams: No, we have not done
anything specifically. We are just taking a really strong, hard
look at diversity in its widest sense within the RDA and what
that means for a whole host of things, including the workforce,
so something is going on that. It is a challenge for us to look
at in terms of the findings particularly of the Women and Work
Commission that we want to have a look at what that means for
the labour market and how it works, and particularly if we subscribe
to trying to move Yorkshire and Humber towards more of a knowledge
economy and what that says for the diversity of people that can
engage and aspire to that is certainly something that we are doing
some work on with the Work Foundation.
Chairman: On that note, thank you all
enormously for your time. That has been a very, very quick canter
around the subject and I think my colleagues would agree it has
been absolutely superb. Can I thank particularly Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods
for injecting passion into our session this afternoon! Thank you
all very very much indeed.
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