Impact Forums – Summary

Employability

1. Key policy drivers – in country

Country / Information
Wales / See the summary of the Impact Forums on excluded groups.
The impact forum on employability was combined with the theme of excluded groups; policies and programmes to support young people towards employability and support engagement and participation by ‘excluded’ groups were identified in a separate document by the Welsh Assembly Government.
N Ireland
England / High levels of youth unemployment drive skills agenda; this has extensive social and economic costs for society – estimated at £28bn over the next decade.
Data on young people who are Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET) shows they are at risk of: unemployment in adult life; teenage pregnancy; youth offending; insecure housing and homelessness and mental and physical health problems.
Scotland / Work of Skills Development Scotland and the Employability Fund; Statement of Ambition for Lifelong Learning which embraces key principles of Lifelong; Life-wide and LearnerCentred approaches

2. Participation and engagement

Country / Information
Wales
N Ireland / Workplace: Strong examples of how adults engaged via workplace ie NACCO, an organisation which committed to learning and re-training in recession rather than make employees redundant.
Community learning: 3 adult learners gave testimony to the transformative results of engaging in learning as adults and changing negative experiences of schooling via community provision and progression routes to HE.
OU NI: offers advanced IAG; embracing technology in diverse ways to engage new learners; Badged Open Courses at Access Level, working with Barclays Bank and City and Guilds to engage more and diverse learners.
England / Challenges to engagement and participation examined in wide range of surveys, reports and data analysis in order to attempt to identify ways of engaging young people who are NEET.
Mis-matches in skills identified; changing structure of economy a strong influence on this.
Scotland / BLES (Blackburn Local Employment Scheme) made a presentation outlining how they are engaging with disengaged young people in schools as well as out of school. The example was in West Lothian but each local authority area has a similar initiative. Engagement takes a long time but motivation uses vocational skills alongside ‘soft skills’ and literacy and numeracy in 2 stages with accreditation at levels 3 and 4 (SQF – equivalent to entry level 3/level 1 in England.)
Presentation by Linking Education and Disability (LEAD) – addressing employability amongst young people with disabilities of all kinds eg through 1: 1 Activity Awards/Agreements; SCOPE group work (Social Skills; Communication; Opportunities; Personal Development; Effective contributor) and CALA, Community Action, Learning Award (Levels 3 and 5 SQF).

3. Wider outcomes processes

Country / Information
Wales
N Ireland / Inspiring Impact Network: processes highly developed and refined to support learning, especially employability amongst young people. Learner interviews; case studies; reports; individual testimonies. Local TV interviews testify to impact on individuals.
England / What employers are looking for researched by young people through interviews, conversations and surveys, asking: What are employability skills: What are employers looking for; How can young people develop skills for employability? 31 unemployed young people and 30 local employers involved in the research.
Engagement through boxing clubs; drugs and alcohol recovery schemes; Morris dancing club, helps to reach diverse groups of young people.
Scotland / Achievement awards and activity awards capture ‘soft skills’ through project-based and theme-based approaches.

4. Evidence of impact on other policy areas eg health, housing, crime, citizenship, environment

Country / Information
Wales
N Ireland / Learning in communities case studies and specific examples, from different sector perspectives indicated how learning supports: the Equities Commission’s purposes; concerns about care of the elderly; concerns about rural isolation and rural economies; women in particular contexts and situations; health; people with learning difficulties;
England / Participation in learning amongst young unemployed people minimises impact on health; long term unemployment; poverty and inter-generational under-achievement.
Scotland / Focus on individual young people, but impact demonstrated by 53% success rate (Blackburn Local Employment Scheme) indicates successful and sustained employment; greater active citizenship engagement; includes progression to higher level learning in vocational skills areas.

5. Policy influence: local, regional and national

Country / Information
Wales
N Ireland / Commitment from Junior Minister of the Office of First Minister and Deputy First Minister (OFMDFM); NI Equities Commission sees learning as a way to address bullying and religious diversity tensions/issues; she bears testimony to the impact of ‘second chance’ learning in her own life; a strong advocate but many resources are directed from Westminster.
England / NIACE, England leading the initiative on ‘What employers want’; but working with providers in Scotland and Wales, and extending to N Ireland to work with young people with learning difficulties.
Scotland / Cross Party Groups (CPGs) interest in employability engagement activities due to over 18% of young people unemployed.
The Wood Commission (2013) looked at the vocational/academic divide in Scotland as well as the relationship between education and employment and made a long series of recommendations about how to help youth unemployment in particular. This influences current development and activity.
There is potential to join up the work SALP, with the Strategic Forums from Skills Development Scotland with insight into ‘what seems to be working’; importance of soft skills; requests for research into the value employers place on soft skills.

6. Sharing of policies and practices from other UK countries

Country / Information
Wales
N Ireland / The Young Adults’ employability project on, What Employers Want, was presented; the project and approach have been extended to work with partners in Northern Ireland. This approach is welcomed.
The Scottish Statement of Ambition re Lifelong Learning, including basic skills, ESOL and skills for work is cited, in some format or context in Impact Forums across the UK. Scotland demonstrates policy in relation to LL Learning and this is an ambition for other adult learning advocates in N Ireland.
England / Scotland’s Statement of Ambition seen as an example of how to draw together the different aspects of individual, social and economic development, including communities and embracing lifelong learning to realise the ambition.
Scotland / Employability project run by NIACE, partnering organisations in other UK Administrations, including Scotland (Glasgow), ‘What employers want’. Publication shared with all at the I Forum.
Interest expressed by policy-makers and practitioners/providers, at the I Forum, in the model/approach used. Endorsed the approach which places young people at the heart of the challenge and involves them in finding solutions.

7 Sharing of policies and practices from other EU countreis

Country / Information
Wales
N Ireland
England
Scotland

8. Actions and issues

Country / Information
Wales / How can we demonstrate that adult learning impacts upon a wide range of policy areas eg health, crime, drugs, alcohol, building community cohesion; families etc ? We must advocate to government policies which are cross-cutting and which are supported by co-financing/partnership funding and embrace adult learning to optimise the impact of investment but also optimise effect. But how do we protect the identity of the experience, expertise and contribution of the communities of practice of adult learning without a dedicated funding stream?
Partnerships are key. How do we create proper partnerships – where there is trust, mutual respect, removing competition, engaging community learning eg memoranda of understanding, in the interests of the participants and communities.
Community, enterprise organisations use skills, knowledge and contributions from others, working in partnership eg adult ed; employers; public services etc Perhaps we must create models and approaches which help other policy areas, agencies and organisations to identify and factor- in to their development strategies and programmes the most relevant and effective partners, including adult learning.
Are JCP advisors equipped to understand the role of informal and ‘stepping stone’ learning? Will they work with existing partnerships, including ACL partnerships? Or under-mine and compete through tendering. This seems to be a time and resource-wasting approach, if partners are not involved in the planning or programmes.
At risk pupils assessed in years 10 and 11 engaging with Unlocking Potential: any intervention re family/inter-generational activities? Some SNAP Cymru intervention work (family intervention programme)
Could the interventions and different approach/attitude to pupils who are struggling in the school environment be spread more widely in schools to try to prevent exclusions ? Some teacher-development taking place to help this.
Work with young people and employability indicates the importance of lit, num and digital skills. A key issue for all administrations is that those who are ‘excluded’ also need support with digital, literacy and numeracy skills so we are often talking about the same people but classified under different themes or labels.
N Ireland / The Impact Forums are a great opportunity to share knowledge, ideas and development; there’s not enough of this in NI, especially between learning providers and Government bodies; collaboration is the key to success.
The current funding mechanism does not always support collaboration.
Co-design with employers and colleges re employability is a feature; it is felt that employability skills should be built into all college curricula
Family learning should be more widely funded and supported; this would help to break the cycle of un-employability between generations.
Voluntary organisations with key purposes which are not only about learning, see clearly the importance of including learning in their offer; should more of them become social enterprises?
Young adults often have some qualifications but no experience and lack the key employability skills; older unemployed adults often have experience and many key employability skills but no or low qualifications. Development programmes must respond to different people at different stages of life ie offer Lifelong Learning policy and practices; there are concerns about older people both in and out of work.
Current emphasis on employability is on young getting into work rather than also considering the needs of people who might progress in work or who have been in work for a long time and need to upskill/update skills. In an economy of 92% SMEs, such an approach can be very challenging for workplaces to fund employee development beyond the mandatory aspects of eg H and S.
Scotland has a policy, Statement of Ambition, to support all aspects of LL Learning; adult educators in other UK Administrations are keen to support something similar but how is this being resourced in the face of a predominant focus on training for work…any kind of work?
Inequities in health are often related to learning beyond school and qualifications; people with the lowest skills experience greater health poverty than those who are better educated and in work; health workers in the lowest grades receive the least learning and development. Learning is a key to addressing health inequities and inefficiencies in both providers and consumers.
IAG is seen as vital for all people who are seeking further learning and/or work. EGSA’s services are very much missed in NI.
England / Issues and questions related to: how might we promote employability skills for young people; who are the key partner organisations; how can organisations be supported to adopt the approach used?
Final materials for the ‘What employers want’ initiative to be circulated to all Impact Forums, when they are complete, after the pilot programme;
Links to volunteering opportunities were felt vital as stepping stones to employability skills development and then employment;
Encouraging all players to ‘join up’ is challenging eg careers services; parents; employers; learning and training providers;
Use of digital and social media seen as useful ways of helping people to participate – many people use Facebook but don’t see it as a platform for learning.
Scotland / If achievement awards and activity awards approaches work for young adults they can probably work for older adults too…a plea for Lifelong Learning so that no-one is denied opportunities
When is a young adult/person an adult? There is a danger that we ignore the young people who become over 25 years and are outside the ‘young person’ remit. Young people are adults and those under 25 years of age demonstrate the same profiles as those over 25 years (especially re employment/unemployment; family responsibilities; qualifications; work experience;) we should work to remove this artificial divide as it benefits neither the older or the younger adult
Employability principles – what employers want – are not age- dependent
Artificial divide between vocational skills, ‘soft skills’ and academic skills; advocacy must continue to make the argument that all these skills are needed in employment
Importance of ‘soft skills’ which employers demand – but not always addressed in employment policies nor recognised in the amount of time needed to develop the necessary basic skills (7 years in initial education but only a few weeks in training programmes or ABS programmes to address big challenges)
Certificates and qualifications are not measures of employability; they are part of wider indicators.
A plea for more research: Is it possible to draw on longitudinal studies which evidence the support, impact of social services, health services, offending etc which emerge as a result of low skills, lack of employment etc across the life course, and put a price on the cost to the public purse? This could be compared with the cost of intervention/prevention programmes, which seem to be offering high levels of success amongst young people (such as those which presented at the I Forum).
Is it possible to draw on Learning Communities Inspections evidence re what seems to work best for and with young people?
We should gather the support of employer organisations or ScottishTUC in the demand for valuing/funding ‘soft skills’ development. (There was a campaign in England, headed by Macdonalds and supported by many agencies, organisations and businesses – Backing Soft Skills – ‘soft skills/hard value’)
Feed questions re ‘soft skills’ and ‘wider achievements’ to the Strategic Forums.