Skills for Life Strategy and Action Plan


Wandsworth Council

Skills for Life

Strategy & Action Plan

1 April 2006 to 31 March 2009


Skills for Life Strategy

1 April 2006 to 31 March 2009

Summary of the Strategy

This three-year strategy sets out the Council’s intentions with regard to supporting the Skills for Life needs of Wandsworth Council employees. The strategy will be updated periodically to reflect changing needs.

National and Local Context

Skills for Life is the government’s strategy for improving basic skills, namely literacy, language, numeracy (LLN) and computer skills (ICT) of the population to the level necessary to function and progress at work and in society in general. Employees with poor skills in these areas may be less productive at work, earn less and are more likely to suffer from ill health and social exclusion.

The government has a target to improve the skills of 1.5 million adults by 2007 and has identified public sector employees as a priority group for improvement.

Extrapolation of the national statistics suggests that there are approximately 700 employees with low literacy and 2,600 with low numeracy in the Council.

Progress so far

There have been a number of Skills for Life activities including:

  • The Directors’ Board have agreed to support the Council’s Skills for Life initiative
  • A partnership has been formed between Council departments, training providers and the unions to support the Council’s Skills for Life initiative
  • Two literacy and numeracy programmes, in Social Services and Education
  • 30 Managers/supervisors have attended Skills for Life awareness briefing sessions
  • 13 Managers/supervisors have attended Skills for Life awareness one day workshops
  • The Council is a “Gold” member of the Plain English Campaign and actively promotes using plain English as part of Wandsworth’s “Delivering Excellence” initiative. Employees are encouraged to use plain English in their letters and reports, and undertake training courses to improve Plain English writing skills.

Challenges

There are a number of challenges to be met in implementing the strategy

  • Commitment to Skills for Life at managerial level
  • Identifying employees with Skills for Life needs
  • Providing access to learning opportunities for employees with Skills for Life needs
  • The operational and resources difficulties associated with giving employees time off for learning and assessment
  • Overcoming the stigma attached to Skills for Life needs

Key Priorities of the Strategy

Four key priorities have been identified for inclusion in this Strategy:

  • Identify the scale of Skills for Life needs within the Council
  • Provide access to flexible Skills for Life learning opportunities to all employees
  • Enable a range of staff including managers, supervisors, Union Learning Representatives, Human Resources etc. to support Skills for Life learning
  • Establish a sustainable framework for Skills for Life development and support

Review and evaluation

A number of qualitative and quantitative approaches will be taken to evaluate the success of the initiative. Progress will be monitored and reviewed regularly. The whole strategy will be reviewed annually in December.

Signature:Date

Gerald Jones

Chief Executive & Director of Administration

Introduction

This three-year strategy sets out the Council’s intentions with regard to supporting the Skills for Life initiative and is intended to address the particular needs of the Council and its employees. The strategy will be updated periodically to reflect changing needs.

Background

In 2001, the government launched the Skills for Life initiative, setting out a strategy for meeting the needs of the millions of adults who need help to improve their literacy, language and numeracy (LLN) skills. ICT skills have since been added to this basic skills framework. The aim is to improve basic skills in adults.

A subsequent survey on literacy and numeracy skills, commissioned by the Government, was published in 2003. The results were that 11% of employees in the public administration sector have poor levels of literacy and 39% have poor levels of numeracy. Poor levels are defined as adults who cannot read or write as well as the average 11-year old.

The Government’s targets are to raise the level of literacy and numeracy of the population to Level 2, which is the equivalent of GCSE grade A to C. This is the level (rather than Level 1) regarded as necessary to function and progress at work. According to the research undertaken, 45% of public sector employees do not have Level 2 literacy and 69% do not have Level 2 numeracy.

Basic skills are defined by the Basic Skills Agency as:

“The ability to read, write and speak English and to use mathematics at a level necessary to function at work and in society in general.”

In terms of the Council’s employees this could mean that levels of literacy and numeracy are:

a)Literacy - approximately 700 employees below Level 1 and 2300 below Level 2, and

b)Numeracy - approximately 2,600 with below Level 1 and 2,000 below Level 2.

This is illustrated in the chart on page 4.


The Council attempted its own estimate of Skills for Life needs; based on employees in manual grades, but with no distinction between literacy and numeracy. The resulting figure is approximately 1,300 (was 1500 last time?); this, however, is probably a conservative estimate, as skills for life needs are not exclusive to manual grades.

Why Skills for Life Matters

The Council has a reputation for delivering high quality services and is constantly seeking to sustain and improve on this deserved accolade.

It is essential to include Skills for Life needs when identifying areas for performance improvement bearing in mind that such a large percentage of the workforce may have such needs.

Potential benefits of addressing Skills for Life
For the Council / Compliance with legislation, particularly Health & Safety, and policies
Confidence in quality assurance processes
Improved audit outcomes
Higher productivity with less wastage and fewer errors
Improved staff efficiency
Improved timekeeping, absenteeism, and sickness
Improved staff retention
A workforce that is capable of accepting change, meeting future challenges and willing to continuously update their skills and knowledge
For employees / Ability to undertake the job competently and safely
Increased confidence, motivation, skills and personal performance
Achievement of nationally recognised qualifications
Improved ability to understand instructions, including those dealing with critically important health, safety and security issues
Improved communication with colleagues and service users
Empowerment to take advantage of training and development opportunities
Able to engage more fully with Best Value and Quality initiatives
Confidence to achieve promotion or change their employment/role
For service users / Improved customer services
Better communication with frontline workers
Improved access to services for users with Skills for Life needs
Improved health, safety and security compliance for vulnerable people
Better value for money

In summary, the anticipated benefits of embarking on the initiative are:

Better services for the residents and organisations of Wandsworth
Improved quality assurance
Increased performance and productivity
Clearer communication

Setting the Scene

Training

Skills for Life activities in the Council have so far developed at departmental level to address the needs of particular groups.

The Education department has been developing School Support Assistants to achieve a Level 2 NVQ qualification. This has highlighted the need for Skills for Life support for this group, which has been accessed in-house through the LifeLong Learning section.

The Social Services department have been working in partnership with MertonCollege over the last 2 years and have developed a very successful Level 1 literacy programme called “Care Start”. The programme is aimed specifically at staff working in social care such as children’s centre workers, home carers, residential workers and day centre workers. The programme is about to expand to offer double the number of places and will also be offered to foster carers.

To date, 115 staff have received literacy and numeracy support and 83 staff have achieved literacy and numeracy qualifications at Level 1 or 2. This number comprises School Support Staff and Social Care Workers. These groups predominate because literacy and numeracy assessment is a necessary prerequisite to required sector qualifications.

Strategic

The LifeLong Learning section, in the Education department, has developed a draft Skills for Life strategy that focuses mainly on the local community, but also takes in Council employees. They have secured funding to resource two online testing centres for literacy and numeracy Levels 1 and 2, accredited by the National Open College Network (NOCN) and two Skills for Life tutors to support the achievement of the qualifications. They are also participating in the Skills for Life Quality Initiative (with consultant support funded by the Learning & Skills Council), which encourages an understanding of Skills for Life amongst managers and team leaders.

Funding

Skills for Life courses are free to learners at the point of delivery. The costs of management, administration and work cover have been met by departments.

The Council was recently successful in a bid for funding of £30,000 from the London Development Agency. The main thrust of this project requires organisations to develop a corporate approach to supporting Skills for Life; the funds are to meet the costs of developing and co-ordinating this strategy.

The way forward

From this point we aim to build on the success of current activities and develop a new focus to raise awareness of Skills for Life amongst supervisors and managers at all levels with a view to establishing a common framework.

Approach

A whole organisation approach, with senior management representation from each of the seven departments, will be the overarching principle.

Working in Partnership

Strong emphasis is given to effective partnership working between Corporate Services, Council departments, learning providers (Education Lifelong Learning and 14-19 Services, MertonCollege and SouthThamesCollege) and the recognised trade unions. A list of current representatives is set out in AppendixA.

This strategy will also link to a number of other development plans, including: the Corporate Equality Plan, the WLEA (Wandsworth Local Education Authority) Skills for Life Strategy, Investors in People, WLSP (Wandsworth Local Strategic Partnership) and Workforce Development Plans.

Underlying principles

To ensure mutual ownership, and an accurate reflection of needs and priorities, there have been a number of open consultations with partners on the content of the Strategy and Action Plan. Final approval of the Strategy rested with the Steering Group.

All parties’ commitment to and support of this Strategy and subsequent updates will be signified by an agreement in this document, signed by the Chief Executive.

All learning opportunities will be offered within the Council’s Equal Opportunities framework and all staff and learners will be required to apply this principle. In particular, any programme delivered will comply with all legislation and embrace diversity.

Methodology

The methodology for carrying out a Skills for Life programme will be to build upon and expand existing Council initiatives (see page 6). Awareness raising, capacity building and the setting up of a framework for embedding Skills for Life in relevant systems and processes will provide a solid foundation for sustainable development.

Management of the project

The Steering Group, comprising at least one representative from each partner, will maintain an overview of the project. As chair of the Group, the Head of Corporate Services will keep the Council’s Directors’ Board informed of progress. The Steering Group will meet quarterly to make executive decisions and carry out monitoring and review. It has also given final approval to this Skills for Life Strategy and Action Plan before submission to the London Development Agency (LDA) and will deal with general publication and subsequent updates.

The Steering Group will also agree guidelines for expenditure from the LDA fund.

The Implementation Group, also comprises at least one representative from each partner It will meet bi-monthly to:

  • Drive forward the objectives of the Strategy and Action Plan
  • Monitor and review progress of objectives and report to the Steering Group

Financial expenditure will be submitted to, and approved, by the Steering Group. A separate cost centre will be used for the purposes of the funding provided by the LDA. Proper accounts will be managed and produced by the Finance Department.

Monitoring

The project will be closely monitored and reviewed by the Skills for Life Implementation Group (Implementation Group) and report to the Steering Group. Monitoring reports will include:

  • Project review summary with proposals for development of the project
  • Report on project expenditure
  • Performance against targets set in the Action Plan
  • Equal opportunities data

Evaluation

The Implementation Group will evaluate significant activities such as marketing on an ongoing basis. There will be annual evaluations of the whole project against the Strategy and Action Plan, with a final evaluation at the end of the three-year period of this Strategy.

The evaluations will contain:

  • Analysis of the performance targets
  • Analysis of project costs
  • Anecdotal review of the project
  • Key recommendations for carrying the project forward

The final evaluation will also include:

  • Proposals for a Skills for Life Strategy for a further term

Key Challenges

There are number of challenges that are likely to impact upon the Skills for Life agenda, with the main ones being:

Commitment to Skills for Life

Staff at all levels need to be informed and committed.

Awareness raising will play a crucial part in convincing managers of the business benefits of addressing this need. Those London Councils which are already engaged in supporting Skills for Life have reported that some of their managers did not attach sufficient importance to Skills for Life needs and were not willing to investresources in addressing this aspect of workforce development.

Prior to the Government’s campaign, Skills for Life was not perceived as a significant issue in the workplace. The strong case made by the Government’s strategy, supported by national research, highlights the need for a framework for identifying and supporting employees with Skills for Life needs. The framework would include identifying and supporting employees with Skills for Life needs within systems and processes for recruitment, induction, appraisal and workforce development. Strong commitment throughout the organisation will be necessary to make such changes possible.

Since all local authorities are being encouraged to address Skills for Life needs of their employees, it would make sense to work with other London Boroughs to benchmark framework standards and share information on these activities.

Identifying employees with Skills for Life needs

With the exception of the national statistics for the local government workforce (see page3), the Council has no available data on how many employees have Skills for Life needs or where they work.

There are likely to be additional Skills for Life needs for staff who are already at Level 2 as these issues can affect everyone in some way; difficulties with composing letters and reports or working out percentages and doing chart analysis are Skills for Life needs. It could, then, be said that nearly all employees may need, or want to, “brush up” on such skills.

Without a more accurate picture of Skills for Life needs in the Council it will be difficult to target particular groups and measure effectiveness of the initiative. It is therefore important to build a picture of the extent of Skills for Life needs of the Council’s employees. In order to do this as efficiently as possible, we will commence by using extrapolation of the public sector statistics (700 low literacy, 2600 low numeracy) as our baseline for potential interest.

We will also make use of available data from the separate departments where Skills for Life needs have been identified in their normal staff development plans.

The information will be collated for analysis and will provide information that will link with other strategies such as the Corporate Equality Plan, the LifeLong Learning Strategy and the Wandsworth Strategic Partnership.

Providing access to learning opportunities for employees with Skills for Life needs

We need to create partnerships with learning providers to deliver quality learning opportunities with the flexibility to meet learner and business needs.

In addition, managers, learning and development personnel and union learning representatives are all ideally placed for supporting these employees. Specialised training and a co-ordinated approach will be required to develop this kind of support.

A sustained marketing plan is also needed to drive the strategy forward on the ground. As well as the support network described above, employees should be encouraged to selfadvocate.

Operational and resources issues

As Skills for Life is a new initiative, the effective resourcing of its management and coordination should be addressed. To some extent Skills for Life can be absorbed in personnel roles; however, there is a need for a central co-ordinator to monitor activities and avoid duplication of effort.

Some sections of the Council are expected to generate income to cover their operational costs. Indeed, there are some that have to compete for Council tenders to carry out work. The anticipated cost of allowing employees paid time off work to attend courses and providing a substitute worker is, understandably, an issue.

We need to canvass other organisations with similar business structures for advice on how to reach agreement on this.