Agenda item

To consider the attached report.

The Executive Board AGREED to:

(a) Extend Form the Future’s contract for a further 12 months, from September 2017 to August 2018.

(b) Set aside £160,000 for the academic year 2017/18 and assume a continuation of funding for a brokerage service in 2018/19 at approximately the same funding level.

(c) Review the focus and targets for the period 2017/18 and begin contract negotiations along these lines;

(d) Set aside £35,000 for the period January to December 2017 and assume a continuation of this into 2018 to develop Career Champions in schools.

(e) Endorse the approach to progressing with the development of Labour Market Information to inform the Information Advice and Guidance for young people, adults, providers, parents and employers and support the work of the Local Skills Service and National Careers Service.

(f) Begin negotiations with Cambridge Regional College to develop an outcome based activity plan that would support businesses to understand the changes in relation to apprenticeships and the levy and carry out Training Needs Analysis to help businesses to identify their skills needs.

(g) Endorse a revised approach to how progress was measured towards the 420 apprenticeship starts and gain agreement from the Skills Funding Agency and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to this approach.

(h) Endorse this approach to recording and monitoring the additional skills related to outcomes in the City Deal.

The Executive Board considered a report which reviewed the progress made from September 2015 to August 2016 against the skills related commitments articulated in the City Deal agreement.

Stella Cockerill, Skills Lead from the City Deal Partnership, presented the report which focussed on the following three key areas:

a review of the performance of the Local Skills Service, facilitated by Form the Future;
a review of progress against the skills related commitments in the City Deal;
a review about the way progress was measured in the future.

It was noted that the skills related commitments undertaken, which were general as opposed to being focussed on STEM based growth sectors alone, included the following:

creation of a locally funded skills team to work with small and medium enterprises in the area to develop training plans and act as co-ordinators to ensure training aligned with employer need;
establishment of a skills action plan for each of the priority sectors, including identifying the apprenticeship framework offer;
creation of locally funded adult careers teams to enhance information advice and guidance in growth sectors based on strong labour market information;
developing labour market intelligence to inform the provision of information, advice and guidance for young people, providers, parents and employers;
working closely with the National Careers Service local offer.

Over five years, from 2014/15, it had been agreed that the City Deal would deliver:

420 additional apprenticeships to support growth sectors;
50 more employers engaging with schools and colleges;
25 more employers engaging with traineeships;
150 more employers raised awareness of apprenticeships.

The Skills Service had undertaken one full year of delivery and an evaluation of the first year of the skills programme was appended to the report. Stella Cockerill reported that the Service had demonstrated a good level of engagement with employers and schools, with indications to date showing that this was working and making a difference. She highlighted that the position nationally in relation to skills and apprenticeships had changed significantly since the City Deal agreement was first made. She made the point, in respect of growth areas, that recognition had to be given to the fact that businesses themselves would set out where they needed to grow, therefore meaning that some of the 420 additional apprenticeships would not necessarily fit into the STEM based growth sectors originally selected as priorities for the City Deal. She added, however, that on a more wider perspective all apprenticeships still supported local economic growth.

Councillor Tim Bick, Member of the Joint Assembly, provided an update on behalf of the Assembly’s Skills Sub-Group which had operated as a sounding board in the preparation of this report and the recommendations contained within, which it supported. He said that the report brought forward a strategic view of what was trying to be achieved and provided a model for discussing the skills thread of the City Deal as it moved forward.

Councillor Bick reported that the City Deal had established a wider view of the Skills Service as a result of this workstream. This service helped young people to understand their career options and develop their employability through contact with employers. He emphasised, however, that this was only one aspect of the service, with the others being:

· demand from employers who understood the business case for investment in skills and how to go about accessing the rest of the system;

· provision of relevant training and vocational education programmes by providers who understood employer need and were responsive to it.

Councillor Bick said that these two issues presented the Skills Service with some particular challenges to overcome but that the recommendations contained within the report sought to address them.

Councillor Bick highlighted the long discussion that took place at the meeting of the Joint Assembly on 3 November 2016 in respect of how progress against its target of 420 additional apprenticeships should be measured. He understood the many comments expressed at that meeting but was of the opinion that the Board should give itself a realistic chance of success in this area as well as having a realistic view of growth. He said that those top priorities for the Board in terms of STEM based growth sectors would continue to be the drivers for the Service, but the Skills Sub-Group had recognised that including additional apprenticeships solely in these sectors would not enable the Board to achieve what was originally intended when the City Deal agreement was signed with regards to achieving 420 additional apprenticeships.

Councillor Roger Hickford, Chairman of the Joint Assembly, reiterated that significant debate had ensued on this item at the last meeting of the Assembly. He reflected on the Assembly’s membership, comprising a mix of elected Members together with representatives of the business sector and further education institutions, which he felt had greatly contributed to that debate and had provided effective challenge and consideration of the issue. He reported that the main point of discussion was around the table set out in the report at paragraph 31 which outlined the high, medium and low apprenticeship categories and that the Joint Assembly agreed with the recommendation to include all categories when measuring apprenticeships against the City Deal target.

Councillor Francis Burkitt was very supportive of this workstream, highlighting that the City Deal was not solely about transport schemes. He was pleased with the Service’s performance over the last 12 months and said that it was delivering well against its key performance indicators. Performance to date had focussed more on education than with employers and in asking whether it was the intention to place more emphasis on employers it was noted that the proposed review of performance indicators sought to achieve this. This would include a much greater focus on the monitoring of outputs.

Councillor Burkitt sought clarity regarding the breakdown of additional apprenticeships achieved to date, together with an understanding of the baseline information that had been provided and which the 420 additional apprenticeships were being measured against.

It was noted that the academic year for 2013/14 had been used as a baseline. This consisted of 1078 apprenticeships in all frameworks and sectors, including traineeships and apprenticeships at Levels 2, 3 and 4 for those commencing solely in the Greater Cambridge area as identified by the delivery postcode of the provider or employer location. 214 of those apprenticeships for the 2013/14 academic year were in apprenticeship frameworks or standards aligned to the City Deal’s identified growth sectors categorised as the following types of apprenticeships:

· science and mathematics;

· engineering and manufacturing technologies, not including transportation, operations and maintenance;

· construction, planning and the built environment;

· information and communication technologies, not including for users.

In terms of progress made there were 1097 apprenticeship starts across all sectors in the 2014/15 academic year, which was an increase of 19 from 2013/14. 275 of the 1097 starts were in apprenticeship frameworks or standards related to the City Deal’s growth sectors.

For the 2015/16 academic year, non-validated information indicated that this had increased to 1100 apprenticeships in total across all sectors, an increase of 3 from the previous year, and 328 of the 1100 starts were in apprenticeship frameworks or standards in the City Deal’s growth sectors.

In taking the baseline of 1078 apprenticeships across all sectors, the target for 2018/19 for all additional apprenticeships was 1498. The Skills Service was aiming for an additional 365 apprenticeships over the next two years across all sectors and it was anticipated that, if the current trends continued,most of this would come from the growth sectors.

Based on the current trajectory, it was noted that the target of 420 additional apprenticeships based on all sectors across the length of the tranche 1 programme was in itself a challenging target to meet. Councillor Burkitt questioned the intention and interpretation of the original City Deal agreement to achieve 420 additional apprenticeships solely in growth areas. Based on the information presented, he accepted that this was a target which could never be realistically met and therefore agreed that additional apprenticeships in all sectors should be counted.

Councillor Burkitt asked where the information derived from and how often this could be presented to the Executive Board. Stella Cockerill explained that the Local Enterprise Partnership had access to the data which could be presented five times a year although it was noted that some of this may not be validated until the completion of a full academic year. It was agreed that updates could be provided the Board on a quarterly basis.

Councillor Lewis Herbert, Chairman of the Executive Board, put on record his thanks to the Skills Service which he said had taken this aspect of the skills workstream to a far better level and was effectively linking up the key strands. He added that this work had demonstrated leadership from the Local Enterprise Partnership and an impressive performance by Form the Future. He also took this opportunity to thank the Joint Assembly’s Skills Sub-group for its contributions.