Employment and Skills Committee - Thursday 15 February 2024, 12:30pm - West Yorkshire Combined Authority Webcasting

Employment and Skills Committee
Thursday, 15th February 2024 at 12:30pm 

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  1. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  2. Myles Larrington, Committee Services Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
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  1. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
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  1. Myles Larrington, Committee Services Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  2. Cllr Eleanor Thomson (Leeds City Council)
  3. Dr Milton Brown, Private Representative
  4. Dr Milton Brown, Private Representative
  5. Alex Miles, Advisory Representative (West Yorkshire Skills Partnership)
  6. Peter Glover, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  7. Phillipa Syers, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  8. Sonya Midgley, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  9. Cllr Elizabeth Reynolds (Kirklees Council)
  10. Phil Day, Advisory Representative (Trades Union Congress, Yorkshire & the Humber)
  11. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  12. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  13. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  14. Michelle Burton, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  15. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  16. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  17. Peter Glover, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  18. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  19. Cllr Elizabeth Reynolds (Kirklees Council)
  20. Colin Booth, Advisory Representative (Further Education)
  21. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  22. Colin Booth, Advisory Representative (Further Education)
  23. Cllr Peter Kilbane (York Council)
  24. Colin Booth, Advisory Representative (Further Education)
  25. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  26. Colin Booth, Advisory Representative (Further Education)
  27. Cllr Elizabeth Reynolds (Kirklees Council)
  28. Natasha Barbar-Evans, Advisory Representative (Voluntary & Community Sector)
  29. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  30. Colin Booth, Advisory Representative (Further Education)
  31. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  32. Alex Miles, Advisory Representative (West Yorkshire Skills Partnership)
  33. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  34. Peter Glover, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  35. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  36. Peter Glover, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  37. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  38. Shirley Congdon (Private Sector Representative)
  39. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  40. Shirley Congdon (Private Sector Representative)
  41. Tim Thornton, Advisory Representative (West Yorkshire Skills Partnership)
  42. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  43. Colin Booth, Advisory Representative (Further Education)
  44. Alex Miles, Advisory Representative (West Yorkshire Skills Partnership)
  45. Alex Miles, Advisory Representative (West Yorkshire Skills Partnership)
  46. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  47. Shirley Congdon (Private Sector Representative)
  48. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  49. Shirley Congdon (Private Sector Representative)
  50. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  51. Phil Day, Advisory Representative (Trades Union Congress, Yorkshire & the Humber)
  52. Shirley Congdon (Private Sector Representative)
  53. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
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  1. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  2. Michelle Burton, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  3. Colin Booth, Advisory Representative (Further Education)
  4. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  5. Colin Booth, Advisory Representative (Further Education)
  6. Colin Booth, Advisory Representative (Further Education)
  7. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  8. Michelle Burton, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  9. Colin Booth, Advisory Representative (Further Education)
  10. Cllr Jo Hepworth (Wakefield Council)
  11. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  12. Michelle Burton, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  13. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  14. Cllr Jo Hepworth (Wakefield Council)
  15. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  16. Shirley Congdon (Private Sector Representative)
  17. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  18. Cllr Elizabeth Reynolds (Kirklees Council)
  19. Natasha Barbar-Evans, Advisory Representative (Voluntary & Community Sector)
  20. Colin Booth, Advisory Representative (Further Education)
  21. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  22. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  23. Michelle Burton, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  24. Michelle Burton, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  25. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  26. Colin Booth, Advisory Representative (Further Education)
  27. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  28. Michelle Burton, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  29. Colin Booth, Advisory Representative (Further Education)
  30. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  31. Shirley Congdon (Private Sector Representative)
  32. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  33. Michelle Burton, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  34. Tim Thornton, Advisory Representative (West Yorkshire Skills Partnership)
  35. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  36. Colin Booth, Advisory Representative (Further Education)
  37. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  38. Michelle Burton, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  39. Cllr Jo Hepworth (Wakefield Council)
  40. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  41. Sharon Riding, Advisory Representative Department of Work and Pensions
  42. Sharon Riding, Advisory Representative Department of Work and Pensions
  43. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
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  1. Sonya Midgley, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  2. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  3. Alex Miles, Advisory Representative (West Yorkshire Skills Partnership)
  4. Sonya Midgley, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  5. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  6. Tim Thornton, Advisory Representative (West Yorkshire Skills Partnership)
  7. Shirley Congdon (Private Sector Representative)
  8. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  9. Dr Milton Brown, Private Representative
  10. Tim Craven Private Representative
  11. Dr Milton Brown, Private Representative
  12. Sonya Midgley, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  13. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
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  1. Phillipa Syers, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  2. Phillipa Syers, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  3. Peter Glover, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  4. Peter Glover, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  5. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  6. Cllr Elizabeth Reynolds (Kirklees Council)
  7. Colin Booth, Advisory Representative (Further Education)
  8. Cllr Elizabeth Reynolds (Kirklees Council)
  9. Natasha Barbar-Evans, Advisory Representative (Voluntary & Community Sector)
  10. Peter Glover, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  11. Cllr Elizabeth Reynolds (Kirklees Council)
  12. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  13. Phil Day, Advisory Representative (Trades Union Congress, Yorkshire & the Humber)
  14. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
Share this agenda point
  1. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  2. Michelle Burton, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  3. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  4. Cllr Elizabeth Reynolds (Kirklees Council)
  5. Natasha Barbar-Evans, Advisory Representative (Voluntary & Community Sector)
  6. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  7. Cllr Jo Hepworth (Wakefield Council)
  8. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  9. Michelle Burton, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  10. Tim Thornton, Advisory Representative (West Yorkshire Skills Partnership)
  11. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  12. Cllr Eleanor Thomson (Leeds City Council)
  13. Dr Milton Brown, Private Representative
  14. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  15. Colin Booth, Advisory Representative (Further Education)
  16. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  17. Shirley Congdon (Private Sector Representative)
  18. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  19. Colin Booth, Advisory Representative (Further Education)
  20. Colin Booth, Advisory Representative (Further Education)
  21. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  22. Colin Booth, Advisory Representative (Further Education)
  23. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  24. Dr Milton Brown, Private Representative
  25. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  26. Michelle Burton, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  27. Cllr Elizabeth Reynolds (Kirklees Council)
  28. Michelle Burton, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  29. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  30. Dr Milton Brown, Private Representative
  31. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  32. Alex Miles, Advisory Representative (West Yorkshire Skills Partnership)
  33. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
  34. Michelle Burton, Officer (West Yorkshire Combined Authority)
  35. Cllr Cathy Scott (Kirklees Council)
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I introduce myself, my name is Councillor Cathy Scott and the Leader of Kent police council and the newly appointed chair, so you have to be patient with me, I'm new to this, but we will get through, can I remind everybody today that it is being broadcast on streamed anybody that does enter the room with are consenting to being filmed, so if we move on can I ask Miles Lamington to tell us about any absences please.
apologies for absence had been received from Nicky Davies, smelting, Hathaway Councillor, Imran Khan and Dr Peter O'Brien Chair.
thank you for that. I presume that's going to be some late arrival, so hopefully they'll get to yet so, as we move on declarations of interest, other any declarations of interests to be declared, if you do have them, can you ensure that you actually provide us with a spot, I'll actually bring, I'm not too sure who is, did you indicate to speak no, no, OK, so I think before we go any further, I think can introduction might be an order because I'm not familiar with a lot of people in the room, so I'll start from my right
Ashley Content vice chancellor University Bradford, and supporting Councillor Scott as Deputy Chair.
Miles, Laurenson Committee Services Officer
Good afternoon, Councillor Alan Thompson from Leeds City Council.
Councillor Joe Harper Hepworth from Wakefield to the Council.
Nutbrown, CEO of Kettley's local TV, as a private sector representative.
it was afternoon Tim Cohen, private sector representative.
Good afternoon all I was managing director of Yorkshire learning providers.
Peter Glover, research and intelligence at the Combined Authority.
picasso's adult skills manager at the Combined Authority.
Sandwich lay employment and skills policy lead for the Combined Authority.
Sharon Ryding, Strategic Policy Manager for GWP
Carolyn Townsley, West and North Yorkshire Chamber, representing Martin Hathaway from Mid Yorkshire Chamber, Natasha, Barbara Evans, CEO of better connect our representing BCC sector Phil Day West Yorkshire skills project worker representing two years.
Colin Booth and CEO, of illuminate education group, representing further education colleges.
thank you, so we're moving on to Item 3, are there any possible exclusion from the press and the public and then no items on this agenda for that, so we'll move on to item 4 minutes of the previous meeting held on the 19th of October, can we agree these minutes or as or any amendments she wished to have?
I take that as your supporting these minutes. This okay removed, so I'll just give you a quick update regarding the UK's S P pillar for sorry pillar 3 people have the skills, but was it the 12th of January? This is a good number of applications that have come through and which are currently being assessed and will be able to show you more information soon. So there will be a timeline on that and that will be brought back to you. There's also about elite level for devolution that should have gone through the Committee. Is there anything else on that really, that that needs to be highlighted? So it's gone through the Committee
so tie timescales for a response to Labour for devolution framework didn't allow for a detailed discussion here, but the Combined Authority and local authorities have been working closely together to understand the implications of the level 4 devolution framework, which was published.
lay in late in 2023 and at the end of January they submitted a letter to and a letter to government that sought to progress in all areas of the level 4 devolution framework, which for this committee will be particularly interested and included further commitment to a more devolved adult skills system and in particular with increased flexibility on adult skills programmes and an
to enable local areas to be central conveners of carers' provision and in their regions.
although it's important to note that the full detail is actually contingent and dependent on the outcome and the implementation of trailblazer deals elsewhere in the country.
so thank you for that, there's also the white-walled programme that appears to be going really well, we're working closely with West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board and the job centres, the Combined Authority and local authorities, we have submitted an application to deliver the government worthwhile programme in West shocked it, so that's a good news programme for us as well, does anybody have any comments on that?
OK, so we're going to move on to Item 6, I believe that it's Peter Gallagher that it's going to be introducing the economic and sector reporting.
culture, so I'll have some slouch, I'm going to attempt to bring up.
so the purpose of this item.
used to provide some context around current emerging labour market trends to inform the discussions of the Committee. So there's a lot of content in the paper and the supporting appendix so I don't propose to go through it all. I'm gonna focus on some specific items within the papers where we have new data or where there's been some notable change, but obviously I'm happy to answer any questions on any ask that aspect of the paper. So the three areas I'm going to focus on the real living wage
apprenticeships and also the general situation in the labour market, which I think shows continue continued evidence of softening and cooling of labour market conditions. So I'm going to kick off with the real living wage aspect and you find a slide on page 20 of your pack, which is also upon screen, which deals with this, and this real living wage is of interest to us because it links into the mayor's fair work charter and also so that means there is a key dimension of quality work pay. Obviously, but also it's the benchmark that we use within the adult education budget to determine whether some of these low paid and therefore eligible
for preferential access to to provision so we can update on the real living wage, because new data is recently being published by an O and S.
just to give you a quick bit of background on the living wage, the living Wage Foundation, real living wage is independently calculated based on what people need to get buy into me everyday needs and the level that was set at the time the data was collected and presenting here was 10 pounds 90 per hour it's actually gone up to 12 times since then.
so the proportion of jobs paying below the real living wage was 14% in 2023 and that in West Yorkshire and that equates to 131,000 jobs falling below the threshold across West Yorkshire.
it's a slightly above the national average of 13%, and it's little changed in 2023 in West Yorkshire compared with 2022.
but it's around 4% points lower than in 2021, and I think it's fair to say the inflation research we've seen hasn't impacted on the real living wage on the proportionate drops below the reeling wage as much as we probably anticipated, but these figures are still for sort of April 2023 you can see that as a mixed picture at local authority level so Carclaze and Bradford have the highest proportion of jobs paying below the real living wage Calderdale and Leeds the lowest White Fields in the middle.
I've not presented in this chart, but an important as an important they're important messages linked to the sex and status of workers, so women are much more likely to be paid below the real living wage than men, so 18% of women and 11% of men, and that's primarily because women are much more likely to work part time, so there are big differences between the hourly rate of pay of proportion of jobs falling below the real living wage on that basis, so 8% of full-time jobs below the real living wage, but 33% of part-time jobs below the real living wage and male part time workers are paid. The worst of all 36% of jobs for that group are paid below the real living wage. So the second that area that I'd like to focus on
is relating to apprenticeships.
and you can find the relevant slides in page 20 pages 24 to 26 of your pack, so since the last meeting of the committee, new data has become available for the 2022 23 academic year. So briefly, going to go through that and of course apprenticeships are important to us because it provided a route into a sustainable career for individuals and also a source of technical skills to meet employment needs. So I think the key message here is that the post pandemic recovery in apprenticeship starts has largely stalled in 22 23, so there were 15,793 apprenticeship starts during the academic year, but that represents a very small
fall of about 56 compared with the previous year, whereas at national level, stocks grew by 3%, which is still, which is still a low growth curve, so the level of stocks in 22 23 was around 3,000 or 16% below its level in 2018 19 before the pandemic, so there's still a lot of ground to recover.
as you can see from the slide, on page 24, there have been declines at all levels, except for high level, apprenticeships and a decline for all age groups, except for a small degree of growth for older 19.
higher apprenticeships are the only segment to follow, will not put up a trend throughout the period that we're looking at here and that's partly due to the influence of the levy, but what can also see is a big decrease in intermediate apprenticeships over the period on slide 25 you can see the picture for subject areas.
and there was a growth ratio, a few subject areas so health, public services and care, and ICT at both grow both grew, but most subject areas are still below their pre pandemic level, with a couple of except with a few exceptions, including ICT and construction, but you can see that business administration and law is well below pre pandemic levels.
at local authority level, it's a mixed picture as well, so you can see a small degree of growth for Bradford and Coakley's about varying decreed degrees of decline for the others, and they're all still well below pre pandemic levels.
so I'd like to move on to now is the evidence I mentioned if the cooling of the labour market, I'm thinking there's a range of evidence, supports that view, the slides that relate to the Sydney alpaca on pages 27 to 34.
and of course, this situation has an important implications, for example in terms of demand for employment support services, the demands placed upon A B by say, an increase in unemployed workers and also demand for apprenticeships and other programmes.
what I would say is that it appears that we reached a turning point in the economy and local labour market in July of last year.
I'm not going to explore the data in too much detail, but what we can see from the first few slides is, first of all, a slowing of employment, growth and a sort of flattening since the summer. We can also, and that applies across local authority districts, and we can also see a moderation of pay growth, although that date is a little bit inconclusive and we can also see a very fairly modest uptake in the claimant count accounts of people who were claiming benefits primarily because they're unemployed. But for me the real bellwether indicator is the downturn in vacancies that we can see
reflected in the count of online job postings at the trend was very robust from early 2021 up until recent months, but you can see that it's fallen quite sharply since then.
what we can also see is that.
that decline is now spreading across the full range of occupational categories, so the occupations that have seen the sharpest falls are areas like information technology which saw really big increases during the pandemic and the aftermath, but they're now declining back to sort of normal levels if you like, but we can also see that say occupational that hospitality and tourism, as well as starting to see decline. So I would also caveat the salsa by saying that the labour market is still strong in historic terms, so we compare pre pandemic before the sort of the sort of boom that we saw from 2021 onwards and may well stabilise, but it is something that we need to. We need to keep
a sort of
and I own, so that's it from me, Chair back to you.
thank you if there are any comments on that paper.
yes.
I I'd just like to highlight something that the Peter didn't cover, but it's in the paper that West Yorkshire's prevalence of young people who were NEET or not in employment, education or training, which is above the national average in Bradford and then particularly above the national average in Leeds which at 9.00.2% is in,
a small group of the worst.
NEET figures in the country now, in terms of local authorities, my concern is that that figure is likely to go up next year, it's not because of a lack of engagement, it's because of a lack of appropriate places in post 16 education in Leeds in particular.
so it's a fundamental planning issue, not not an engagement issue.
OK, Peter, do you want to come back on that?
yes, I think I think we've we've discusses at previous meetings bits, and it is an important point to raise, then the next set of data NEET data should be available quite shortly, so the kind of benchmark period.
use each year is December to February, so obviously we're getting towards the middle of February now, so we should we should have, we should have an updated position so we can see, but whether things have worsened so yeah, obviously it's a really key point.
Councillor Peter, yes.
hi yeah, I just wanted to say that foreign Central have just done a workforce pressures survey actually Johnny, as of January 2024, which is in respect of BCFC organisations.
they are struggling and this survey basically identifies staff retention as being a major challenge, high turnover rates, you have some VCC sector organisations having to dip into reserves to to survive, so I just wanted to highlight them as a major contributor to actually supporting economically inactive adults, the healthcare so we talk about work well I think the CCSC sector can really add huge amounts of value but the survey was quite eye-opening in terms of the sector struggling as well.
briefly, come back on on what pizza would be great, to look at the current data, that's looking in the rear-view mirror and it may have gone, it may be the same, it may be slightly more or slightly less looking forwards.
until we resolve the planning issue, the number of NEETs will grow.
thank you yes.
yeah just on that, particularly in Leeds and Bradford like he said.
but while we've got local authority representatives here, it's worth mentioning that it is absolutely a planning issue, no doors are shut and there's not enough neat provision available for young people, and the DfE's response is very adamant that they won't go back out to procurement. So what you've got in your districts is what you've got, but what they absolutely will do is support growth, but that growth has to be initiated by the local authority. So I think it's important to raise that with the local authorities are really the gatekeepers to making sure that there is more neat provision and funding can go into the districts, doesn't super-healthy colleges if your places are full, but there are alternative providers that could provide that they don't so it could get growth, but this needs to be led by the local authority, so the day if we will support growth there weren't support no, but it's the local authorities that are the gatekeepers to that growth, so I think that's worth mentioning,
thank you just one thing Peter, that I wanted to mention is point 2.6 about the reader technical issues on the INS dataset which data is the right one to monitor and is it dependent, can we rely on it basically?
just bear with me, while I will find the relevant.
the pack
yeah, so there have been issues with the Labour Force Survey, which is a source of much of the labour market data that's available, both at national and local level, and no one is going to be making improvements to that.
in
there have been issues, so I guess what I'm suggesting is that there is a need to kind of calibrate both the Labour Force Survey base data with the HMR date and use both of those to kind of get an impression of what what the picture is, but hopefully the United States is going to improve now that there may be improvements doing to boost the sample sizes and and correct the the sort of non-response bias.
affected the data, thank you for that, Peter, as there are any further questions.
yes.
yeah, it's really a point about one or two points for anyone about the comments on the apprenticeship programmes and the the decline generally the decline and I'm sure Cullinan Alex and my colleague Tim might have something to add to this point, but I do wonder whether it would be helpful for us to to some sort of combined view of is that a problem with generating demand from them and points.
and or is it something to do with with with Ms mismatch, I know from a higher education perspective last?
universities are still interested in delivering apprenticeship programmes where they can get the volume an awful lot of demand to to make sure that it's gonna be cost effective to run, but we spend quite a lot of time with employers trying to engage in discussions on that and it is quite challenging.
I'd like to me.
not speaking on behalf of the University of Huddersfield, but noting the outstanding of apprenticeship, Ofsted outcome recently for the University of Huddersfield, I would second what Shirley says about the challenges of working, particularly with smaller to medium-sized employers, were most HC eyes that's not through lack of willingness.
on the part of HA as it's the in flexibilities of the system, and I know this has been said so many times, but it is worth saying again we are looking forward, obviously potentially to policy change that might bring more flexibility in the use of the levy and I know HPA's are looking to that in advance.
thank you Chair.
yeah, so just just the seems correct, the the system is.
extremely difficult for employees to negotiate, so in the end its employer demands that the that the problem but employ them, or you look further into that an employer demand is impacted on by the complexity of the system.
the other comment when you look at the data, I suppose, asks the question, what do we want from the apprenticeship system because if you look at the numbers of apprentices then I'm sure Tim and Shirley would agree, you can see the number of higher level apprenticeships has been going up very strongly.
and that's been a priority in the system.
what that means is the number of low level apprentices has been going down.
so there is a question about what we want from the system as well as in, I think everybody would agree that the that the way the bureaucracy works need to be simplified, but then we need some clear policy statements on what is the certainly to do lots more, unlike the training provided and unlike the colleges and so I think they are in listening mode for the first time in a long time to use that opportunity haitch haitch sea ice while you've got Derry and sea ice while you have the area and because I do think we can now more than ever shape and change there.
the landscapes approach, I don't think it's an employer demand issue, I think it's just it's a long windy system yeah thanks for your comments, Minister might be helpful if maybe through Yorkshire universities and the Combined Authority together we could produce something that we would want to send in terms of yeah, a bit of pressure to add to the DFC.
case or any further comments.
could I just make sure it's just one final comment just on the the presentation and and the FA and the forward look in point that Colin mentioned I was just struck by the the point beneath the neat position, but also when you look at the other slide slide 21, you know the real living wage slide, the lack of pay growth, et cetera, et cetera, collectively, it's all pointing to a real need for us to have a really strong focus on an owner on our young people stronger. So I know Colin mentioned that point about planning, but what else can we bring to bear?
when we see it in the round, it is pretty miserable.
nothing that's a really valid point and the other slot, so we would be fortunate when the two you'll see West Yorkshire to get funding from Combined Authority to employer firework, jobs, project worker and the five pillars that were in effect for Wiltshire to pay their remit will be to go out and support that real living wage increase and think around all those aspects.
and it's not just them, it's not just a direct union, elements within those five pillars is also the learning side of things and negotiating and recognition and things like that, so I think that's a really really valid point, this will probably find that a lot of valiant people and personal are categorised as needs and probably living in families that are detailed below they've been living with etc etc families and,
thank you, Peter, thanks for your time and effort spent on this paper, it's really appreciated, so will go on to Item 7, the school system review and Alan Bytes Michelle Burton in to present this paper, thank you very much chat.
sorry, thank you very much chat, and so this committee will be really aware of a lot of the strategic work that that's already taken place on the employment and skills agenda, so we have an employment and skills framework which was published in 2021, which feels like an awfully long time ago, and while a lot of the kind of context and the priorities that are set out in that framework remain really current, the context has changed quite a lot.
following on from the discussion, we've had not least the role of combined authorities in in the system but also, and things like that and like apprenticeship levy policy and and future devolution as well, we also, of course hosted in West Yorkshire an independent future Eddie skills Commission which considered an egg in great detail and how the employment and skills system could better work in a devolved context and I said I've included as a reminder in the paper in the in an appendix and some of the recommendations from that.
and that commission and as
as the pace of the pace of off of change and and regional, particularly and regional, local influence over the employment and skills system is developing so quickly, and particularly in context of the in the context of potential.
level 4 devolution framework that we summarised at the beginning and it's really timely to look at and an operating model for employment and skills in West Yorkshire and particularly to give stakeholders the chance to move quickly when sometimes developments don't don't allow don't allow that thinking to take place then so point to some of the timescales for we've we've just authorised while there's a really good example where the timescales were really short and so it seems really timely to look at an operating model for employment and skills.
we have a real mix of of of reasonably led activity that some of which, some of which, of course, that the education budget is fully devolved, others which characterises being delegated at reasonable levels, so you know, they're fully there, the rules are fully formed and then passed down to be implemented at regional level and then others are contracted and brought by national government and operating models vary.
accordingly, and with deeper devolution potentially imminent, it seems really timely to look at at how we have worked together in the role of of actors in in the space and linked to that, and four of the local authority areas actually have employment and skills boards which are constituted really differently.
they vary, the vary in their make-up, they vary in their scope in how their chads.
and this committee is asked to consider how best we can join up the governance with those groups.
how whether and how you would like them to represented here?
and whether it would be of benefit to see greater consistency in in those local groups, both in terms of their terms of reference, their makeup.
and and their remit as well, so there is a and and so the the the review of the skill system.
this this committee is, is its is made up to date with that with this this update, I'm made aware that that were that the intention is that that will progress really quickly with.
organisations being invited to to deliver that work over the coming weeks.
from some show, well, I hope I'm going to say something boo boo or abuse, yes.
I would support were being a more logical and rational structure rather than with a somewhat random one, so yes, it would be a good idea to have some standard terms of reference and standard structure to achieve.
the boards and the local areas, and to state the obvious as well, it doesn't make sense to have a local boarding for local authorities, but not in the fifth one either.
the other question in there relates to how that would report through to this board, so, speaking as the SFA rep, we will be able to sort ourselves out in as long as there's an iffy rep on each of the local authority level boards, then the FE colleges will sort themselves out and will feedback through myself and Nikki on this board and probably directly to Michelle as well outside of these meetings through Joanne Patrington, who I know you speak to quite frequently.
so we'll sort ourselves out as long as there's a structure and and some logic to it.
yeah
thank you, Chair them have a question and then, depending on your answer, I might have a follow-up commented on 2.5 on page 36, the second bullet point, asking one of the chairs to represent the four boards and the committees, could you expand on that a bit more for me, please?
so.
rather than just asking you as a committee, how would you like to engage with these groups, I thought I'd make some suggestions, but there may be others that you can you can think of one, and one of those is that you know so it is really important that we have the voice of local partnerships on this committee we have got elected members on this committee.
it could be that you fail that that is a role that the elected members can play to provide that conduit between the local employment and skills boards and to this board.
thank you.
thank you them so. Reading on your part of this is that some councillors are involved in their skills committee. I know I am I sit on my skills committee, but reading it elders down, so how will that transpires something that we have to put all councillors onto the skills committee on, can we just have someone from the skills committee on because it reads to me that one person will go forward and do it all on behalf of the other authorities, and I don't think that will work across the bar because my needs in Wakefield are very different to Leeds, different to Kirkley and so far, so it didn't need to be unified representation from every local authority because something that's happening in Wakefield is very different to something that is happening in Leeds. Thank you
that's really helpful, that's exactly the question is whether it's whether we need an additional wrap from each board or whether the Local
whether the and the elected Members on this Committee could provide that already, and there are there are, all each local authority is represented by political leadership here, or whether we need five additional members on this, but that's that's exactly the pattern.
tend to come back to sorry year, something I feel passionate about, and so because I don't do this full time, isn't skills and education. I think that my officer would be beneficial in this role to report back of what they're doing as a day in day out of jobs, because she certainly knows what she's doing, and that is her sole focus of skills and education in Wakefield, and I think that's the best person to report back to this board because you might have a follow-up question about what we're doing in Wakefield on this issue and I haven't got a clue about it because that's not what I do day in day out, I have a very small snapshot of skills and education, and her job is that forwards. I think an officer who she does chair of skills and education in Wakefield as well, is the best person to come and report back and
answer everyone's questions on what's happening in Wakefield or elsewhere, Minister, thank you, thank you, Jo or Charlotte yeah. I think this points to the to the original sort of position of we should have some regularity across the across the sports in the in the various route region because highlighting difference already, isn't it,
there was going to just say something from a Bradford perspective that they do have one of these sports is quite effective, it's not shared by the Councillor, it's chaired by an independent person, actually, but the officers are represented there and,
I think they feel that I'm getting from Brown from Bradford not that I want to speak to for TfL for the elected representative of that. They will probably be all along a lot more to your thinking that it isn't necessarily to be the elected officer, but we need to get some consistency for so anybody else want to add into the, or is it something that we need to take away and talk to you individually that you can actually field it feel filling to that? Yeah, yeah yeah, it'd be worth seeing the terms of reference for each one just to understand what are the differences before deciding who the
that's the right path, it sounds eminently sensible to have that, but my concern is always, and I've seen this happen before the levels of engagement in it, reaching those boards, would they be on board with do it doing that and would it be as effective then if it is effective but anyway seeing the terms of reference would be a great starting point?
thank you, did anybody else want to come back in at coin yeah, can we just check somebody were the really it's what power this committee, so is it up to this committee to agree some standard structure and terms of reference and then ask each of the local authorities to implement that?
and if it is then I'd like to see a draft at this meeting that we can all have a look at and agree to
OK, I'm going to bring Michelle in.
what that's why it's finally café words in Pep Cohen says there is so so no, I don't think it would be appropriate to do this, so this committee has specific decision-making powers and so telling local partnerships how to organise themselves, isn't part of that and I don't think that's what you'd want to be doing, but I'm sure that,
but it is really important that we adequately and effectively have local partnerships, voices reflected here and so your local areas will be very keen on to get your thoughts as a committee as to how they can best be reflected here, and I'm sure that if you had a strong view that you'd like to see greater standardization and consistent terms of reference they would listen to that.
so, in summary, we need to get all of the local boards to agree to standardization individually.
but that that's part of yeah so, and that's why I'm framing this as part of the review of the system, there's certainly the appetite to look at that.
okay, excellent, thank you.
so I'm just going to bring Shirley bucking yeah, I started with a point really.
the the Mayor up to the transfer of extra Exchequer, prompt devolution and with some asks, and it's just how that might be considered in the light of this.
yeah, so that's that's absolutely the context here, isn't it is that we the?
the remit that this Committee is responsible for is is evolving so quickly is, isn't it?
with
particular
responsibility is round whacking health, strategic greatest strategic employment, surrounded careers, but then, of course, greater asks as well for over and above those, and we need as a local partnership and that it needs to be the ability to respond as quickly as things as things change.
you know why the pace of change over the last couple of years has has really been been quite something, and so it is the time to reflect on kind of how we're organised and the decision-making decision-making structures are operating models, and that's Chelsea's absolute right, it's really important part of the context.
in fact, I had an interesting discussion that included the relationship between districts in the Combined Authority, I, I think it's worth at least beginning to think through the implications.
if we are thinking about a voluntary engagement with an agenda on terms of reference and membership.
we need to think about other things too, so a lot of the material that this committee has been centrally involved in around the skills agenda in West Yorkshire doesn't refer to the SB or it might only marginally refers to USBs so there are lots of other agendas to align not just simple terms of reference and membership I think that might only be the the first and simplest of the hurdles to get over.
Peter Collins.
so one of the comments and I'll follow from on Times comment as well.
can I just stand, ask what it would just thinking about those relationships actually, so would it be appropriate to minute, in this meeting, a polite request to Leeds to say, would you like to consider setting up a board so that it's more consistent with the rest of the structure and then following on from that, if we're gonna get a standard set or a reasonably standard approach, would it be appropriate for this board to consider?
some very outline terms of reference that they could recommend to all of the local structures, and then the third point that I've got, which is probably a bit more complex but but nevertheless important.
if we think about that whole structure then, and how decisions and information flows through it.
how do the local skills improvement partnerships relate to that, presumably well I don't know, I don't know how they relate to this committee and then the local committees, I just don't know how that would work.
I do, I do have to have the answer to that, actually so we say the chat. The previous Chair of this Committee wrote to the tariff the where salt cycle or improve the local school improvement Ann Patchett board, asking breakfast at representative and Martin Hathaway has put forward that and Caroline is heading in his stead today, so I'm comfortable confident that we have got that representation and at regional level and in terms I wouldn't want to speak on behalf of all of the local employment and skills boards, but one of which at 1.00 that I am a member of certainly does have strong outside representation as well, but there is probably a mixed picture, I'd guess.
yeah
I just coming back on Collins' point about the terms of reference, I think, for terms of reference for the skills is going to have to be abroad, one because my issues in Wakefield are very different elsewhere, and that's the thing is, although we'd like some uniform reference across all the things our make-up are different authorities are very different and what
certainly further education and higher education, we've got one college that does higher education in old the Wakefield district compared to Leeds, who'd got three for universities now, so as in colleges and everything like that, so it's very different make up that way, so what the terms of reference could be going for Leeds will not most of them for higher education wouldn't apply to Wakefield because we've only got at the moment one higher education provider.
is there any further?
adding to the I do just one of the notes that I actually had earlier was was some some consistency. It needs to be hear about best practice. We have to ensure that that is the local governance of this and about the majority of our partnership relationships as we go forward. So I think that's got to be really really important as we move on, so it is about the skills review, it is about feeding into it. We have noted the comments about
the towns' restaurants, but it's also about what's within this remit in this committee here.
sorry, yes.
I was a little bit like them
I think it's I think it's really worth exploring them across West Yorkshire, there's lots of government funding now that's coming down through the Combined Authority which we want to make sure benefits all the individual local authorities, but it will come to a central point and how that then is worked and you agree how that's distributed and what a provision might be delivered needs to be through a combined route I think so from my experience we've got universal support that's that's on track now for your reference worked well already.
and we've had the experience of shared prosperity fund.
we should think we've all found very challenging in the timeframes we've had, so I think it's really something that it's worth exploring more, and I think there will be real benefits both for a combined authority but for each local authority as well.
OK so well, good noted PA thank thanks for that Michelle has really appreciated the work and effort that's gone into that, so we've got to move on to Item Knight digital skills, so I'm gonna bite suddenly immediately in to present the paper.
thank you Chair, and this report is dual purpose, firstly, we're seeking in the hospital for the digital blueprint which was actually presented in draft form at the last meeting, and I just like to thank Members for their comments and contributions at the discussion at the last meeting the draft reports is very much a book redesign start, it's included in full at Appendix 1.
and the second item that I debt I'd also just like to bring to Members' attention is around the progress of the digital skills plan, which was published just over a year ago, and this committee had was very valuable in helping us to develop the key aims within that plan and also to make investments to help us make progress towards the actions that we'd identified in the plan.
I'd like to start with that by highlighting that appendix 2, we've detailed the actions have been taken as a result of the investments overseen by this Committee over the last 14 months, but in particular I just want to highlight and draw your attention to point 2.11 in the report which I think is a good news story for our region in terms of essential digital skills which was one of the key indicators that we'd established of the digital skills plan whereby how we were going to measure progress against,
and you'll see that, although the way that those figures have changed slightly and they are collected at a Yorkshire and Humber level rather than at a West Yorkshire level, that's the lowest level drop, then they are available at you'll see that it shows that we've made good progress in that space, we are actually leading the way and I think that's something to be celebrated in West Yorkshire, but we're not prepared to stop there. We continue to make investments, particularly around digital inclusion and skills, including a recent investment working with our local authority partners to establish a digital skills coordinator role in each of the local authority districts. If I move on to the digital blueprint
this has really evolved from that digital skills plan and that we've had. That was published in November 2022, and it also builds on a previous iteration of a digital blueprint, and that was actually published way back in 2018 and, as you will see, a refresh is very timely. The digital blueprint aims to boost productivity, reduce skills gaps, improve our digital connectivity and make West Yorkshire an attractive place for investment, but also to improve the lives of our residents. And if I just draw your attention to the metrics approach or as an overview of that plan, which is on page 55 of your packs or page 7 of Appendix 1, you will see that the approach that is very much an integrated approach across all the different agendas that have an impact on digital or across the three themes which run horizontal on that page across pupil and education place businesses and organisations and then the vertical walls, in terms of how we will take an approach to tackling digital exclusion, how we can benefit from advanced technologies and how we can showcase all the digital opportunities that West Yorkshire has to offer. So the consultation on this blueprint today it has been through a number of different committees, business stakeholder workshops and a public consultation which received 121 responses.
and if the blueprint is endorsed here today by this committee and it will be taken to the Combined Authority and published towards the summer equi J Members are asked to consider the three questions in relation to the digital blueprint.
dear members feel that the digital blueprint is reflective of the digital skills needed in the region and the outcomes as they relate to pupils in education, ambitious enough enough and if they are not ambitious enough, how can we be bolder and do you have any other further feedback?
thank you,
thank you, sonar, is there anybody wanting to raise that because we are looking for endorsement of this today.
one of your intended outcomes is to raise or encourage more digital apprenticeship starts if you got, obviously that can be huge.
if you've got an idea of what that means in terms of digital apprenticeship starts, do you know if the offer is robust enough in West Yorkshire in order to follow starts to increase in digital marketing, is it coding and programmers who have done some analysis of what that means?
so I will be able to answer your question in full Alex because I have not been part of representing the team that brought this together, but I will certainly take it back, I do know that they are looking at developing an action plan and there will be talking to stakeholders about how we can ensure those actions are delivered just want to make sure it is challenging and ambitious enough yet so we can share that back to our members.
I feel this is something that we should have faded earlier to the process, but it has been a in some ways, a recurring theme, the contribution of HSI, so this agenda is sometimes, I think, conceived very narrowly around courses that are coded as being very specifically around computer, science and related areas. Actually, digital skills at a high level are delivered in a range of different courses in our education favourite example of minus music technology. We have a large number of students studying music technology across West Yorkshire in a variety of different institutions, not all of them, but many of them are developing very high level coding skills as part of those qualifications, but obviously the
the very specific coding that tends to get drawn on coding and since, in terms of course coding, let's get wrong, doesn't necessarily represent that it might be that that helps us to frame an even more ambitious agenda around the the high level contribution to to the agenda.
thank you at Epsom.
yeah, just just to maybe, that'll build on 10's point there, I think when you look at the metrics diagram with the advanced technology column going down.
it may be trying to just don't pick up, but what does that, but what does that mean, and I think in the context of where we are with generative A-E and what will come next after that think we've got to be pretty ambitious at that high level in terms of really pushing forward to to support our businesses and with the right level of skills because they're in such short supply and even universities are finding it very difficult to get the skills we need to teach the skills at that level.
are there any further comments, so there was three points at Sunnymead sorry to thank you, Sonia, in terms of what's, in the Muslim 1 yeah, there's a set of set of outcomes in the library to the areas already funded.
or for the judge to look at the other, although funded things, and that they have times gowns or although the ideas at this point that will need funding when you act in that bulwark, where does it sit?
thank you for the question, and the the action plan is is is emerging, it's in development, I suspect there'll be a mixture of things across there and there will be a mixture of things that are already happening, will there'll be him things that will be coming up for investment and then a little bit things that we want to achieve as a partnership and do Marvin like the apprenticeship space?
not nothing further, so there was three or three points there for the committee to note the progress since the publication of a digital skills plan, particularly in the West Yorkshire, Jill digital inclusion initiative, also to endorse a digital brooklyn's on the current progress and also delegate endorsement to the Chair in the case of the outstanding feedback from members ahead of the final design.
so we're going to move on to Item 9, which is the adult skills year, 2 2, data on which I am going to invite.
Peter Peter Glover and Pippa Sayer.
thank you Chair.
the main focus of the adult skills paper is the A B Year 2 achievement, but I just wanted to give you a brief update on some other adult skills provision. Firstly, skills boot camp, so since the papers were published, work has continued with our local authority colleagues to plan for more targeted skills boot camps in each of the local authority areas underway 5, which starts on the 1st of April. There are two areas we'd been asked to commission on their behalf, based on their reported skills needs in their areas and local authority, colleagues who are involved in the commissioning and monitoring of providers with contracts held centrally with the Combined Authority. The other local authorities are opting to receive a grant from the Combined Authority to deliver direct skills bootcamp provision, also procure and manage so contracted providers
through skills Kinect, there's been recent commissioning some exciting, not accredited level 3 provision in digital, including digital marketing, cloud computing, cybersecurity and a pilot unethical use of artificial intelligence.
there is also a way at West Yorkshire wide procurement about to commence to support additional Whiteway 5 skills bootcamps covering sector areas such as fabrication and welding.
English for speakers of other language tutors, telecoms infrastructure and project management will soon hear from pisa Glover about our end of year to adult education, budget data, and it's hard to believe that ABI's only been developed for two full years. The full report will be available in the coming weeks which showcases the impact the West Yorkshire flexibilities and devolution is making. We must remember, the impact on disadvantaged and more reluctant learners can take time to evidence, and pilots that we've put in place to learn from will support our future flexibilities. What is remarkable in the current climate, with costs increasing and an A B allocation that hasn't increase, is that the number of learners has increased by 10% from year, 1 to year 2. That's 4,160 more learners in West Yorkshire, engaging in adult skills
in the main, the data shows an overwhelming positive picture in the support the adult education budget and free courses for jobs delivers to West Yorkshire residents, 47,000 residents have been supported to upskill throughout 82,000 courses.
and a partnership of local authorities, colleges and providers continues to work together to improve how we plan our provision and our relationships to ensure that learning programmes are accessible in over 450 locations across West Yorkshire, which ensures residents have local access to reduce barriers to participation.
there is similarly an encouraging picture as the changes of prioritisation of the funding in year 2, there has been an increased funding.
in more deprived areas.
and
in priority areas and more residents supported from those acutely disadvantaged areas, there's more diverse demographics engaged in learning, doubled the number of learners achieving their first level 3 or more people on the low wage are supported to upskill and increased learning in key sectors such as digital and engineering and manufacturing the date is also highlighted where we can improve in areas that we can investigate further, such as improving collation of destinations including wider social impact outcomes and looking at the predominance of the younger demographic participating in AV and how this links with youth and employment.
while the number of individuals supported with a learning difficulty or disability was maintained since year 1, the numbers supported through learning support funding shows with increase the number of learners supported above the West Yorkshire demographic average I'll now pass over to Peter Glover who presents some of our key year 2 data.
that's paper and I have some more slides, and hopefully this is going to work.
but you also have you also have printed copies of the slides on the desks saw for reference.
so what we thought it might be useful just to is just to expand on some of Pippa's points with a quick presentation, no, the date is quite complex and multifaceted, but we've tried to keep it as simple as possible.
so first of all, building what people said around the overall scale of the programme, what we're looking at here is all of the different strands combined together, including adult skills, community learning and free courses for jobs, so the overall number of distinct learners who were supported on a B during 22 23 was 47,000 and that includes people who started learning in the previous year and were carried over into this year and so we saw 10% growth is people mentioned.
between compared with the previous year, so the fastest rate of growth was in Wakefield, but the biggest net growth in absolute terms was seen in Bradford and, as you can see, a strong growth in Kirklees and also growth in Calderdale and Leeds, so all local authority sheds in the growth that we've seen in the overall scale of learners.
so moving now to subject areas, how was that changed in the last couple of years again we're looking at all strands of provision here, and we're looking at stars, so starts, are actually courses that was started during the academic year and learners quite often do more than one course, so the biggest area of year on year growth was preparation for life and work as you can see which is top dwarfs all the bits of
other subject areas of the programme, and that includes all the basic skill elements which I'm going to go into more detail in in a moment. But the second biggest area of growth was information and communication technology, so 34% growth and 600 additional styles in 22 23, then the next biggest area of growth was engineering and manufacturing, 530 additional styles and 35% growth. That is important because both of these areas of skill shortage high demand areas, so it supports the objectives of there'd be strategy to address those sorts of occupational areas, but we also did see some reduction in starts to some subject areas. Retail and commercial enterprise was lower and, as well as health, public services and care and health, public services and care is a very large subject area
so I mentioned basic skills, that is a key priority for the devolved programme and you can see from this slide that there's been growth across the board in terms of the different types of basic skills provision there was a total of 23,500 spouts on basic skills courses during the year and in fact 40% of all the adult skills provision in terms of starts was directed through basic skills.
there was substantial growth in the number of a basic skills, starting 22 23 compared with the previous year of 2,870 or 14%, and a lot that was driven, the overall growth was driven by a growth in ESOL English, for speakers of other languages 7,500 net additional staff 17% growth
we've seen exceptional demand for that type of provision.
although, as you can see from the chat, was growth across all the basic skills categories?
turning now to progression within Adult Education Budget.
Andrew Adult Education Budget provision, so a key measure of the added value of A B is whether the extent to which learners are progressing within within their learning, so this analysis focuses on learners who started a course at a higher level than their existing level of attainment. I'll studied their first qualification and overall 45% of adult skills and free courses for job starts or nearly 27,000 starts in absolute terms, provided that kind of progression for the learner during 22 23 so around more than 17,000 styles or 25% of the total offer learners have no qualifications.
as you can see, you can see the various levels and the extent to which progression was offered at those levels you might notice at level 3, that the proportion is more than 80%, that that reflects the eligibility criteria within Abbey for those level 3 courses, so with a few exceptions people are eligible when they don't have an existing level, 3,
so turning to the employment status of learners, looking here at adult skills and free courses for jobs and obviously supporting the unemployed is a key priority for the older AB, we saw 34,000 styles across those two strands, from employed learners during 22 23.
and that's an increase of 3,000 on the previous year, so among learners who are unemployed and actively seeking work at the outset of their course.
53% experienced positive, positive progression at the end of their course I moved into employment or further learning, and that's amongst learners, who are they you have a known destination.
so turning to the diversity of the programme, to to mention that it is a highly diverse programme and we can illustrate that with this focus on ethnicity, so a majority 57% of new learners to learners who started during 22 23 were from an ethnic minority group you can see Asian and Asian British learners and amongst the most strongly represented account for 26% of all learners on the programme but Black African Caribbean Black British group of Council 11% so the 57% for 22 23 is an improvement or an increase on the 54% that were seen in the previous year and also a further increase on the 46% in 2020 to 21.
and then people also mentioned the extent to which learners are drawn from deprived neighbourhoods, what we're looking at here is a profile by local authority of learners in terms of their residents and whether they're from a deprived neighborhood, so decile 1 is the most acutely deprived neighborhoods.
through to 10, which is the least deprived, and it's worth noting that learners on A B provision or on adult skills provision attracted funding uplifts to reflect the fact that the disadvantaged and the costs of recruiting and retaining them in learning are relatively high so there were more than 18,000 learners or 41% of the total were recruited from the 10% most deprived neighbourhoods so that they are really the most acutely deprived neighbourhoods.
and that is high for both Bradford and Leeds, so for Bradford is 54% of Londoners for Leeds 50% and that reflects a profit and lies on a wider prevalence of acute deprivation what you can also see, though, is that Calderdale Kirklees and Wakefield at higher proportions in Bradford and Leeds of learners in decile 2, which is still at a high level of deprivation within within those neighbourhoods,
so turning finally to achievement data, so the overall volume of achievements delivered through the adult skills and free costs for job strands during 22 23 increased by 17% compared with the previous year, and, as you can see from the charts, there was an increase at all levels in 20 to 22 23.
you will also noticed that the volume volume achievements recorded in that year was for both Level 1 and Level 2 was lower than in 2020 21, and that's a pre-debate periods, but you can see that there was substantial net growth at entry level and level 3 and the growth at those levels was enough to push the number of achievements higher 5% higher in 22 23 1920 20 to 21. The overall success rate for the adult skills programme in 20 to 23 was 87% which is a slight increase on the figure of 86% recorded for the previous year. A medicine summary points which are I won't go through again but teacher
thank you, are there any comments?
very general coming, actually, I'd like to congratulate the team that both the results here, but also, more generally, when when I talk to people nationally
the overall roll-out of the devolved adult skills budget has been managed better in West Yorkshire than I think anywhere else in the country.
thank you.
I just like to echo the said comments that are hugely positive, I'm quite interested to understand in terms of where you've recruited the diverse audiences that we've actually taken on these skills, where did they come from?
so we do, we do have the ability to solve, provided very detailed. Mapping of of well learners with different characteristics are recruited from. So but, as you can see, a bit proportionate from those most deprived neighbourhoods are a lot of those are in the centre of Leeds and Bradford, but also spread more widely across across West View option. I think that's the at almost the point I'm making. It is that today are the hardest to reach and you manage to do it and and actually just capturing that and making sure that we take that forward is really important.
thank you.
High thanks on, thank you for me as well, mainly around for facilitating the funding for us to continue our to aid programme at Northern College.
reached out to pupils, Austria, because that was ceased through Bradford Bradford College, decided no longer to deliver to your education programme, which was urinary, learning red shop stewards, health and safety reps, which are always important in workplace and I think we all agree.
Pippa kindly agreed to perform that for West Yorkshire participants, so that's a really big thank you on our behalf from we've run unsuccessfully until you all our castles are quite a lot of other to you, webcasts is download now and will look into bringing that up until West Yorkshire for delivery as well, so thank you very much.
just another point within that, glad to have a chat with you, about people who, at some point, is around the digital skills and potentially looking to increase that with some work I'm doing with Leeds and Kirklees local authority, trade unions, OK,
thank you thanks, Chair, thank you if there are any further comments.
OK, so thank you, Pippa, and thank you Peter for that report, thank you, so we're moving on to this skills support for businesses, alongside Michelle Burton.
thank you very much, and so this paper provides an update on on an activity to support employers in West Yorkshire to and to create a pipeline of talent, but and also to encourage empire investment in in skills, so the context here is really important.
the context is around and vice, labour shortages and and skills shortages, so the context within our within which our employers are operating, so then the labour market in West Yorkshire we had at the beginning of this meeting remains relatively tight, so we still have.
we still have high demand for labour and a lot of the work that this committee oversees is really about and and what the great work we just heard about is about increasing the size of that labour pool. So in West Yorkshire we have far too many residents that are not in the labour pool at the moment. They don't have the skills or there are other issues that prevent them from being able to work, and that has a direct impact on employers because they are competing for a talent pool, allow a labour pool that is too small, so a lot of what the work that this Committee does and will will benefit employers. As you know, the the the residents of West Yorkshire have just been hearing about are brought closer to and into the labour market, but we also have a labour market that experiences and skill shortages so both hard to fill vacancies and also people in roles that they're not fully capable of doing, and we and those kinds of skills mismatches so roles that are really difficult to fill, because the skills just aren't out there. Those are at an all-time high, and now, and more than a third of the vacancies that we have in West Yorkshire offer that reason, because people are either not interested in doing them or they're not out there with us with the skills to do them, and construction is top of the list of sectors that suffer from that that challenge, but employers also face skills deficiencies within their existing staff as well. So employers also have people enrolled at carefully achieved. The role and the the minority of employers use iffy and hectoring institutions to address those those issues and most employers actually pay pay for training themselves via private, via a myriad of private training providers and consultants and others.
we have got specific challenges around
higher skilled occupations, so we've picked out in the report and digital engineering and and health areas, all of which are absolutely crucial to our economy, these are all also highly productive sectors.
and highly skilled STEM workers, and particularly in engineering and 0 and a really important if we're to achieve our ambitions around green transit or green green transition, green economy.
and there is some funding available to to co-invest with businesses to help address these issues, so in particular we have secured funding to to work with the FE sector in order to
to increase capacity to respond to emerging skills and and just over one and a half million pounds to support emerging skills through co-investment businesses, these amounts of money are are modest and we're really keen to get the thoughts of the committee about how those can best be co invested in order to encourage the behaviours that we want to see by employers.
the there isn't the huge amounts of money that we'd need to deliver to to to to subsidise or fully fund the CA to address the challenges that I've addressed here, we need to say and employers investing more in, particularly in emerging skills, and that's what we're really keen to start a conversation with you about and we'll also be holding,
session with the regional CBI, to start thinking about how we can, how we can scope co-investment models for emerging skills, and so those were the questions and that we wanted to to ask him to to leave with you.
so there is this just over one and a half million pounds to work with with employers to support co-investment in emerging scale, so we're thinking particularly around digital and and green.
thank you, are there any comments or anybody wants to speak to?
Natasha on Pingeot, actually, it follows on to probably the next point in your report that actually the Fair Work charity, what you might be able to you'll be pushing on an open door with people that are in there and actually in the questionnaire for it it does, it asks if you are interested in helping to support and build a community, but it doesn't ask that specific question about the skills, so it could be useful to put that in just to get captures that are already keen audience
thank you, thank you Chair.
I will go back to away Phil because that's where I know so in Wakefield we have an issue with employers not wanting to train people because they'll leave and and that's part of the issue that we have of life trying to establish those relationships with employers in Wakefield so one of our concerns over in Wakefield is because as a higher education skills staff that do these and try and get people into court as they are on a short term base plan so that the staff will be gone in a year or so and then do we start from square one in and we are recruiting those people who were going in a vicious circle of we're going round around
when we're talking about having this framework to see what we can do and we do it across Jay-Z, all we're doing something.
we piloted something in Wakefield and then piloting something different in Kirkley is owned, something different in Leeds and then seeing what is the best approach that way around and something like that.
and so so firstly yesterday they are.
the the
there is absolutely an entrenched issue around low demand and low supply of skills in Whitfield, and that's the context within which we're operating here, it's absolutely recognise that, and I think that your your star and your your advice around, potentially piloting an approach in a local authorities is one that the committee might want to consider.
to
I think Roy to eyes the single most powerful group of interventions in this.
spear are around replacement internships, structured engagements with the workplace, the powerful partly because they do help build confidence on the part of employers and key individuals within organisations, build confidence in the opportunities that exist.
to work with the with HC eyes or or I'd obviously I think we're all welcoming the news elsewhere in the papers around the mayor's graduate scheme, but if you're looking for things to invest in Michelle in the HL as part of this field,
and I guess that's particularly on green and digital, as you say, it would be to further extend those opportunities around placements, internships and other work-related engagements.
thank you, and it had a comments section on the comments said that that funding should only be used as an offers if all of us have been explored with, however, we're offering funding to, we can't just say this funding there, this is not gonna be a substantial amount of funding so after all offers have been exhausted and they have looked elsewhere and there's a potential for the overlap on the Boots skills Isa
that would be a slight problem.
well, I think that's together to have a really good point that you know, skills bootcamps are are able to be positioned as a as a business facing author in order to retrain or upskill people in in with clear line of sight to jobs. So, yes, you're absolutely right, we need to create with where we're looking at piloting interventions, they need to compliment those those existing office, and I think it's key that you explore with the employers what the barriers are to the investment. You know why you know could be downtime anything within them in a setting. So, yes,
Eleanor
thank you, this may be a bit too broad for the police, but he had aspects of what we're looking at, but just thinking wider perspectives about especially in engineering.
degree, apprenticeships and other approaches to encouraging people in and retaining them and keeping them in the area once they are trained up.
but also looking earlier. How are we doing this in terms of careers advice and support? Are we actually encouraging young people into these fields in the first place so that they know that these were options available to them? Thank you, Melzer yeah. I would love to see the offer extended to social enterprises CFCs, and voluntary sectors too. It's a win-win when, because it can bring on some of these youngsters who want these kind of jobs, it helps build their capacity for more and more and more, and obviously that contributes more to the economy. So I'd love to see more. A deeper dive into CIEH sees voluntary sector, social enterprise and perhaps even sole traders, especially realm construction
wholly.
just referring to something earlier on in this meeting, the there was a couple of big funding streams that are long term that will fill skills gaps, key one is apprenticeships, so we come back to how do we grow apprenticeships, how do we get more employers to take on more apprentices because that will bring more funding into the area more?
the and directly related to what employers need, because if employers to take on more apprentices they're taken on apprentices in the skills gaps that they need, so answering that question would would be a significant long-term gain, I'll also refer back to the previous item on the agenda.
I think that our performance with regionally with the adult skills budget is excellent.
how do we get the biggest slice of the cake that's available nationally into the adult skills budget on the basis that well, if we're spending it more effectively than all the other regions?
can we get more of the cake?
I'm going to bring in Shirley than my sister thinks about the future and lifelong learning at 1.00 entitlement and maybe getting on the front foot with that, because if we can be prepared to, I don't know how a sensitised businesses are to that opportunity coming forward but we should be helping them to be prepared and working with colleges and universities on that.
context, can I kind of come back so?
so when I look around the country and look at the way the different different areas are using their adult skills budget.
you can find areas of the country where it's habitually underspend.
and that they incentivise providers in a number of ways to spend the money.
which that's OK, I'm not going to criticise the colleges that have that extra money available on that incentive basis, but it's a bit frustrating when we've got waiting lists.
the money could be distributed more logically and better nationally.
thank you, Colin, Potter de, the bootcamp s the initiative, I think it's a great initiative, but what would have helped if we knew what organisations needed before it was rolled out because that's been the biggest frustration I've found, certainly working on what organisations need there is a lot of skills out there, but what do they actually want there hasn't been really made clear.
so.
did you meet with the DFC, can we send it CAMHS yeah so, Sophie for committee members, this?
information and skills when it comes to a Department for Education initiative, but in devolved areas and
the delivery is grant-funded to combined authorities, but there's also national commissioning in parallel, so here in West Yorkshire we do have both nationally commissioned and recently commissioned bootcamps.
it is with it with it, which isn't hugely hugely straightforward for employers to to engage with, and it is a key feature of the way that we have, we've designed boot camps herein in West Yorkshire, that there is clear line of sight to jobs so guaranteed interviews, content designed in partnership with employers and that's that is,
how to get strong progression outcomes, but
it's a really important thing to do is to work with a range of size of businesses to articulate the needs and of course it is much easier for larger employers that are recruiting high volumes to articulate their needs and for and for us to respond, so we're really keen to work with groups of SMEs and ticket smaller and so that we can commission the provision that meets meets their needs and but you're absolutely right,
in Vienna, the principal focus on it that we need to fully understand and what employers are looking for, help them to articulate what they're looking for and make sure there are real roles to apply for at the end, and that's that's where the strong progression has come from.
did you want to come back to the tenant?
thank you for that.
I guess if we'd have known as well, we could have added quite a number of small social enterprises CDCs, working together to create a
a pool of trainers and providers to work with the bigger.
pool of SMEs and everything else, that's what really is the bugbear of the we can't seem to move forward as a collective or as an ordinary social enterprise.
but you made the point, and I just want to thank you for that.
thank you.
can I just get a bit of clarity you mentioned that you have some funding that was for F E is at colleges or is that all organisations that deliver F in skills?
so we ha, so that is to be fully scoped and developed in consultation with with the sector, but I'm using the broader definition as shorthand when I speak apologies, apologies for not being clear that.
is there any further comments, I think one of the things I've just taken is that it's about listening to what the employer wants and their needs and the freedom to choose a provider that fits their needs, whether it's credited or non-accredited training, it's got to be working in partnership with the employer.
OK, if there's no further comments, thank you Michelle for that comprehensive.
paper, and I think that completes the business for the day, thank you for your time.