Meeting documents

  • Meeting of Bucks Strategic Partnership Board, Tuesday 12th July 2011 2.30 pm (Item 5.)

Sue Imbriano, Strategic Director for Children and Young People BCC, will facilitate this session, the outcomes sought from which are:

  • consensus on the key challenges facing Bucks regarding skills and job growth:
  • key barriers to success identified;
  • partnership commitment on some short-term actions to address these;
  • a clear way forward outlined for a sustainable forward plan for long-term change; and who is responsible for driving this change

 

Members will receive an initial presentation from Alex Pratt, Richard Waite and Rob Spurrett representing Bucks Business First.  This will be followed by short updates from the following partners on the key issues from the perspective of their organisation/group or sector.

 

·         Prof Derek Godfrey, Deputy Vice Chancellor, Buckinghamshire New University

·         David Corke, our Head of Commercial Services, National Enterprise Academy/Peter Jones Foundation

·         Ann Kiceluk, Aylesbury Vale District Council, representing the Bucks Strategic Workforce Planning Group

·         Sue Imbriano, Buckinghamshire County Council

 

Minutes:

Sue Imbriano (Strategic Director for Children and Young People, BCC) introduced and facilitated the session.

 

Presentations were given, and during these, the following points were made.

 

Presentation by Alex Pratt OBE, Chairman of Bucks Business First and points made by Richard Waite, Managing Director of Esri UK

·         The view of Bucks Business First was that policies needed to be based much more on evidence and trends.

·         A clear strategy made a significant difference to the economic situation in an area.

·         More businesses were started in Buckinghamshire (and remained in existence longer) than in any other county.

·         Aylesbury Vale and Wycombe Districts had both suffered seriously from job losses.

·         Bucks Business First would be tracking and monitoring the net jobs growth in Buckinghamshire to measure economic development.

·         On the day of the meeting, 1090 people were looking for work as shop assistants in Buckinghamshire. However there were only 60 vacancies.

·         Buckinghamshire was described as having a ‘skills gap,’ but this was more complex than it appeared; it was more accurately about a mismatch between the profile of young people who remained in Buckinghamshire (bearing in mind many highly qualified young people left the County) versus the jobs available.

·         Output from educational establishments was not linked to the job market.

·         The majority of young people in tertiary education left Buckinghamshire to work elsewhere, which led to a skills gap. It had to be recognised that Buckinghamshire was part of a bigger country, and not a ‘ring-fenced’ county.

·         Most jobs available in Buckinghamshire were highly skilled and required experience.

·         Anecdotally, many employers had said that the young people applying for jobs did not have the employment skills which they were looking for.

·         The solution to the problem could include employers going into schools to explain what they looked for in prospective employees. Teachers could even be seconded into business.

 

Presentation by Prof Derek Godfrey, Deputy Vice Chancellor, Buckinghamshire New University

·         The University worked to understand the needs of the public and private sectors, looking at where they could be supported. An enterprise education system was being developed.

·         The University aimed to ensure it provided excellent employer engagement, being easy to do business with and adding value.

·         Working in partnership was key.

 

Presentation by David Corke, Head of Commercial Services, National Enterprise Academy/Peter Jones Foundation

·         In the future, the Academy planned to work more with NEETs (those Not in Education, Employment or Training), and was working with Amersham and Wycombe College.

·         The Academy worked with partners on an Enterprise Club Partnership (with Bucks Business First and Amersham and Wycombe College) and on Adult Enterprise Programmes (for adults from deprived backgrounds).

 

Presentation from Ann Kiceluk, Aylesbury Vale District Council, representing the Bucks Strategic Workforce Planning Group

·         Public sector organisations in Buckinghamshire had been working together to provide a number of initiatives, including increased employment opportunities, particularly for young people.

·         The Bucks Strategic Workforce PlanningGroup had recently agreed to widen its membership to include private and voluntary sector partners who delivered services on behalf of public organisations.

·         Successes of the Group included the Future Jobs Fund (the funding had now finished for this) and apprenticeships.

 

Sue Imbriano then initiated a number of discussions, including the issue of apprenticeships. Although the public sector was not currently recruiting, both the public and private sectors had a responsibility for apprenticeships.

 

It was also noted that evidential data was very important and Bianca Kerley said that she would find out how many of the 25% of young people receiving job-seekers allowance were graduates – Action: BK

 

Key issues and questions identified by members

·         Was there ever a ‘golden age’ when a skills gap was not present?

·         Are the right young people applying for the right jobs?

·         Jobs have changed – has the skills level of young people also changed?

·         Employment advice needs to be taken into schools at an early age.

·         Expectations should be raised and then delivered against.

·         Attitude of young people was the number one criterion. This could be partly dealt with through apprenticeships.

·         Parents had a responsibility as regarded their children’s attitudes to work.

·         The voluntary sector should be involved.

·         The self-worth of young people should be looked at. There was also an issue among young people who did not feel ‘entitled’ to work.

·         The relationships between children, parents and schools were very important.

·         Graduates were taking lower-skilled jobs, which had a knock-on effect on jobs available for non-graduates.

·         Education locally was not providing the right skills. These skills were defined by employers as reliability, a strong work ethic and attitude.

·         Wealth creation came from the private sector.

 

Workshop session Outcome

In smaller groups members were asked to identify a key issue and an action to solve it.

 

Key issue(s)

Action(s)

Fragmented approach within various aspects of education and jobs.

 

Work to link curriculums – not just courses which people want to study but what they ought to study.

 

Current drop in employment is temporary – planning needs to be long-term to improve the job offers in Buckinghamshire

It is the responsibility of business / economy to create opportunities. An infrastructure is needed to bring businesses to Buckinghamshire.

Act as a conduit between businesses and education. Provide a ‘rapid response’ to deal with the skills needed by business.

E.g. Aylesbury Vale attracts high-level engineering companies – young people should be made aware of this.

How do you get the early engagement between employers, schools and parents? What motivates young people?

Focus initially on those not in employment or education, to find jobs and to want to find jobs.

Ask young people what motivates them.

 

Role of parents – how a work ethic is instilled – lessons to be learnt from China, Brazil etc. Level of complacency/dependency in the UK needs to be addressed.

 

Terms such as ‘apprenticeship’ may be off-putting as they may seem old-fashioned.

 

Identify ambassadors from business to go into schools to inspire young people.

How do we match the jobs to the needs?

Challenge re: cost of land locally

Build motivational skills; mentoring schemes.

Need to make a case for growth (business, housing, infrastructure) to provide jobs.

 

Get young people into the workplace through whatever means, including job swaps between private and public sectors.

 

Sue Imbriano summarised the key outcomes from the session which BSP partners needed to focus on:

  • How do we motivate our young people?
  • Focus on ‘employability’ – positive attitude/reliability/strong work ethic are key.
  • Matching supply and demand based on evidence. 
  • Exposure to the workplace – particularly through employers (specifically through use of employees not long out of education) going into schools to raise awareness of what employers are looking for.

 

The Board agreed that the Bucks Strategic Partnership Implementation Group should discuss all the issues and suggested actions at its next meeting.

Supporting documents: