Skills Projects Archives - Page 5 of 5 - North East Local Enterprise Partnership

In February the North East Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) published the updated Strategic Economic Plan for the North East. The Plan, which lays out the roadmap for creating 100,000 more and better jobs for the region by 2024, has been updated to reflect progress made since its initial launch in 2014, and to take account of changes in the economic landscape.

North East LEP Skills Director, Michelle Rainbow, talks through some of the changes you can expect to see when it comes to supporting skills, employment, inclusion and progression in the North East.

We have revisited the Strategic Economic Plan for a number of reasons. Changes to the economy both nationally and globally and of course the changes which lie ahead of us, including Brexit and the opportunities that could be available to us through the Industrial Strategy and global opportunities, mean that we chose to lay out how we will continue to work towards achieving our ambition of creating more and better jobs.

The updated Plan makes clear links to the development of the North East Local Industrial Strategy, which identifies how we will make the most of our particular strengths to maximise productivity and improve standards of living for people here in the North East, and how the region will make an important contribution to the overall UK Industrial Strategy.

In the updated Plan, the skills programme and the employability and inclusion programme have been brought together into a combined skills, employment, inclusion and progression programme. The work we do in this area is all about progression and improving social mobility in the North East. It’s about supporting people as they make transitions throughout their lives and careers, whether that is school pupils learning about the world of work and further education, people preparing to return to the workforce later in life, or graduates who are choosing where to live, work and stay after university. It’s all intrinsically linked and the updated Plan reflects this.

Our focus is on all age groups and circumstances and our programme of work will help us achieve our long term ambition for the North East: that demand for skills and the quality of jobs continue to improve, leading to higher productivity. We want individuals, regardless of age or employment status, to have a good understanding of employment opportunities available and how to access them, we want to continue to strengthen links between employers and education, and we want everyone to understand the importance of skills in raising productivity and living standards.

You will see a cross-cutting theme of digitalisation throughout the Plan. If the North East is to continue to compete on a national and international stage then it’s vital that digitalisation and digital skills are embedded across our businesses and communities. As we move into Industry 4.0, our workforce and our young people must have access to the digital skills and related opportunities this fourth industrial revolution will bring.

Alongside our board we have advisory boards made up of representatives from the public and private sectors, the voluntary sector, trade unions and business representative organisations including the CBI and Chamber of Commerce. Our advisory boards have valuable experience in each of our focus areas of industry – energy, digital, health and life sciences, and advanced manufacturing – and in innovation, business growth, and employability and skills.

The guidance of our board members and our advisory panels becomes ever more important as we continue to deliver the SEP and the Local Industrial Strategy, and we will make use of their expertise and our close working relationships with partners across the North East to deliver on our ambition of creating more and better jobs.

Read the North East Strategic Economic Plan.

The North East Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) is expanding its Skills team to increase the reach of its work with schools, colleges and education providers across the North East. Michelle Rainbow, the North East LEP’s Skills Director, explains what’s in store.

2018 was an incredibly busy year for our Skills team here at the North East LEP. We spent the year working on both a regional and a national basis, building the foundations of our Skills strategy and working towards the interim aims laid out in the region’s Strategic Economic Plan (SEP).

One of these aims was to put in place our Fuller Working Lives programme, working with employers to boost their numbers of older workers and to make sure that those in our workforce who are older are supported, whether they want to pursue a new direction or continue in their career.

We aimed to roll out the Good Career Guidance Benchmarks, which form a clearly defined framework for good careers guidance, to every secondary school in the North East and we wanted to partner every secondary school with an Enterprise Adviser – a business leader who volunteers their expertise to support schools and colleges in shaping the delivery of careers education.

Another major aim was to begin the ground-breaking Education Challenge programme, including working with three North East schools to pilot a new, project-based model of learning which places employer engagement at the heart of the curriculum.

In the area of technical education, we aimed to work with providers to develop world class technical education and apprenticeships to match the requirements of our growing and emerging sectors.

I’m proud to say that we achieved all of these aims and more. And to help us work with even more schools, colleges and education providers in 2019, we have recently welcomed seven new people to the North East LEP Skills team. It’s my hope that by mid-2019 we will have recruited another 10 members of the team to help deliver our ambitious plans for this year.

It’s a period of rapid expansion, which will enable us to have a wide scale regional impact. By the end of 2019 we will be working with every secondary school in the North East and we will be increasing the scope of our work with primary schools, helping to raise children’s aspirations from a young age.

We’re building on our engagement with the Further Education, Higher Education and Technical Education sectors as well, supporting organisations in responding to changes in policy and working closely with partners like the CBI and North East Chamber of Commerce.

Over the past three years we’ve put foundations in place that form the basis of a robust Skills strategy for the North East. We’ve carried out pilot projects and learnt from all the work that has been carried out so far.

Now we’re building on what we’ve learnt and we are actively pursuing opportunities to expand our reach across all our programmes so that we can support even more schools, colleges, employers and educational organisations.

Our long term vision for the North East is that it is a place where individuals, regardless of age or employment status, have a good understanding of the employment opportunities available in the North East and the pathways to access them. We want employers to have strong links with education and training providers and we aim to continue working with partners to highlight the importance of skills in improving productivity and living standards for everyone in the North East.

Find out more about the North East LEP Skills strategy.

Pupils from Norham High School in North Tyneside got on board with learning about different career options as part of the school’s partnership with Go North East.

30 pupils visited the Go North East depot in Gateshead as part of the Education Challenge programme led by the North East LEP, which is designed to bring employers and schools together to help students understand how what they learn at school can be applied in the workplace.

Neil Willis, Education Challenge Project Manager at the North East LEP, said: “Working with employers and other partners, we can really put context and purpose into lessons and the curriculum. That helps with pupils’ engagement and in the long term helps to boost attainment at school.”

The North East LEP is working with three secondary schools in the North East to pilot the Education Challenge programme

The schools taking part are Norham High School and Churchill Community College in North Tyneside, and Excelsior Academy in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Joanne Pearson from Norham High Schools said: “The project offers opportunities where we can see pupils developing soft skills like communication, confidence, leadership, resilience and organisation.”

The students were driven to the Go North East depot on a double decker bus, before having a tour of the depot and meeting people who work in a number of different job roles within the organisation.

Watch a short video to find out more about what happened on the day:

The Education Challenge aims to reduce the gap between the North East’s best and lowest performing schools and to help all schools in the region achieve ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ OFSTED ratings.

By bringing schools together with local employers, the programme enables profound employer engagement opportunities for students, addressing local skills gaps and driving social mobility.

This pioneering approach puts projects co-developed with industry at the heart of the curriculum, making learning in school relevant to the workplace, raising students’ engagement, aspirations and attainment, equipping them with the skills employers are looking for and preparing them for further and higher education, apprenticeships and their future careers.

If you have any further questions about this article, please do not hesitate to contact us directly.

Northern Gas Networks, the organisation responsible for delivering gas to 2.7 million homes and businesses in the North East, Northern Cumbria and Yorkshire, has partnered with the North East LEP to bring an example of project-based learning into a North Tyneside schools. Sarah Napier, Education and Employability Champion at Northern Gas Networks, explains more.

We’re embarking on a new project, working in collaboration with year 11 Construction students at Norham High School in North Tyneside. We’ll be challenging the students to look at the construction of domestic housing, why gas is used in housing, and how we can work to reduce energy use in homes and make them more sustainable.

Northern Gas Networks has a research facility in Gateshead and, as part of the project, the students will be visiting the site to find out about some of the initiatives we have in place to help reduce our carbon footprint and increase the use of clean energy. We hope the group will be inspired by what they see and hear – for example, they will hear from people who are involved in the some of the following projects:

H21: Hydrogen is a clean gas which emits only water and heat when burnt, meaning it doesn’t contribute towards climate change and could be used as a future fuel for heating and cooking. We’re delivering a range of projects called H21, aimed at proving a gas network carrying 100% hydrogen is just as safe as the natural gas network we use today. This week we’ll be attending the Low Carbon Networks and Innovation conference in Telford….and we’ll be taking an exhibition stand powered by hydrogen!

iStop: Our Emergency and Repair engineers often need to use on-board power when carrying out repairs on our network. But this isn’t an environmentally-friendly solution, so we’ve trialled a clever device called iStop. This detects when power hasn’t been needed for a certain time, and drops down the engine revs from 1600rpm to 1200, reducing fuel consumption and carbon emissions. Revs then return when power is required. iStop is now a specification requirement for all our vans using on-board power.

Solar-powered land clean-up: Since 2014, we’ve been remediating our portfolio of former coal gas sites, where there is potential for land contamination. On a site in Gateshead, we recently used solar-powered pumps to remove coal tar from an underground tank, an entirely sustainable solution we plan to replicate on future jobs. To date we’ve completed land remediations at 9 sites, returning to 3500m2 of land to a healthy state.

Over the course of one term, Norham High School’s future designers, builders and construction experts will work on designing solutions for their housing projects, with guidance from Northern Gas Network staff, before presenting their designs to a team of senior staff at the end of the term.

While we work with a lot of different schools (you can see more of what we do on Twitter at @NGN_Evolve), this particular type of school challenge is a new way of working for us and we’re grateful to be working with the pupils and teachers at Norham – hopefully we will be able to roll out more projects like this to other schools in the future as part of our Education and Employability programmes.

It’s important to us as an organisation that we’re not only working to reduce energy use and make more use of clean energy, but that we’re also working with the next generation of innovators who will be responsible for taking our work forward in the future and this is a great example of bringing the workplace and education closer.

Northern Gas Networks is one of the businesses working with the North East LEP on the Education Challenge, which aims to reduce the gap between the North East’s best and lowest performing schools, with the target that all schools achieve a ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ OFSTED rating.

Pictured: One of Northern Gas Networks’ compressed natural gas vehicles at the Low Carbon Networks & Innovation Conference

A partnership between Marden High School in North Tyneside and their Enterprise Adviser has led to a new way of supporting students as they prepare to enter the world of work or further education.

Fiona Brennan, Career Lead at Marden High School, has been working in partnership with Jane Austin, Director of HR at water retail company Wave, with the aim of strengthening careers guidance for pupils at all levels of the school and working towards achieving more of the Gatsby Benchmarks which form a central part of the Government’s Careers Strategy.

Fiona Brennan explained: “We’ve recently worked with North Tyneside Learning Trust to implement mock interviews for the whole of Year 10. Local employers including Jane’s colleagues from Wave and also representatives from the Department of Work and Pensions, Accenture and Newcastle Building Society all took part, giving our students a real taste of what interviews are like and, importantly, helping us to identify where students need additional support.

“We found that some students needed extra help in identifying and describing the skills they have that relate to certain jobs and some need help with building their confidence, for example.

“We’re now in the process of implementing a new programme of one-to-one coaching/life-coaching for students, which is tailored to the specific needs of individual students as a result of these interviews.”

Jane Austin added: “This will help the students with their confidence and self-belief as well as helping them to understand what types of jobs are out there for them and the options they have.

“We wanted to take a more holistic view of preparing students for their future careers. It’s not just about academic success and that’s why we’ve taken this step of joining forces with a life-coaching service. I think it’s amazing; I don’t know of any other school that’s doing this and I think Marden High School deserves a lot of credit for providing this kind of tailored support.

The school also organised a full day event for Year 9 students, working with members of staff from Wave to run a Super Learning Day. Students took part in a tailored business game involving a series of workshops each based on a different area of work including HR, finance, marketing and production. Students gained experience in each area before pitching ideas to their peers and the panel of business representatives – a bit like Dragons’ Den.

“The students worked in teams and not only did they learn about these different areas of work but they developed their time management and team-working skills as well,” said Fiona.

“Events like this, along with the coaching programme, are something different from what we’ve done before and they wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t been working side by side with Jane and her team from Wave.”

Find out more about the North East LEP Enterprise Adviser programme.

North East LEP Skills Director Michelle Rainbow gives the lowdown on apprenticeships and calls on the Government to listen closely to businesses and help create more demand.

The Government plans to create three million apprenticeships by 2020. It’s an increasingly ambitious target, not least because the number of apprenticeships has dropped since the Apprenticeship Levy was introduced in April 2017.

So what’s going on? Here in the North East it’s a mixed picture. Having seen apprenticeship schemes promoted heavily, pupils, parents and schools have understandably bought in. Conversely, businesses have been hanging back, waiting to see what the quality standards will be like – so there is supply of eager applicants but less demand.

The complexity of the Apprenticeship Levy hasn’t helped. An early assessment report by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) shows that 22% of employers don’t know whether they have to pay the Levy or not.

This plays out here, where SMEs continue to seek clarity. There is a big difference between sectors which are used to hiring apprentices, such as construction, manufacturing and engineering, and those for whom this is still a new innovation. It’s one of the reasons our case studies focus on the fields of pharmaceuticals and law as they’re not traditionally associated with this type of scheme.

Right now our ask of Government is that it continues to liaise closely with employers to understand their needs, provides reassurance about quality standards and simplifies how the Levy works – and this has to include clarification on how unspent monies will be used to set the record straight.

We need an agile system which can flex and respond to opportunities and issues in a much quicker timeframe. We also need to create real business demand.

Better qualifications and better jobs for all

Here at the North East LEP we particularly welcome higher and degree apprenticeships as we strive to create more and better jobs to support the local economy.

The North East Growth Hub lists the various providers and is well worth a look for those looking for more information.

However we are keen that the government takes steps to ensure these remain open to everyone.

Access to affordable degree-level education will of course prove popular across the board as more people understand the opportunity and move to maximise this. As such there is a particular need to engage with the more disadvantaged and not just the squeezed middle classes if we are to raise ambitions, keep a level playing field and make sure no one gets left behind.

Ultimately the apprenticeship drive is moving in the right direction but implementation always brings new challenges, as well as the need for expectation management.

Rest assured, we will continue to work with the business community, schools and parents to represent their needs with Government and do all we can to achieve the greatest success possible.

A PARTNERSHIP THAT WORKS BOTH WAYS

Jane Austin, Head of HR and Communications at water retail company Wave, became involved in the North East LEP’s Enterprise Adviser programme after Wave’s CEO heard about the programme at a conference.

Jane was matched with a school just a couple of miles from where she lives and is now working in partnership with Fiona Brennan, (pictured left), Work-Related Learning Co-ordinator at Marden High School in North Tyneside.

Together, Jane (pictured below) and Fiona aim to strengthen careers guidance at the school, ensuring that the school achieves the eight Good Career Guidance Benchmarks which have been successfully piloted here in the North East and now form a central part of the Government’s new careers strategy.

“We had already completed an internal audit to see how the school was performing against the eight benchmarks, and this helped us to identify our priorities for the academic year, and for our work with Jane,” explained Fiona. “For example, we found that our careers provision varied across year groups and that we needed to provide more opportunities for our younger pupils.”

“Working together with Jane has been a really positive experience and I feel that we’re making good progress towards achieving the benchmarks. The most useful thing has been having the support of someone who is looking at our situation from a different perspective.

“We want to make sure that students come away from our career events feeling inspired and wanting to know more. We need to spark their interest and give them experiences which they can relate to.

“We now have a number of careers-focused events planned for different year groups in the New Year and more in the pipeline – these include a half day event where pupils will run their own business, learning how to make business decisions in areas such as pricing, HR and production. We’re also challenging stereotypes, with younger pupils meeting people who work in all sorts of different careers, from firefighters to marketers.

“I’m really, really happy with our partnership and Jane’s experience and passion means we work very well together.

Jane Austin added: “Working together, we’ve made huge progress in a short time. We’ve moved towards filling the gaps in provision which the school had already identified and we’re in a position now where we have a plan for the careers offering for every year group and we can evidence the Good Career Guidance Benchmarks in a more robust way across all ages.

“While I’m working with the school on a strategic level, I’ll still be supporting them at events which is great as I have the pleasure of watching the students grow and, every time, I come away astounded by them.

“There’s something amazing about a partnership between business and education. The school gains from it but so does the business.

“I’ll be calling on my colleagues in finance, sales and our CEO, who will all be volunteering at events and sharing their knowledge with pupils. Our employees get a lot out of being involved and opportunities to volunteer are really valued by people at all levels – the partnership really does work both ways and it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done.”

Find out more about the North East LEP Enterprise Adviser programme.

Category: Skills Projects

A refreshed plan for delivering more and better jobs in the North East

Expanding the reach of the North East Skills Strategy

PUPILS GET ON BOARD WITH LEARNING ABOUT CAREERS WITH GO NORTH EAST

Helping our future innovators get to grips with clean energy

A new approach to holistic careers support in North Tyneside

National Apprenticeship Week – What next for the North East?

A partnership that works both ways