Agenda item

[Report – Pre-Decision Item]

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The Head of Skills gave a presentation on Education and Skills (a copy of the presentation is attached to the signed minutes). She summarised the current strengths the City had towards employment support. She felt some of the strengths in the City were nationally strong, those were 20 secondary schools,19 with sixth forms, 54 independent training providers. 8 Colleges delivered learning to City residents. There were more City of Wolverhampton schools rated as ”good”  by Ofsted than the national average. Online learning had increased in usage during and then post-Covid lock down. There were low levels of young people who did not participate in employment, education or training (years 16 – 17), a youth employment HUB, extensive data collection.

The Youth Employment HUB had finished its first year, it had a target of 300 people, it managed over 400 with 30 percent who moved into employment.  The Head of Skills listed the current challenges to be dealt with, these were:

·       high levels of long-standing unemployment (especially between 18 to 24)
 

·       low levels of formal qualifications compared to regional and national averages

·       low level essential skills

·       an imbalance of skills in reference to qualifications and experience thus meaning a skills shortage in the area

·       employers were focused on hiring employees and not developing existing staff with upskilling or reskilling

·       loss of European Union funds

·       legacy issues from the Covid lock down.

To address some of the challenges, in particular the loss of European Union funding and the framework with which that set out, the Council would be taking funding from the Commonwealth Games Legacy Fund and the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. They also had a development deal between the national government and the West Midlands Combined Authority which would see a more place-based approach to address Local Authority Specific challenges. The Head of Skills then discussed the Wolves at Work programme, which was a cross sector approach to tackling unemployment in the City, highlighting its approach in the presentation slides. Community Skills delivery targeted supporting adults who were furthest from the jobs market to enable them to get skills in a community setting. This included maths support tailored towards helping people understand how to budget, second language speakers for migrants, skills and well being packages, people with learning disabilities and more. They aimed to get community grants in the future towards further facilities, taken from the United Kingdom Shared Prosperity Fund.  A joined up approach was being developed in house with the Adult Education Service.

The Head of Policy and Strategy stated that with new investment into the City, there were new opportunities, however, she was aware there were many young people who would not yet be able to take advantage of those opportunities due to various barriers, so strategy was focused on working with young people to enable them to progress. The challenges of worklessness were inter-generational and went back 20 years and would require a long term plan to address. 5 areas of focus for transformation and action were:  Children have the best start in life, high quality education which prepares young people for work, post 16 education provision that meets the needs of employers, lifelong learning pathways to good quality work, a new employer support model.

The Vice Chair thanked the team for the report. He stated he had read a statistic that Wolverhampton had the second highest number of unemployment benefit claimants in the country. He felt that when it came to young people having the best start in life, there was statistical evidence that local children from around key stage 3 started to drop off in terms of their output quality. He said in English and Maths particularly, there were children falling behind. He said he felt the data did not highlight white working class children, who made up a massive cohort of the school population. He felt the report should have included that group too. He said more engagement needed to occur with parents to stress how important education was at a young age for their children. He stated that the future would bring further global competition, with countries like Mumbai and Delhi. Citing his own experiences visiting those countries, he said the children in those schools were hungry for education because education was seen as a ticket out of poverty. He felt this same message was not being driven home to students in England, especially Wolverhampton.

The Head of Policy and Strategy felt there was an opportunity in the schemes to drive home to families the importance of learning maths and english. She also said careers engagement from a young age was key to increase aspirational thinking.

The Cabinet Member for Jobs and Skills stressed the importance of the strategy containing practical actions that could be done and emphasised the need for increased support around post-18 year olds to target the slump in career based trajectories that age group brings with careers advisory.

A Panel member stated that he felt the figures of unemployment across the City were too high, and not reducing. He said more needed to be done to reach people to get them into employment.

The Head of Skills referred to statistics quoting that the most recent City unemployment figures were 28.7 percent, which was higher than regional and national averages. However, 26.1 percent of those people said they wanted a job, which was higher than the regional and national averages. She explained, however, that there were people listed as economically inactive and people who were economically inactive but seeking a job. The latter would be on the radar of services as they’d be attending the jobcentre for benefits, whereas those not seeking were off the radar and were harder to engage with. She informed the Panel the Council was in line to receive funding from the United Kingdom Shared Prosperity Fund, once this funding had been granted to the Council, they intended to invest around £1 million into reaching economically inactive people. She said it was important to note that data sets that report figures of people claiming Universal Credit included people who did work but were on low wages or zero hours contracts. She said these were people who were under-employed and that they too were a focus to try increase their working hours or job prospects. She hoped for devolved powers to local Department of Work & Pensions so that they could do place based targeting on these issues, rather than a generalised national system as was currently in place.

A Councillor stated that he would be interested in seeing which wards were doing the worst on employment figures.

Resolved: That the Employment team come back to the Panel with strategies for local wards and how employment and unemployment is in those wards.  The information should also contain which wards and services are the weakest links.