Westminster Hall Debate – Colleges Week 2024

• Local government, as democratically elected leaders of place, and often being the largest employer in a place, play a key role in stimulating local economies and want to ensure that employers have a supply of skilled workforce to meet the current and future business demands in local areas.
• Funding and the national employment and skills system is too centralised, short-term and no single organisation is responsible or accountable for coordinating programmes nationally or locally. This makes it difficult to plan, target and join-up provision.
• The LGA identifies that poor-quality, insufficient and fragmented CEIAG is a persistent and key barrier to youth employment.
• Locally-tailored and independent careers education, information, advice and guidance, is vital to ensure young people are informed of the full range of careers and pathways available to them, and should inform young people about the local and national job market, which industries/sectors are growing, and which skills are in demand.
• Councils report that the reduction in careers advice over recent years means that young people and their families are less well informed about career options due to insufficient staff and resources to spend sufficient time looking at options, support, and reasonable adjustments.

Councils want to ensure that every young person, no matter their background, has the tools and support to progress in life and reach their full potential. Local government, as democratically elected leaders of place, and often being the largest employer in a place, play a key role in stimulating local economies and want to ensure that employers have a supply of skilled workforce to meet the current and future business demands in local areas.

As part of their wider role in supporting children and young people, and in shaping their local skills and the employment system, councils have several statutory duties relating to ensuring all young people up to the age of 18 (25 for those with learning difficulties) participate in education or training. These include:

• Raising Participation Age – encourage, enable and assist young people to develop a range of skills for adult life and reduce the likelihood of unemployment.
• September Guarantee – secure a suitable place in education or training, including a vocational offer, for all 16 and 17-year-olds.
• Tracking – undertake effective monitoring to fulfil statutory duties for participation and to reduce the number of post-16 unknown destinations for young people.
• Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET) – establish the identities of young people failing to participate in education and training.
• Risk of NEET Indicators (RONI) – identify those who are not fully engaged in school and therefore may be at risk of becoming NEET at age 16.

Despite these wide-ranging responsibilities, councils have very few formal levers over the commissioning or co-ordination of provision to ensure statutory duties are met. This makes it extremely challenging for local government to provide place leadership or to build wider support for those with complex or additional needs.

Place makes a difference to a young person’s life chances, access to support and economic opportunities. Every area has its own unique labour market and economy, including a mix of jobs, qualification levels, unemployment, vacancies, levels of deprivation and geographic challenges, with often as many differences within regions as between them. A national one-size-fits-all approach cannot therefore deliver on an area’s diverse needs.

Councils and combined authorities, with the right powers and resources, could do more to bring together decisions around the economy, job creation, transport, skills and employment support and wider support services, to create a joined-up offer for young people and adults around the needs of place.

The national employment and skills system is too centralised, short-term, and standalone. On the ground, this makes it difficult to plan, target and join up provision and leads to gaps and / or duplicated provision.

Our analysis (April 2021) reveals that across England, £20 billion is spent on at least 49 nationally contracted or delivered employment and skills related schemes or services managed by 9 Whitehall departments and agencies, multiple providers and over different geographies. No Government strategy sets out how schemes like Levelling Up and Towns Funds, Help to Grow, Restart, Bootcamps, National Careers Service etc should work together.

This is further complicated by the fact that different Whitehall departments are responsible for different age ranges:

• Department for Education (DfE) – 16-18 years.
• Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) – 19-24 years, who are not in education or employment.
• Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) is responsible for youth services for those aged 13-19 (or up to 25 for those with learning difficulties) and the National Citizen Service for 16-17 year olds.

All of this makes the system complicated. Many councils have established employment and skills board (or similar) to help cohere the system. But without formal levers or a duty to discuss with councils how services will operate in local areas, councils can only at best knit together the patchwork of different initiatives. This also means that there is no single organisation nationally or locally responsible for coordinating these, with no one organisation accountable over how the totality are improving local outcomes.

The LGA’s Work Local proposals aim to improve the impact of the employment and skills system for people and places. It would give elected local leaders powers and a single pot of funding to work with local partners to design, commission and have oversight of a ‘one stop’ all-age service, bringing together careers’ advice, employment support, training and apprenticeships, and business support connected to wider services. It has the potential to increase – by 15% - the number of people improving their skills or finding work at a lower cost. Each will be underpinned by multi-year devolved employment and skills agreements (DESAs). This approach would enable areas to join up decisions and maximise opportunities for residents, businesses and the wider community.

Poor-quality, insufficient and fragmented CEIAG remains a key barrier to youth employment. In any one area, schools, colleges, councils and national agencies like the NCS, CEC, Job Centre Plus, and Education and Skills Funding Agency, deliver initiatives for different age ranges and groups, without a single organisation responsible or accountable for coordinating it with the local jobs market.

Quality, locally-tailored and independent CEIAG is vital to ensure young people are fully informed of the full range of careers and pathways available to them, including vocational and technical education training options, apprenticeships, and university degrees.

Recent years have seen a plethora of new policies, initiatives and new bodies, some of which have proved counter-productive. In schools, careers advice has been identified to be often inconsistent, not independent, and does not start early enough. Poor CEIAG risks disproportionately impacting young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, as they are potentially less likely to benefit from resources and advice from family and friends about the breadth of career options.

It is important that CEIAG informs young people about the local and national job market, which industries/sectors are growing, and which skills are in demand. Too often, young people finish training and struggle to find suitable employment or take up low-paid or insecure jobs that do not match their skills or interests with vacancies. This can lead to frustration, disillusionment, and a lack of motivation to pursue further education or training.

Councils report that the reduction in careers advice over recent years means that young people and their families are less well informed about career options due to insufficient staff and resources to spend sufficient time looking at options, support, and reasonable adjustments. The reduction in Disability Employment Advisors in local jobcentres has further reduced the support available.

Nevertheless, local government is working to ensure an inclusive service for all. With the integration of Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEP) functions within local government, and the role of councils in influencing CEC provisions for areas, it is essential that the opportunities this presents are not lost. Most councils are already actively engaged with Careers Hub in supporting young people, including those with SEND. For example:

• In Surrey, the Careers Hub team also works across the internal directorates in the council, particularly with colleagues in Education and Lifelong Learning who are providing support services to special schools, and alternative provisions and PRUs and providing direct support services to young people in these settings who have EHCPs and/or are at risk of being NEET. Surrey Youth Voice provide advice and support to help young people take the next steps into education or employment.
• The West Midlands Combined Authority has developed an online platform for adult education and employment support as well as a website for young people seeking work and training, and wants to do more to join this up locally.
• Babergh & Mid Suffolk Councils' Careeriosity inspires young people about new career opportunities in an area which has traditionally been characterised by low skilled and low wage jobs.

Councils recognise that T Levels are pivotal for addressing skills shortages, to develop a pipeline of skilled young people ready for the workforce. They are committed to ensuring there is a strong local T Level offer and the LGA is supporting the roll out of T Levels across local government through the improvement offer for councils. This includes a pilot programme to promote T Level industry placements within councils and work to capture and share best practice.

Through their wide-ranging role in the skills system, councils are well-placed to support the T Level rollout by engaging with young people from all backgrounds to improve take-up, build in wrap-around support for learners and support the provision of quality industry placements. Joining up T Levels with other local support will be crucial to re-engage those who are NEET, provide the additional support needed for students with SEND and those from disadvantaged backgrounds, to enable all young people to get the most out of T Levels.

Councils and combined authorities, working with their local FE sector, employer base and the forthcoming Employer Representative Bodies, are well placed to take a lead role in planning and promoting the new Post-16 local offer, so there is a coherent local picture with joined-up pathways of progression, with built-in wrap-around support for learners.

To ensure the rollout of T Levels is a success, it is crucial that they are effectively promoted to students and their families, through quality CEIAG, as part of the wider Post-16 education offer. As T Levels are still relatively new, confidence will need to be instilled in the long-term value of these qualifications to boost uptake and ensure the reforms do not inadvertently result in a drop in learner numbers and an increase in NEETs.

As a significant employer and apprenticeship levy payer, councils provide support for young people, including those with disabilities to gain access to employment with their local council. The LGA has been providing improvement support to councils as employers to help them create more apprenticeship and T level Industry Placement (IP) opportunities.

In a recent LGA T level survey of councils, the majority said they would provide more Industry placements if incentives remained in place to help with the additional capacity needed to provide placements for young people. The LGA is committed to working with DfE to promote how T levels and apprenticeships can continue to be a positive experience for young people to gain long term employment.

Apprenticeship Levy fund

Currently, Apprenticeship Levy funds can only be spent on apprenticeship training and not on many of the other associated costs. The LGA has consistently called for employers to be granted greater flexibility over how they can spend apprenticeship levy funds, including on administration costs, salaries and pre-apprenticeship training. Councils should also be given maximum local freedom, including the ability to pool levy funds to better plan provision across their areas, and use a proportion of the levy to subsidise apprentices’ wages and administration costs and devolve non-Levy apprenticeships funding.

If levy payers were permitted to use a portion of their levy funds to pay for some of the wider costs of maintaining an apprenticeship programme, it would help to create more apprenticeships and give local government greater flexibility to tackle our own skills shortages and bring more young people into the sector.

Archie Ratcliffe, Public Affairs and Campaigns Advisor

Email: [email protected]