COLLAB GROUP – WRITTEN EVIDENCE (YUN0053)

Youth Unemployment Committee inquiry

 

About Collab Group

Collab Group represents the largest colleges in the FE sector, covering the whole of the UK. Our members make a positive impact in their regions and in the lives of their students: they provide supportive environments for learners; they form partnerships with employers to deliver high-quality skills training; and they publish thought leadership on the biggest issues impacting technical education.

Our members are transforming skills across the UK and they are collectively:

-          Have a student population of more than 600,000 part-time and full-time students.

-          Train more than 46,000 apprentices.

-          Employ nearly 30,000 teachers and teach 50,000 different courses.

-          Have 154 campuses spread across the country.

-          Have a significant economic impact with a combined turnover of £1.8 billion.

 

This consultation response

Collab Group colleges are actively involved in providing life changing education and training opportunities to learners across the UK. The impacts of the coronavirus pandemic have exacerbated pre-existing challenges around young people can navigate the labour market. 

This response is a summary of direct responses from Collab Group colleges leaders on how the challenges of youth unemployment within their own local contexts.

This consultation has been produced based on a survey that was sent out to Principal and Chief executives across Collab Group colleges. In total 10 responses were received to this survey and a summary of the responses can be found in this document.

We would be grateful if responses can be kept confidential at this stage, but we would be happy to obtain permissions from respondents to make these responses public. Similarly, we would be happy to share the full survey responses with the committee, pending the approval of survey respondents.

If you have any questions about the response, please feel free to contact us at info@collabgroup.co.uk

 

Question 1) What are the main challenges facing young people seeking employment today? How do structural factors impact youth unemployment, and how might these be addressed?

 

  1. During the pandemic, under 25s have been hit harder than any other age group. According to the ONS, almost three fifths of the 726,000 people who are no longer on company payrolls were aged 25 or younger. Many young people are facing an increasingly competitive labour market, as more under 25s are also looking for work and companies prioritise potential employees with more experience. 

 

  1. We see the main challenge facing young people in seeking employment as accessing the right educational opportunities at all levels and ensuring they are ‘work-ready’. This means getting both the formal qualifications they need, having some element of work-based learning, and being able to develop the softer skills e.g., around communication and preparedness for work, which enable them to get and keep jobs in a more challenging labour market. This applies to all young people.

 

  1. The pandemic has had a devastating impact on the labour market, and on those sectors and roles which have typically offered a high volume of first-time or 'stop gap' employment opportunities to young people leaving full-time education. Whilst initiatives such as Kickstart may offer some short-term opportunities, these will only be available to those young people who are claiming benefits and are at greatest risk of long-term unemployment. There is also no requirement (and therefore no guarantee) that these opportunities will lead to sustained employment.

 

  1. A significant number of young people leave school with no or low qualifications. Young people who are NEET tend to face multiple barriers, ranging from financial, personal, cultural, physical, and mental health issues which lead them to becoming NEET. These are problems associated with the wider social economic inequalities, of which unemployment is one manifestation.

 

  1. This points to the need for a much more comprehensive response to youth unemployment, both in scale and scope, which incorporates the option of remaining in or returning to education and training alongside other labour market initiatives as a means of increasing young people's short and long-term employment prospects and therefore wider life chances.

 

  1. One mechanism to address these challenges is to focus on the provision of basic transferrable skills that are not being delivered in schools (who are understandably mainly concerned with GCSE results). Confidence, resilience, the ability to learn from making mistakes and communication skills are essential to successfully entering employment and are all currently key barriers for young people.

 

  1. It will also be critical to promote access to good quality well-funded relevant training that lets young people develop level 3/4/5 skills with higher earnings potential, with relevant work experience and employer engagement as part of the programme. The employer incentivisation needs to be more than a 12-week work experience or traineeship option.

 

Questions 2) What are the main challenges facing employers in the labour market today? What barriers do they face in recruiting young workers and setting up apprenticeships and traineeships?

 

Employers face several challenges including:

 

  1. Employers are facing unprecedented uncertainty. Many will see tens of thousands of existing apprenticeships that cannot be completed due to backlogs on assessment and EPA. Many will be worried about committing to take someone on whilst they recover their trading. Therefore, they may seek to take on experienced adult workers rather than the burden of a young trainee. Employers need help and better incentives to take young people on; they need guarantees about awarding bodies and assessment organisation being able to complete their work on time. Many apprentice training providers are losing money or have cashflow problems and cannot guarantee to support employers through their apprentice journey.

 

  1. There are a range of existing training schemes to help employers access new talent, however, initiatives including T Levels, Kick Start, apprenticeships and traineeship create a complicated landscape for employers and there is some scheme fatigue.

 

  1.                     Employers also face challenges in attracting young people to occupations, for example regulated health and social care areas where employers require more experience, or traditional trades where working environments are more challenging for young people.

 

  1.                     The challenges faced by employers will also vary within the devolved nations. In Northern Ireland, the number apprenticeship frameworks (standards) are outdated and the range of apprenticeship pathways for young people were fewer compared to their counterparts in the rest of the UK.

 

  1.                     Several barriers exist that impact the recruitment of young apprentices. The strict compliance rules generally around apprenticeships can reduce flexibility. The apprenticeship levy cannot be used for other accredited skills training outside of apprenticeships, an apprenticeship may not always be the answer whereas a part-time evening programme could be—levy monies could be made available to support this.

 

  1.                     The reforms to apprenticeships and traineeships make employers wary and unsure about their requirements in these programmes. Employers often do not envisage the requirements around 20% of time 'off the job' for apprentices and the subsequent impact on their operational activities. Similarly, the risk incentives between employers and trainers are unbalanced. Having an apprentice reaching the end of their programme and having been trained in essential skills for a role, for example, is a situation that an employer may be comfortable with for some months.

 

Question 3) What future social, economic, and technological changes are likely to impact youth unemployment? What impact might these changes have, and how should this be planned for and addressed?

 

  1.                     There is an ongoing move towards the automation of entry level roles. For example, a lot of young people got jobs in places like McDonalds, where they would gain invaluable experience in customer service and teamwork. However, while there are significant jobs in this sector, electronic ordering on apps and in store reduces the need to have staff taking orders, therefore, reducing jobs. There will be an increased demand for skills in digital innovation and coding, but not at the same level as the jobs those innovations are replacing.

 

  1.                     Additionally, the increasing pace of the impact of technology across a range of sectors is leading to situation where even traditional trades require an enhanced level of digital skills. The risk is that those young people and indeed the SMEs they work for are distanced from the new employment opportunities and that FE Colleges fail to keep pace with the changing need for digital and technology skills. Demand for digital skills is not limited to those sectors associated with the digital industry, employer skills surveys has identified the scale of digital skills challenges across the economy, key findings indicated that nearly 25% of job applicants lacked advanced IT skills and 20% lacked basic IT skills.

 

  1.                     More and more businesses have moved their work into a digital or online environment and so these trends are likely to continue, young people with low or no qualifications are likely to be at more risk of extended long-term unemployment, and those with some qualifications will find that if these cannot be applied in a remote, flexible, or online environment then their roles may well be automated or replaced. Even if young people have some qualifications, as wages are restrained many will need to access better qualifications at level 3,4 and 5 to access better paid economically viable work or to reskill. This means a significant uplift in capacity and places in FE, Vocational training and via training providers.

 

  1.                     The standard model of university at age 18 may wane and employers may gain if the alternative routes are simplified and properly supported. The gap between the disadvantaged and the more advantaged/able will widen unless compensatory measures are put in place at school. The increased emphasis on digital skills could either mitigate, or exacerbate, this divide. Technological advances could support a move towards a younger workforce and digital training should be a core part of the curriculum for all students up to the age of 19.

 

  1.                     The future student will also need to develop more transferrable skills and resilience to cope with changes in employment patterns and technology. However, much of the direction of travel within policy currently seems to drive in the opposite direction to this. The DfE is currently driving qualification reform at Level 3 for post 16 students to create highly specialised and focussed study programme (T Levels) at the expense of the (possibly defunded) Applied General qualifications that they replace. The AGQs will provide a broader and more transferrable skills portfolio in the ever-changing future for young people.

 

Question 4) Is funding for education, training, and skills enough to meet the needs of young people and of the labour market? How can we ensure it continues to reach those who need it most?

 

  1.                     FE funding per student is still less than it was in 2010 but colleges are being asked to do more. Funding available to FECs, particularly for technical and vocational courses, does not adequately cover the costs of delivery. Equity with schools funding needs to be a priority, with additional recognition of the costs involved in providing world class facilities and equipment.

 

  1.                     The per unit rate for technical and vocational training that young people and employers need to receive quality applied training and skills development is often less than half the rate of an undergraduate average. The significant growth over recent years of funding for graduates appears to have had very little impact on GDP or relevant employment, the per unit rate of funding needs uplifting by at least 20% to provide young people and employers with real world training and access to up to date facilities and kit for training to be relevant.

 

  1.                     Funding streams could also stand to be simplified. There are too many different pots of funding for education and skills, from different government departments. DWP work in a silo and do not use the expertise already available within education. The incentive for young people to catch up on their learning is absent, particularly where there is lack of parental support. As an example, there is a disincentive for young people from poorer families to take up apprenticeships because parents miss out benefits (as opposed to full time education where parents can still claim).

 

  1.                     Increased funding is also required to ensure that lecturer and teaching staff have the latest industry standard skills. It is widely understood that working in the industry pays better than training talent for the future, therefore as new and emerging technologies are developed the sector needs to respond by getting people in to train for the future.

 

  1.                     Again, devolved nations face their own funding challenges. Compared to England, Scotland and Wales, spending on education and skills is lowest in Northern Ireland, relative to total spending. According to Department for Economy analysis linked to the new SkillsNI strategy, NI funding for skills related interventions has decreased by 24% over the period 2011 – 2019 representing a reduction of at least £188 million.

 

Question 8) What more needs to be done to ensure parity of esteem between vocational and academic study in the jobs market and society? How can funding play a role in this?

  1.                     There are a range of measures that will be necessary to achieve parity between vocational and academic routes. Ongoing campaigns and employer support for vocational applied education will be important. Employers also play a role in offering jobs which require level 4 & 5 rather than degree qualifications.

 

  1.                     School engagement will also be critical. Vocational education, which is the foundation on many skills that supports our economy is looked at as the second option or pathway for people that have failed academically. Funding alone will not address this, clear messaging, outcomes, and support at all levels is needed. There must be clearer guidance and enforcement of good careers in schools. The Baker clause is not being implemented in all schools who will still guide towards their 6th forms rather than technical education. There must be parental education too to persuade them of the value of technical education.

 

  1.                     Colleges and Secondary schools should be jointly funded to support the development and delivery of vocational programmes in schools, in colleges and in partnerships. This approach would support a levelling up of the conversation on the value of both pathways with schools and Colleges working in partnership. This approach would also maximise the value of capital investments being made across the FE and Schools estate and the utilisation of staff resource. We should also ensure that schools' careers programme and access is performance-measured and open the pre-16 curriculum to the possibility of more vocational study so that parents get used to seeing it as desirable.

 

  1.                     Additionally, there needs to be parity of funding, not in an absolute sense but in an applied sense at sector level. There is no point funding business quals where you can have 30 people at a session and need little access to kit, tools and materials at the same or similar rate to an equivalent qualification for electric vehicle engineering. The delivery costs for both are completely different and needs to be recognised as such, as is the economic payback for the treasury.

 

  1.                     The introduction of T levels has been a significant policy development to improve parity between academic and vocational routes. However, there is a concern about the accessibility of these qualifications. If only students who have been able to achieve 'good' GCSE grades in English and Maths (around 67% of Year 11 students) are able to progress to high value vocational study, opportunities will be limited. The remainder of the cohort will be stuck in a transition phase, trying to achieve the good GCSE English and Maths grades to access T Levels or A Levels and having very low chances of being able to do so. This policy change will be a strong barrier to social mobility in the UK.

 

Question 9) What is the role of business and universities in creating a thriving jobs market for young people? How should they be involved in developing skills and training programmes at further and higher education level?

 

  1.                     Collaboration between further education colleges, universities and business is essential.

Universities and colleges can create excellent education pathways for young people who may not have considered university education. Colleges typically have greater links to local employers and are better embedded within the local community than universities, which have a greater national and international footprint.

 

  1.                     However, Universities cannot reach the volumes of young people needed across all sectors below undergraduate level at either the right delivery cost or the volumes of people needing to be trained. It is uneconomic for universities with all their inherent costs of research, employer pensions contributions to be considered as a viable large-scale vehicle to deliver level3/4/5 technical qualifications at scale, and with the very applied delivery/training/teaching models required for employers. It is our view that, University should focus on levels 6 and above allowing colleges to focus on technical education at levels 3, 4, 5 which is their natural space and what they do well as they are closer to the learner and to the employer.

 

  1.                     There is a clear place for business in creating a thriving jobs market for young people through detailed engagement with education providers. Ensuring all further education providers have strong sector focused employer boards that influence skills and training at the college is vital. Progression to higher level skills can then be developed as part of the pathway with universities. Business should be embracing more involvement in co-design and co-delivery curriculum models bringing together the best of FE and the employer.

 

  1.                     Businesses need to be able to predict short- and medium-term skills needs. Having an accredited framework of qualifications which lead to employment is vital. It must be possible to mix and match employment across these matrices.

 

  1.                     There should be continued emphasis on work placement, internship, supported where appropriate, and industrial experience offered as a collaboration. Employers should be welcomed as part of vital HEI infrastructure. The IoT model provides a route map for collaborative curriculum design.

 

  1.                     This question is not just about Universities, who in many cases are focused on higher level research funding and less on addressing the lower-level skills and employability challenges associated with youth employment. An improved framework to support the funding and delivery of collaborative progression pathways, Foundation Degrees, Access Programmes and Higher-Level Apprenticeships into Universities working with Colleges should be encouraged. University receipt of core funding for some undergraduate programmes and the delivery of their Widening Access and Participation Plans should be contingent of having defined pathways and development pipelines in place with FE Colleges jointly consulted on with employers.

 

  1.                     FE Colleges, such as Belfast Met, are developing a more structured dialogue with employers to identify the skills needs of employers and of the economy. This would build on work of the Curriculum Hubs in NI, across the sectors such as Digital ICT and Tourism & Hospitality, for which Belfast Met is the lead FE College. We need to ensure that there is a structured and consistent approach to employer dialogue which helps us to drill down into the detailed needs beneath the macro-analysis contained in Skills Barometer.

 

Question 10) What can be done to ensure that enough apprenticeship and traineeship placements are available for young people? Is the apprenticeship levy the right way to achieve a continuing supply of opportunities?

 

  1.                     Promoting the role of apprenticeships in terms of how they improve the employability of young people and prepare them for the jobs that employers and wider society need is key.

 

  1.                     While the sector recovers the employer incentive scheme needs to be maintained to ensure employers are provided with the financial incentive to build for the future. Once they are supported and out of survival mode, they will see the impact of their apprentice and continue to use them as a vehicle for workforce development. The levy is a way of continuing to drive apprenticeships, but the underspend of the levy cannot be the governments only source of apprenticeship funding for SMEs. If the levy paying employers, circa 2-3% of the employers in the country all use their levy, apprenticeships will crash.

 

  1.                     Consideration should also be given to make the levy more flexible, so it becomes and apprenticeship and skills Levy. Apprenticeships should be the primary route for young people to enter the workplace and receive a high standard of training.

 

  1.                     Many training providers find traineeships too cumbersome and expensive to deliver within the allocated funding, so many do not recommend them to employers. The levy helps but is not fully utilised as some employers feel that they (with their training provider) cannot deliver a quality training and upskill experience for the funding allowed in the standard, this means that certain sectors with huge demand are underserved, e.g., health and social care. Other areas should have a national programme linked to further education and employers, for example nursing apprenticeships or qualifications should be available at every FE college and be linked with a local NHS employers to deal with the national shortages, provide pathways from school and to deliver these qualifications in a real world applied way and at an effective and efficient price point for the public purse, FE colleges could create very strong pathways from school directly into work with NHS employers.

 

Question 11) What lessons can be learned by current and previous youth labour market policy interventions and educational approaches, both in the UK and in other countries?

 

  1.                     There are several lessons to be learned from previous approaches. Firstly, the need to act promptly. In some UK cities, the "employment" rate three years after the last financial crisis (2011) for cohorts of 16-24 years olds was as low as 40%, where there are gaps in educational attainment post covid, or a lack of funding for places in technical/vocational training at a time of higher unemployment, these numbers could be exceeded with further long-term impacts for society and the economy. The capacity and funding need to be committed at scale before September 2021 to have impact. Acting very quickly on skills is key to reducing the unemployment benefit burden, closing the time between being out of work and training to being in work and contributing tax and National insurance back into the economy.

 

  1.                     Another significant step that could potentially be taken to support better training and attainment at 18 is removal of high stakes testing at 16. The GCSE regime and the impact results have on schools has led to a results driven economy where schools teach for the test and students fail to learn skills outside of the construct of GCSE exams. This leaves students unprepared for vocational study and leaves many (a third) on the 'scrapheap' at 16 unable to access A Levels or T Levels as they do not hold the requisite grade 4 at English and Maths. The nations that score the best within the PISA research for literacy and numeracy do not have such a sorting at 16 years and enjoy better educational attainment because of it.

 

  1.                     Overall, there have been too many initiatives and changes of direction in UK education policy. If successive governments saw through long term programmes, there would be much more stability and it would allow some good policies to work. Apprentices were well regarded in the sixties and are becoming so again but successive government changes have lost time. There need to be more opportunities for FE leaders to look at positive vocational models elsewhere in the world. There are limitations on transferring from full time programmes to apprentices which creative disincentives for the FE provider.

 

  1.                     Short term projects of less than 2 years are not a workable model for youth labour market interventions. For example, a commitment to a Youth Guarantee scheme (e.g in Glasgow City Deal) where young people can access high quality education and training opportunities, with guaranteed work placement and interview, based upon local context, employment opportunities and skills needs has potential for longer term impacts.

 

  1.                     Another pre-requisite is accessible careers advice and guidance, which orientate young people towards additional sources of information and advice, with effective signposting and referral pathways between education and employment providers.

 

  1.                     The Futures Work programme at Belfast Met, demonstrates evidence that embedding a youth work approach alongside vocational skills development focused on the personal and social development of the young person is required.

 

  1.                     There are lessons to be learned from both the UK Government's Future Jobs Fund (FJF) and the Welsh Government's Jobs Growth Wales (JGW) programme in relation to providing young people with meaningful work experience and, particularly in the case of JGW, a 'foot in the door' in respect of sustained employment.

 

Question 12) What economic sectors present opportunities for sustainable, quality jobs for young people? How can we ensure these opportunities are capitalised on and that skills meet demand, particularly for green jobs?

 

  1.                     There are several sector-based opportunities for sustainable jobs for young people. These include occupations in green technology and vehicles, construction, and infrastructure, digital, some engineering occupations and logistics. Green jobs need sustainable investment, many training providers will not commit to invest in or build new expensive green training facilities whilst the growth and development of the jobs in the sector remains uncertain. Committing funds for green jobs alongside green training investment need to go hand in hand, retrofit of homes is an example of a national need.

 

  1.                     However, there will be a need for a regional based approach to the development of these sectors. Regional bodies each espouse specific priority economic subject areas that they expect training providers to also champion. This does lead to a disconnect between what the customer (student) wants and what the commissioner (devolved authority / LEP) wants to prioritise. The difficulty with this approach is that nearly all regional bodies wish to become a hub for advanced manufacturing, digital skills, and low carbon economies. There will always be a requirement for the Care sector, the Personal Services sector, Retail etc. however these sectors are largely ignored by commissioners.

 

  1.                     A further challenge is that qualifications do not keep pace with the change in demand for skills in the marketplace e.g., there is no level 3 qualification in AI. As a result, colleges are not able to meet the demands of businesses for skills. Economic sectors include Construction, Engineering, digital and green. It is unclear what skills are required for some green technologies e.g., Hydrogen. Colleges also struggle to find the right people to teach these qualifications and have the resources.

 

Question 13) How might future youth labour market interventions best be targeted towards particular groups, sectors, or regions? Which ones should be targeted?

 

  1.                     High quality case studies, which are representative of all groups is vital. We must challenge stereotypes and put positive interventions in place to access a bigger pipeline of talent.

 

  1.                     Targeting must be regionally/locally derived without national assumptions which often do not meet the needs or demands of actual young people and businesses.

 

  1.                     Regions for targeting include cities/towns where there are large and growing numbers of the population under 24, or future large school leaver populations. Areas that have a concentration of low or semi-skilled jobs in the regional economy at risk of automation and switch to digital delivery, and those areas that may rely on a night-time/retail or leisure-based economy that might take several years to recover or adapt.

 

  1.                     As T Levels roll out there is a potential problem whereby extensive industry placements (T Levels require young people to spend 45 days in the workplace) exclude students from subjects where there is limited capacity for placement in their local area. A 16-year-old who dreams of entering the Visual Effects industry will not be able to conduct a 45-day placement in London at 16 years if they live in Lincoln). This policy ensures that only learners from regions with an established workforce can deliver in a subject area - this will impact upon social mobility and aspiration.

 

  1.                     Incentives need to be focused on STEM and persuading young people of the necessity of these skills. There is also an absence of data on unemployment, so we are not able to work with many to put in place the right interventions. There is a lack of data on destinations of students which could be used meaningfully by colleges as role models.

 

 

11th May 2021