Young People in Transition June 2002
Key parts of the social and economic security of this city rests with young people. Raising the skills level of young people is one priority of Birmingham and Solihull Learning and Skills Council, and the main business of other partners such as the Education Service, the Connexions Service, the Probation and Youth Offending Services, and a variety of voluntary organisations that specifically work with young people at risk.

More than ever is being done to sweep disengaged young people through programmes into work. Outreach activity is specifically targeted to encourage increased take up of learning opportunities by young homeless; residents of foyers; young care leavers; teenage parents; young offenders; and others who currently need to boost their skills levels.

Again, more is being done through a wider range of personal advisors, mentors and support services to identify those cases where low levels of basic skills are acting as a barrier to further progress to employability, and to put individual solutions in place.

Even though Birmingham is better at getting young people to take up opportunities for continued skills training, we still need to constantly ask why some young people leave programmes without the adequate levels of basic skills needed for employment.

Those organisations undertaking ‘bridging’ work are being asked to focus more closely on their capacity to identify basic skills needs, to undertake appropriate skills assessments, to refer people on into the most appropriate provision or to deliver high quality basic skills support themselves.

The main structural programmes for young people – schools; colleges; New Deal for Young People; Modern Apprenticeship; Student Traineeship etc – are constantly being improved in terms of the quality of basic skills assessment, teaching and resources.

The wide range of organisations working on raising the skills levels of young people, in a number of ways, are drawing on support from this Partnership. This includes linking these organisations with a mentor organisation that is more experienced in basic skills work; or to support the organisation with a learning adviser to help them draw up a basic skills development plan; or to offer a menu of practical support in terms of access to resources, training, information; or to make sure that their basic skills work links more effectively with other major changes going on.

We are working with national partners to ensure that assessment tools are appropriate to young people. All basic skills teachers working with young people have been trained in applying the new curriculum and awareness of the new national certificates.

ICT is a strong motivator for young people and we have supported a range of CyberChat; portable device; web-based; and other ICT-based approaches to improving basic skills levels.

Organisations with different roles are recognising the need to be clearer about each other’s function before passing young people on, to prevent endless going round the same loops again. Organisations are also increasingly seeing the part they have to play in locking the various aspects of the national ‘Skills for Life’ strategy into place through their own work.