1. Context: the approach being taken
Since 1996 substantial additional gains have been made in raising literacy, language and numeracy levels because of the momentum created by the particular approach that has had the support of the several organisations that make up the Core Skills Development Partnership.

This approach has aimed to build the system's abilities to self-assess, plan developments and achieve raised standards. It is believed that:

• a large proportion of primary schools have been brought to this stage of self reliance, (with targeted support work of new kinds needed for those that have still to get there)
• there remains more to be done for young people 11-19 and for adults in general
• information on attainment of school pupils can now be disaggregated to individual pupil level – and allows for a much more sophisticated analysis of work to be done at organisational level, by various underachieving groups etc. There remains more to be done to achieve a similar level of data usage for young people 14-25 year old, and for adults in general.

It has been clear over the lifetime of the Partnership that any mechanisms and structures in place need to be open to rapid refocusing as the environment and priorities change:

• Substantial structural changes are underway in the ways that literacy, language and numeracy levels are being driven up in secondary schools (and that there is another three to five years worth of developments until level 2, i.e. GCSE equivalents, skills in English and Maths are high enough for all groups across the area), whatever pathway they have taken
• Considerable work remains, over the next five years, to shift the levels of adult basic skills to higher levels across all areas and all communities; with a wider range of organisations brought in to support the ‘Skills for Life’ strategy implementation locally.
• The collaborative working by key organisations, which has been a strong feature of local developments over the last several years, has gained national (and increasingly international) recognition. This approach has had a number of key features that need to continue for some time yet.
• Continuing national policy developments related to skills levels; to neighbourhood renewal; to children’s achievements and reducing the numbers of children at risk etc will all continue, for some time, to have implications for core skills developments locally.
• There has been a large contextual shift in that, there are now larger than ever amounts of resources for literacy, language and numeracy developments across the whole system, and that these resources have moved to being within the direct control of the various different partner organisations. This strengthens the need for a short-term set of mechanisms which ensure that the range of organisations work together to get the best alignments of their developments (internally within each organisation; across organisations; and across the system as a whole).
• It is now expected that LEAs planning is increasingly outcome-focused, over longer timescales, with schools responsible for higher overall achievements of pupils, closing gaps for under-achieving groups and networking with other schools to share good practice.
• Local Learning and Skills Councils now produce Basic Skills and Language Action Plans. This focus on basic skills targets is also a requirement for the Probation Service and for Jobcentre Plus. Connexions Services are also needing to focus on the basic skills and language deficits that prevent their local targets from being met. Other public services such as Health are beginning to focus on their own basic skills issues.
• The ‘Skills for Life’ adult basic skills strategy is now in its third year and has produced most of the structural ‘tools’ needed to operate in new ways – national tests; adult core curricula in literacy, language and numeracy; screening; profiling; exemplars of different delivery models; teacher training standards etc. The issue is now one of ensuring the best implementation ‘fit’ to produce maximum progress locally.
• The last governmental comprehensive spending review established a further set of adult basic skills targets beyond those to 2004. The new targets for 2004-2007 anticipate that, nationally, an additional 740,000 adults will make substantial improvements in their levels of basic skills. This equates to around 7,000 adults each year, in Birmingham and Solihull, making the measurable, expected progress – year on year, until at least 2007. Locally it is anticipated that this same level of success will still need to be continued to 2010 (and beyond). Such achievements can be made if there are qualitative improvements across the provider base; if a wider range of organisations undertake basic skills work in ways that are appropriate; if local communities engage with the issue; and if there is a cultural shift away from ‘low level/for ever’ activity models to ‘skills improvement/rapid progress’ models.
• The National Skills Strategy ‘Skills for the 21st Century’, launched in July 2003, reconfirmed the need to continue adult basic skills (particularly work-focused skills) developments, but as part of a wider set of skills developments. The importance of ICT skills was endorsed within this strategy. Development work needs to have a ‘transparency’ for core skills, but increasingly see these embedded within wider programmes and activities.
• Each Regional Development Agency has produced a Framework for Regional Employment and Skills Action identifying collaborative approaches to key challenges. Basic skills remains one of the skills gaps that affects the regional ability to upskill its workforce, to equip the potential workforce and to improve regional competitiveness. Increasingly there is a need for robust data specific to the various sectors, clusters and localities. The links between Regeneration Zone Implementation Plans and these basic skills challenges need to be strengthened.

2. Development principles and key development areas:
The Board of the Core Skills Development Partnership, early in 2003, reconfirmed the vision and the development principles and outlined the areas for development for the next few years.

The vision is that the area becomes a self-sustaining literate, numerate and IT competent community, in which:

• adults and young people have adequate literacy/numeracy skills to be able to participate in community, social and economic activity
• adults in employment have levels of communication/numeracy to do work tasks well and see opportunities for self-development
• employers and employees recognise a shared responsibility for continuing development of communication/number skills of employees and the work place
• those seeking employment have essential communication and number skills for employability
• pupils leave school having reached highest achievement levels in literacy/numeracy and confident with IT support for these
• children, young people and adults see themselves as able to be readers, writers and communicators in a range of ways
• there is a strong culture of reinvesting literacy/numeracy skills for the benefit of others
• parents are confident in their own abilities to develop literacy/numeracy skills in children
• levels of literacy, numeracy and IT skills exceed national target levels for pupils at Key Stages 1-4, and for adults.

These aims will be reached through a set of joint developments based on a set of development principles which:

Strategically:

• link to the implementation of broader strategies
• add value to mainstream activities by improving the quality and diversity of opportunities
• focus on the needs of specific client groups, especially at identified critical transition times
• train staff in appropriate ways of embedding key skills in a wide range of mainstream programmes
• enhance the existing professional development of staff to create whole-organisation approaches to core skills development
• sustain the changes long-term by creating new ways of working that become independent of on-going financial support
• support the raising of aspirations

Operationally:

• are structured not on fragmentary activity but on activity that has impact on whole structures
• increase multi-agency approaches and joint planning, with differing roles clearly defined
• assist organisations to identify what creates success and to make this the norm
• have some targeting based on need, without defining people/organisations as failing
• expand the use of appropriate technologies to accelerate learning
• support assessment and target setting, based upon disaggregated, reliable information
• transfer relevant learning across organisations, phases and sectors

Strategic objective 1: Raise levels of language, number skills and literacy skills for children, aged 0-4, in designated localities

by:

• disaggregating data to identify interventions needed in target areas
• focusing on work with families
• promoting work via voluntary and community groups
• bringing all forms of provision up to higher levels of quality, assessed against local/national frameworks
• increasing the amount of cross-agency and integrated working, within an overall agreed set of developmental drives
• ensuring better alignment of a range of interventions and support activities
• using evidence-based support for improved language development
• gaining a clearer understanding of the factors producing developmental delay 0-4, and the interventions to counter these
• supporting the increased use of ICT linked to language, literacy and numeracy skills

Strategic objective 2: Secure continued annual improvement of literacy, numeracy and language skills of pupils aged 5-16 by:

• ensuring the progressive annual achievement of local education targets (including targets for underachieving groups)
• aligning annual improvements with the distance to be travelled to reach national levels by agreed dates
• focusing ‘non-school’ resources onto activities that make a difference re community support for raising standards
• supporting and challenging schools through a menu of reliable interventions
• increasing the sophistication of use of data, and of the knowledge of impacts
• working with schools in new ways to establish ways of bringing skills levels to at least the national average
• increasing the engagement of families and the community in activities that raise levels of literacy, language and numeracy
• supporting collaborative work across organisations and networks to improve the infrastructure re language, literacy and numeracy
• supporting the increased use of ICT linked to language, literacy and numeracy skills

Strategic objective 3: Secure the achievement of local contributions to national ‘Skills for Life’ targets by:

• improving the style and range of promotional activities re adult basic skills
• shifting perceptions of ‘adult basic skills’
• promoting a range of national qualification opportunities (to learners, to key intermediaries and to employers)
• establishing better patterns of shorter ‘top up’ booster courses (basic skills for a purpose, not basic skills as a lifestyle)
• increasing the opportunities for securing national qualifications within existing and new activities
• increasing the volume of numeracy, higher level ESOL, work-related and embedded basic skills
• increasing the amount of employment sector specific activity
• ensuring an adequate number of skilled and qualified teachers, in a range of contexts
• ensuring that young people make the transition to training or employment, 14-19, with specific basic skills needs being met
• clearer targeting of Skills for Life priority groups
• ensuring appropriate engagement of a wider range of organisations
• increasing the focus on the skills of teaching and learning
• securing increased clarity on the functions expected of different parts of the infrastructure

Strategic objective 4: Ensure that levels of adult literacy, language and numeracy are above aspirational levels for each area of Birmingham and Solihull, and for various demographic groups by:

• agreeing aspirational ‘floor targets’ for areas and for target groups
• ensuring that sufficient provision, at appropriate levels, is available to support necessary levels of progress
• creating stronger links between neighbourhood renewal processes and Skills for Life agenda
• enabling local planning to be on the basis of reliable data, and within agreed frameworks
• enabling employee focused work to be undertaken on the basis of better knowledge
• ensuring a focus on widening achievement

Strategic objective 5: Increased volume of opportunities that support the use of reading, writing and language for creative purposes by:

• promoting the cultural and creative uses of a range of core skills
• increasing the number and range of opportunities for school pupils and young people 14-19 to invest their own time in these activities
• ensuring that these activities encompass the interests of target groups (e.g. looked after children; children with language development needs; children with disabilities etc)
• increasing the role of media, arts organisations, private sector organisations etc in developing the overall levels of engagement with reading, writing, speaking etc

Strategic objective 6: Ensure the progressive embedding of core skills within national and regional strategies by:

• ensuring clear descriptions of the basic skills elements of national primary strategy; Key Stage 3 strategy; national Skills Strategy; 14-19 strategy etc
• ensuring a more transparent linkage between core skills developments and the renewal of neighbourhoods
  ensuring clear descriptions of the basic skills elements of Regeneration Zone developments; area-based regeneration programmes; regional frameworks etc
• identifying the core skills elements/outcomes of planned developments, with a mechanism whereby each element can be effectively made part of mainstream/ongoing activity
• using checklists to monitor progress of core skills developments, linked to specific local activities to ensure that annual progress is made
• aligning development plans of a range of organisations; to identify any gaps and overlaps in core skills developments
• keeping some focus on literacy and numeracy, but increasingly as a contributor to wider strategic outcomes

Strategic objective 7: Raise provider quality to a consistently high grade re literacy, numeracy and language by:

• encouraging regular self-assessment as a non-bureaucratic way of identifying the menu of developments to be worked on
• aligning resources behind a menu of developments aimed at ‘bringing up to level’
• promoting assessment frameworks as development tools
• assisting pre-school; out-of-school; and voluntary/community activity to meet quality standards
• assisting post 16 providers to reliably self-assess at inspection grade 2 or above

Strategic objective 8: Increase the contributions being made, by a wide range of support and development organisations, to raising levels of literacy, language and numeracy by:

• creating increased expectations of what can realistically be done by various networks of organisations
• increasing alignment of renewal, regeneration and development proposals
• ensuring increased engagement of all major structural groups (justice system; health; housing; community groups; libraries; Information and Guidance organisations etc)
• developing a wider variety of managed activities to unlock and meet adult basic skills needs
• clarifying and strengthening the role of key intermediaries
• ensuring the existence of routes into appropriate, highly effective provision
• ensuring effective mechanisms within each set of organisations to identify basic skills needs, to plan for meeting identified needs, to review and record progress, and to access appropriate accreditation of skills

Strategic objective 9: Create increased amount of organisational collaboration; shared expertise; and mutual recognition by:

• creating more opportunities for sharing expertise at a number of levels
• supporting organisational mentoring, collaboration and joint activity
• increasing amounts of peer support, cross-sector and cross-phase support around specific developments
• promoting high value activities, as robust frameworks of elements that can be taken and customised by others
• increasing the use of expert seminars, ‘springboard’ meetings, ‘think tanks’ around specific topics and problems; limited use of ‘standing groups’

Strategic objective 10: Increase the area’s reputation for being at the forefront of developments by:

• promoting robust, sustainable models and approaches
• contributing to regional and national developments
• proposing and testing more effective ways of working
• applying learning city/learning organisation principles
• better use of research and learning from skilled practitioners
• taking opportunities to contribute to leading developments at regional, national and international levels without detracting from the local work to be done.