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Birmingham Core Skills Development Partnership exists to ensure that levels of literacy, numeracy and IT key skills in Birmingham increase to exceed national target levels for all client groups.
Key client groups include:
- young children before school age
- school pupils
- young adults aged 16-25
- unemployed adults
- employed adults
- employers
- those wishing to invest voluntary activity
The Partnership forms part of the wider strategic planning and operating mechanisms between Birmingham City Council, Birmingham Voluntary Service Council and Birmingham TEC, in conjunction with a wider range of strategic partners. The Partnership is managed via a company structure and can be contacted at:
Development Framework
The Core Skills Development Partnership will support activity which:
- focuses on the needs of specific client groups, especially at critical transition times
- identifies the common elements to effective curriculum interventions
- trains staff in ways of embedding key skills in a range of mainstream programmes
- supports the skilling of key workers: creating new roles for staff, as decision-makers or support workers in literacy/numeracy development
- links to the implementation of broader strategies
- has some targeting based on need, without defining people/organisations as failing
- is structured not just on pilots but on activity that can impact on whole structures
- allows some room for testing ideas and for creativity
- increases multiagency approaches and joint planning, with differing roles clearly defined
- expands the use of appropriate technologies to accelerate learning
- allows for the possibility of new links between voluntary activity, statutory learning settings and work activities
- assists organisations to identify those elements that create success and to build these in as the norm
- supports assessment and target setting, based upon disaggregated, reliable information
- increases the volume of voluntary activity
- creates whole-organisation approaches to core skills development
- adds value to mainstream activities by improving the quality and diversity of opportunities
- supports the development of resource/learning hubs, with networks/clusters of activity being developed into platforms for future developments
- sustains the changes long-term by creating new ways of working that become independent of on-going financial support
- contributes to planned outputs and contributes towards longer-term outcomes
Development and Business Plan 1998 - 99
Contents
Click any section below:
- Context for 1998 - 1999
- Raising the Baseline attainment levels on entry to school
- Raising literacy and numeracy attainment levels of young people at school
- Increasing the key skills levels of young people out of school
- Meeting the needs of specific target groups and communities
- Increasing the employability and job-retention of adults
- Meeting the needs of employers
- Increasing the individual commitment to core skills development
- Company operations
- Outputs and financial summaries
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Section 1: Context for 1998 - 1999
Core Skills Development Partnership activity brings together ideas from a range of groups of planners and practitioners and aims to carry forward the existing corporate strategies of the partners. There continues to be a need to create more coherent frameworks, with common messages, if consistent impact is to be made. Our support activity aims to be city-wide whilst at the same time addressing the particular needs of different client groups. To aim for patchy, fragmentary activity will not bring about the scale of improvement that is needed to address current levels of under-achievement.
This continued need for a strategic approach to the development of core and key skills has been underlined by a number of recent national emphases:
- The Dearing Report on post 16 qualifications has identified the key skills of Number, Communication and Information Technology as playing an important role in all post 16 education and training. Work with HE institutions will begin more strongly during the coming year with support being focused on the ways in which the key skills are delivered.
- Performance against the National Training and Education Targets require that an increased focus be given to work with secondary schools and the further education and training sector, to build on the improvements beginning to show through at primary school level.
- There is a continued recognition that the future of societies requires ways not only of finding solutions to the problems of integrating young people into working life but also of addressing the needs of the 80% of the current workforce who will remain in employment over the next decade. Birmingham partners within a broader training and employability framework.
- Both the Welfare To Work / New Deal for Young People and the later New Deal for Single Parents will require additional activity to boost the key skills levels of those who are not immediately attracted by the proposals, or who do not meet the eligibility requirements but nevertheless need the same degree of support. Awareness work will also be required with Advisers, with employers and with Voluntary Sector providers of services.
- Activity to meet the employability needs of unemployed people will be influenced by the proposals to establish Employment Zones. Since any activity will build upon existing partnerships it will be relatively easy to identify the support that the Core Skills Development Partnership can offer.
- The Kennedy Committee proposals re widening participation to under represented groups may require the consideration of new methods of delivering key skills to particular client groups. There is also a growing concern, in further education, about the negative impact of low core skills levels on success/completion rates.
- Whilst the provision of new technology is being proposed elsewhere, previous work through pilots in Birmingham has highlighted a more fundamental need to explore effective teaching and leaning styles in relation to the use of such new technologies.
- Employers continue to report that recruits have key skill levels below the ever-higher requirements of jobs. Employee Development Schemes, focusing on key skill development, are seen as an effective way of meeting such needs alongside the strengthening of key skills delivery within employee-focused training and the establishment of learning centres on employer premises (with future linkages to the proposed University For Industry).
- The continuing development of the Birmingham Lifelong Learning Forum mirrors the national concern, with a White Paper on Lifelong Learning due to be issued for consultation. The implementation of an agreed local Lifelong Learning Strategy should have the development of core skills as an important component.
- The recently announced National Literacy Strategy for schools has incorporated many of the elements proposed by the Birmingham partners. This is seen as a strong endorsement of our work but, at the same time, has meant a rapid repositioning of some of our support to ensure that we stay ahead of the development edge.
- Although the package of support activities for schools is fairly well-defined, the way such support is delivered may be affected by any proposals to establish an Education Action Zone in Birmingham.
- There are current proposals to establish a National ESOL strategy. The Birmingham ESOL Partnership, whose action plan is substantially supported by the Core Skills Partnership, have been linked to these consultations and will be active in implementing any wider strategy.
- Particular attention is increasingly being focused on the specific needs of children looked after; those under threes with substantial language delay; and children in hostels or involved in homelessness.
- LEAs are being asked to submit Early Years Development Plans and proposals for the establishment of Early Excellence Centres. Such developments will involve joint staff training re the effectiveness of early years provision across a range of providers, curriculum development and the engagement of the support of families. Through these activities, city-wide, it will be possible to further implement the Birmingham Early Years Guarantee.
- The continuing evidence for the effectiveness of sustained interventions through families and wider communities requires that we continue to have a growing focus on out-of-school activities.
- Where other regeneration activities are beginning (eg Millenium Point), continuing (eg Castle Vale Housing Action Trust) or have discussed the implementing of their exit strategy (eg Task Force), we would seek to play an appropriate role.
The context thus continues to be one of rapid change and the approach taken by Birmingham Core Skills Development Partnership continues to be one that will allow for flexibility and adaptability whilst retaining a clear set of year on year developments and targets. The Partnership is creating an intense focus upon core skills development, by working on a number of fronts and in a number of ways. Substantial progress has been made during 1997-98, in terms of aligning previously disparate activity, and this will be further enhanced during the coming year.
Section 2: Strategic Objective 1
(a) Raise the baseline attainment, year on year, of children on entry to school
(b) Create increased consistency of preschool intervention across areas and communities
Context: Work with parents and families in the years before school continues to be seen as a key element in raising the future standards of literacy and numeracy. Birmingham has been a source of good practice in baseline assessment; in linking babies and books and other such developments. The links between the chosen interventions and raised standards on entry to school are consistently being demonstrated by external evaluations. Initiatives which originated in Birmingham are increasingly being promoted nationally as in the Basic Skills Agency/Book Trust promotion of the BookStart model.
Whilst there are separate models of good practice, a coherent under-fives plan has yet to be agreed across the agencies involved. This is beginning to emerge through the Early Years Guarantee, the Early Years Development Plan and the proposals around the Early Excellence Centre. Discussions about the developments to be given Core Skills Development Partnership support will aim to foster this increased coherence and the planned alignment of existing services.
As far as possible developments will:
(a) work to models that can be applied cross-city
(b) seek to be inclusive rather than exclusive, whilst recognising the need for some targeting
(c) work upon promoting common messages through staff expertise and the expertise of parents.
(d) ensure that materials produced have wide availability and broad endorsement
(e) introduce changed ways of working by building on what exists whilst looking at redefinition of roles
Specifically in 1998-99 support will be given to:
- Promotion of the common messages through a range of activities and materials
- Opportunities for joint and shared curriculum, staff and materials developments through BookStart and through parent workshops. The various initiatives will be increasingly aligned at city and local levels
- Developments that accelerate language development in children aged 0-3
- Developments that support the Early Years Development Plan
The activity supported will enable:
- 20 additional staff training weeks
- parent workshops at 40 community venues
- 12,500 parents assisted
Outcomes from this activity: By March 1999 the Baseline profile of entry to school will be:
- level A or above: 93%
- level B or above: 22%
- level C or above: 2%
Total Challenge Fund budget for this objective will be £107,748
Section 3: Strategic Objective 2
(a) Raise, year on year, the attainment levels of pupils of school age
(b) Produce a body of key staff who are highly skilled in the teaching and learning of the key skills of literacy and numeracy (including the supporting use of IT)
By:
- creating consensus about content and methodology re teaching and learning literacy and numeracy
- improving the knowledge and skills of the existing teaching force
- extending the impact of the National Literacy Strategy and National Numeracy Project for primary schools
- supporting whole-school approaches to planning for developments in literacy and numeracy (aligned to the elements of the Basic Skills Agency Quality Mark).
- creating opportunities for good practice within schools to be shared across all schools
- supporting school-based development activities and pupil targeting activities
- developing models for raising attainment at GCSE level
- implementing a strategy for out-of-school support for young people
- increasing pupils’ access to Integrated Learning IT support for literacy and numeracy
- engaging parents more closely in the literacy / numeracy development of their children
Context: The necessary focus on professional development that formed part of this section of the 1997-98 Business Plan has been adopted as part of the National Literacy Strategy. We are therefore now able to shift the focus more onto school-based infrastructure and curriculum development.
Although Birmingham children are closing the gap between city and national averages at Key Stage 1, by KS2 significant numbers are not achieving the level that might be expected - despite the impressive leap forward over the past year. The LEA has stated its annual targets as part of the National Literacy Strategy and support for meeting these targets will come from the Standards Fund. Core Skills Development Partnership support will be aligned with the national strategies in order to accelerate progress and broaden the range of schools benefiting from support.
At the primary/secondary transition stage there is a need for work on higher level language/number skills needed to ensure access to the secondary curriculum. Success at KS4 requires early intervention on a planned basis, with a whole school focus, supported by informed and deliberate teaching supported by individual pupil planning.
The Partnership aims to support an infrastructure change (at primary and secondary level) by identifying factors that create success for schools / supplementary schools; what is sustainable by schools themselves; and what enables provision to meet external standards - and making this information available to all schools.
Specifically in 1998-99 support will be given to:
- Extending the professional development of target groups: - Newly Qualified Teachers; Language Coordinators / Numeracy Co-ordinators; Governors; Headteachers
- Continuing the programme to expand the use, by pupils, of new technology that accelerates the acquisition of literacy/numeracy skills.
- Supporting school-based curriculum support activities.
- Implementing whole school approaches to the planning, implementation and review of literacy and numeracy developments
- Implementing interagency development plans for family literacy, for volunteer support and for out-of-school activities
- Creating coherence of developments by bringing school-based developments within an overall framework
The LEA will encourage schools to work together to develop their capacity to improve their performance and to sustain those improvements. Support for school-based improvements will be built into the range of developments described above.
This activity will support:
- 248 training weeks
- 400 schools benefiting
- 1,000 parents assisted
- 25,000 pupils benefiting
- 500 pupils with parent volunteers
Outcomes from this activity, by March 1999 :
- 38% 0f young people achieve equivalent of 5 GCSE (A-C)
Key Stage 1 at Level 2 or above
Key Stage 2 at Level 4 or above
Total Challenge Funding for this objective: £1306440
Section 4: Strategic Objective 3
Increasing the amount of own-time investment in key skills levels by young people
This will extend the programme of curriculum and staff development within a raft of initiatives for young people via the youth service, library service, University of the First Age, holiday activity schemes etc.
Context: It is recognised that the levels of key skills amongst young people will only rise if their voluntary activities are also harnessed, especially for those who are not totally engaged into effective mainstream learning. A number of vehicles exist , each with opportunities to build upon the core skills curriculum development work and the SpringBoard to Literacy work already funded.
Specifically within 1998-99 work will be done to:
- Expand the number of literacy and numeracy springboard sessions through the University of the First Age.
- Extend the skills of a range of staff in order to create increased literacy/numeracy contents within out-of-school opportunities
- Enable organisations to work to common, agreed standards within a cohesive development strategy
This activity will support: 2000 young people benefiting from projects
Outcome: 10% increase in the volume of young people from target groups using libraries; implementation of an out-of-school development plan.
Total Challenge Funding for this objective: £123,540
Section 5: Strategic Objective 4
Meeting the needs of specific target groups
Context: Although the intention of the above developments is to create an impact on all schools, all pupils, all families, all areas etc. there is also the need to focus upon the specific needs of particular groups.
Specifically within 1998-99 support will be given to activity related to:
- the disruption to learning of young people whose schooling is (for one reason or another) interrupted - especially children with behaviour difficulties, those in hostels and those looked after by the Local Authority
- those young people and adults who have a range of specific needs
- those young people who find it difficult to engage with mainstream provision because of homelessness, risk of offending etc.
- the capacity of local networks to create coherence of existing opportunities at a locality level
- adults from particular communities who are underrepresented in mainstream training and employment
Outputs from this activity are:
- 120 training weeks
- 10 unemployed people into jobs
Challenge Funding for this objective: £254160
Section 6: Strategic Objective 5
Increasing the employability and job-retention of adults
By:
- establishing ways of embedding the relevant key skills into existing programmes
- producing a more skilled cohort of staff, in relation to guidance, assessment and delivery re key skills
- developing vocationally specific language and numeracy provision, including within Weekend College; within Higher Education and within the Gateway / Four Options of the proposed New Deal initiatives.
Context: Employability and retention of employment are key aims for the Core Skills Development Partnership. As part of the contribution to levels of personal and national competitiveness there is a need to accelerate progress towards the National Training and Education Targets. Raising individuals’ Key Skills levels will contribute not only to those targets directly concerned with levels of literacy and numeracy but will also facilitate progress towards the wider targets. There is a need to give particular attention to those clients for whom English is an additional language. There will also be a need to undertake ‘bridging’ activities to bring disengaged young people to the entry points of mainstream activity.
At the moment key skills are often approached via discrete activities rather than creating access to key skills through a variety of academic and vocational programmes. Integrating key skills into a wide variety of curricula will require imaginative ways of delivery, without losing the key skills focus. This itself will require a large programme of staff development, and the development of appropriate assessment and curriculum materials. Without using Challenge Fund resources to provide wide-scale replacement of equipment, there is a need to explore the use of IT as a delivery tool for key skill learning. Good practice does already exist and this can be built into other programmes in a structured way.
Specifically, within 1998-99, work will be done to:
- Integrate key skills into existing training curricula for target groups of unemployed people currently underrepresented in training and employment
- Explore ways of engaging adults in the community with mainstream provision eg through Welfare To Work
- Provide training for frontline staff in a range of agencies to enable them to more adequately refer and assess people with core skills needs.
- Undertake curriculum development that fosters a strategic approach to training and assists with meeting quality standards
- Implement a collaborative city-wide plan for the development of ESOL
- Meet the needs of employees for vocationally-specific core skills enhancement
SRB Outputs:
- 3612 training weeks
- 2050 jobs safeguarded
- 3000 qualifications
- 240 unemployed people obtaining jobs
- 5 voluntary organisations assisted
This activity will lead to the following outcomes:
- More than 100 staff whose retraining focuses on core skills development
- A 1% increase in the number of adult learners engaged in raising their basic skills levels.
- More than 600 employees involved in work-related core skills activity
Total Challenge Funding for this objective: £442567
Section 7: Strategic Objective 6
Meeting the needs of employers for key skills at work
Specifically within 1998-99 work will be done to support:
- work with cohorts of employers to find sustainable ways of meeting employees key skills needs
- add to models of employee development.
- increase the volume of employee volunteering to enhance the core skills of others.
- bridge employers with mainstream employer support provision
SRB Outputs:
- 75 businesses advised
- 300 students gaining from collaborative projects with employers
- 20 businesses in projects
- 20 employee development schemes
Total Challenge Funding for this objective: £158,500
Section 8: Strategic Objective 7
Increasing the individual commitment to core skills development
Context: An increasing number of voluntary sector organisations are engaging with education and training needs, to the extent that there is emerging a voluntary sector education and training development plan.
The voluntary sector has the capacity to unlock new routes into work with parents, access to young people, access to trainees and the developments outlined in most of the other sections of this plan will draw upon these routes in addition to relying upon the usual statutory links. To facilitate the planning of these approaches, so that the Partnership is not left responding to an ad hoc set of fragmentary demands from separate small organisations, the voluntary sector will increasingly define its role, and capacity, within education and training strategy networks.
There are already a range of activities associated with volunteers and reading. This will be extended to include numeracy volunteers. Work will also be undertaken to ensure that the emerging volunteer organisations offer high quality volunteer training and that the various initiatives align their activities. It is anticipated that creating a more robust approach to volunteering will be necessary if we are to respond to the increased motivation during the National Year of reading.
Activity to support this objective will lead to the following outputs:
- 5 voluntary organisations and 5 community organisations assisted
- 300 new volunteers
This activity will lead to an active discussion of core skills issues within the voluntary sector.
Total Challenge Fund Support for this objective: £99045
Section 9: Core Skills Development Partnership company operations
The following organisational developments will take place before March 1999:
- The Board will be maintained at full membership.
- The Operational Managers Group has worked well as a joint planning mechanism, enabling partners to contribute to this Business Plan and to its operationalisation. This group need now only meet three times per year and will increasingly focus upon reviewing activities and their impact.
- The attaching of development workers into a combined team has worked well in enabling them to act both in an interpreting role (carrying SRB Core Skills information into partners thinking and contributing to development ideas within a core skills team) as well as taking responsibilities for direct leadership of development areas.
- Specific areas of new activity, or areas where activity is slower than expected, will be supported by the attachment of additional development team members. The capacity to produce reports for partners will be supported via a newly created Information and Evaluation post.
Section 10: Output and financial summaries
Financial Summary 1998 - 99
Strategic objective
Raising the baseline on entry to school; increased consistency of preschool interventions
Raising the baseline on entry to school; increased consistency of preschool interventions
Increasing the amount of own time investment in key skills by young people
Meeting the needs of specific target groups
Increasing the employability and job-retention of adults
Meeting the needs of employers for key skills at work
Increasing the individual commitment to core skills developments
Management and administration
Total
Output Summary (1998-99)
Strategic Objective
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Total
Jobs created
Jobs safeguarded
Pupils benefiting
Qualifications gained
Training weeks
unemployed into jobs
Young people gaining
Employers in projects
Students in projects
Businesses advised
Vol orgs assisted
Community groups assisted
New volunteers
Employer development schemes
Parents assisted
Schools benefiting
Student with parent vols