As more of our partners worked on a Birmingham and Solihull area basis, the development work and joint approaches fostered by the partners’ collaborations spread (at least for post-16 work) onto the wider geographical area.

At the same time the approach being fostered by the Partnership – all agencies; whole area; rapid development; outcome-focused etc – was gaining strong national recognition and we were asked to undertake a range of pathfinding developments around aspects of the national adult Skills for Life Strategy on behalf of the West Midlands region (1 of 10 regions across England). The Regional Development Agency, and the six local Learning and Skills Councils that make up this region, invited us to lead on a regional programme of adult basic skills staff development.

This has led to a network of professional development centres and activities across the region. We have rapidly accelerated the supply (through universities and colleges) of teacher training programmes. We have linked this to a push on finding and training around 80 new basic skills teachers, at the same time adding to the diversification of the workforce. We have supported the development of new regional modules and new regional support materials. Most importantly, all of this has been done whilst bringing together previously disconnected developments into one coherent set of activities.

In December 2004 the Partnership was successful in a proposal to push the staff development activities further forward – all as part of developing a regional approach to Skills for Life developments. (An article on ‘A Regional Approach’ was commissioned by a professional development magazine and is included in the Articles section of our website).

From January 2005, Geoff Bateson, Partnership Manager of the Core Skills Development Partnership, will take on a Regional Director role in relation to the national Skills for Life Strategy. This will mean ensuring that, by 2007, the West Midlands region:

• reaches all regional targets related to adult basic skills
• improves the supply side of provision to more closely match to continually changing needs – in localities, in employment sectors, in areas of high disadvantage, in relation to particular groups such as offenders, long term unemployed etc
• has an adequate, diverse supply of well skilled teachers able to deliver adult basic skills in very focused ways across a range of contexts
• increasingly embeds adult basic skills in a wide range of education, training, support and regeneration programmes.