• The core skills work that was initiated as new developments in Birmingham still continues to get embedded in national developments:
• The early school improvement work to raise standards of literacy and numeracy in primary schools was incorporated into the national literacy and numeracy strategies.  The early work we did on building literacy and numeracy into all early years settings was incorporated into the national Early Years Foundation approach.  Our identification of the need for a clear focus each day on how literacy, language and numbers ‘work’ was developed into a more rigid set of national expectations – as was our identification of the need for annual assessments of progress, the ability to track individual pupil progress, and the capacity to compare overall gaps in progress for different groups of learners. 
• We spotted, early on, the need for an additional focus on language and how language development could be built into all activities to reduce the later need for specialist speech and language therapy inputs for large numbers of children.  This is now part of the wider accepted approach.
• The early developments in family literacy, language and numeracy were trialled with enthusiasm in Birmingham and we went for a large-scale approach early on.  This is now an established national programme, with Birmingham as one of the largest deliverers.  We have been leading the way on demonstrating effective leadership and management of this area of work; how to do it with secondary schools; and how it ties in with the school improvement/child and family outcomes approaches.
• The early development activity in adult literacy, language and numeracy made us well placed to be a pathfinder for the Skills for Life national strategy.  Birmingham has continued to be seen as at the leading edge in much of the adult skills agenda – building literacy and numeracy into integrated employment and skills pathways; taking forward a new approach to tying language enhancements into drives on social engagement, inclusion and cohesion; and supporting the government aspiration to get 95% of adults functionally literate and numerate by 2020.
• Most recently, developments have included how Skills for Life gets built into employability assessments and delivery; a more meaningful tool for identifying how companies can make specific cost savings by focusing on literacy, language and numeracy gaps in different parts of their processes; how language and numeracy improvements tie in with wider local planned developments; how a local city authority’s priorities can be used to reshape adult English language learning opportunities.

Now that literacy, language and numeracy development is almost ‘business as usual’ attention is being given to those things where the skills are one smaller strand of a much broader set of complexities;

• What to do to give young people aged 13-25 better ways forward?
• What can be done to lift more children out of poverty (given what we know about adult/child intergenerational influences)?
• How can national shifts in policy get put in place locally in ways that are most helpful to the least wealthy communities of people?