1. Context: the approach being taken

Since 1996 substantial additional gains have been made in raising literacy, language and numeracy levels, throughout Birmingham, because of the momentum created by the particular approach that 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)
• that 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.
• that 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)
• that 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. These include:

(a) the capacity to rapidly adapt to shifting contexts and respond rapidly to national changes
2002-2004 is seeing a large contextual shift in that, whilst there are now larger than ever amounts of resources for literacy, language and numeracy developments across the whole system, 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).

(b) retaining a small-scale set of ‘enabling’ partnership functions, rather than building up separate structures with agendas beyond those of the contributing organisationsThere are resources to maintain a small, dedicated capacity for the time needed to ensure:

• that progress is consistently planned for and achieved
• that work is increasingly coherent rather than slipping back towards fragmentation and ‘projects’
• that literacy, language and numeracy developments are focused on, but not seen as separate developments isolated from wider educational, economic and social developments.

(c) supporting and challenging organisations to go that bit ‘faster, deeper and wider’ than they would go on their own

Organisations have valued the continuing use of expert seminars; ‘springboard’ conferences; comments on their separate draft plans; reviews of areas of development; and assistance with (or helpful observations on) their own proposals for improving delivery.

(d) stressing the potential for cross linkages, inter relationships and learning across sectors

• There has been no shortage of information locally. There has, however, been a need to create some additional value by stripping out the knowledge about the elements that have more developmental impact, and how to best repackage these into activities that can be built in as normal, everywhere.
• There is still the potential to make more of the transferable learning between different organisations, different sectors and different localities.

2. Development principles and key development areas:

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

The vision is that Birmingham 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 in Birmingham increase to 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 just on pilots 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
• increase the volume of voluntary activity
• contribute to planned outputs and contributes towards longer-term outcomes

3. Changing national and regional context

The annual development plans, produced since 1996, have identified the rapidly changing national and regional expectations, re basic skills, as one of the major influences on developments needed. The wider context continues to change:

• 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 the ones 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 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 is due to be launched in July 2003. This is expected to reconfirm the need to continue adult basic skills (particularly work-focused skills) developments, but as part of a wider set of skills developments.
• 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 needs to be strengthened.

4. Strategic Objectives

The original seven strategic objectives, (for 1996-2003) subscribed to by the major education and training organisations in Birmingham, have been substantially achieved to the extent planned from the original 1995 baseline.

The time is now right to take these a stage further and to use the improved position in 2003 as a new baseline against which further progress can be outlined with milestone targets up to 2010.

Progress is still needed against ten strategic objectives. These consist of five ‘outcomes’ objectives and five ‘process’ objectives, and are:

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

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

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

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

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

Strategic objective 6: Ensure the progressive embedding of national primary literacy and numeracy strategies; Key Stage 3 Strategy; and ‘Skills for life’ adult basic skills strategy:

Strategic objective 7: Raise provider quality to a consistently ‘inspection level grade 2 or above’ re literacy, numeracy and language

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

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

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