The Tees Valley Combined Authority’s main priorities include creating thousands of good quality jobs across the region – but this would be a fool’s errand if local people didn’t have the skills to access them.
Equally, our brilliant local businesses would wither on the vine without an experienced, agile and ever-developing workforce equipped to meet their requirements.
The Tees Valley Combined Authority is unique as it has a fully integrated Local Enterprise Partnership, giving local companies influence at the top table of our policy and decision-making. This immediately makes us better placed than most to understand the skills needs of our businesses.
Before securing the Adult Education Budget, we researched and consulted to consider the benefits of the approach and how it could be used to specifically address current and future skills gaps – it quickly became obvious devolution was key.
We examined the previous nationally funded providers already in place, the range and type of learning that they could deliver to our local people and how this could be improved to tackle our skills needs. This was all with one eye on emerging jobs in the low-carbon sectors of tomorrow, at sites such as Teesworks – part of the UK’s largest and first operational freeport. We developed a robust commissioning process to secure a strong, quality set of providers that could make an economic and strategic impact, responding to the jobs on offer here.
We want to see the wider devolution of the National Skills Fund into a single pot
We’re already seeing the benefits of this approach, with more than 53,000 adult learners entering post-19 education to boost their potential since 2019/20. Devolution helps us to fully understand what our providers are delivering and prioritise learning linked to local demand. We’ve also developed new funding packages of qualifications targeted to jobs our businesses are creating.
Flexibility has been a watchword. While the pandemic has undoubtedly been the biggest challenge we’ve seen since AEB devolution, local control helped us minimise the impact of reduced learning levels. We’ve been able to be more responsive to increasing employer and learner demand, support provider stability and flex funding where necessary.
It has also helped us improve the performance of our providers, while reducing subcontracting - which keeps more cash in our area and increases funding for learners. We can be confident that public money is being spent with the most successful and specialist providers.
This great progress is why we want to see things go further, including the wider devolution of the National Skills Fund into a single pot, helping link local delivery to demand, address duplication and make the system much simpler for everyone. Devolution of DfE careers funding and greater influence over 16-18 vocational skills funding, and Department for Work and Pensions local flexible funds directed to skills, would help us offer a more rounded and progressive approach.
Adult education, though, is only one string to our bow. From careers education beginning in primary school and our successful Routes to Work scheme - which recently informed the national Restart programme - to support for apprenticeships and traineeships, we’re making sure no one gets left behind.