This was an action research project funded by the European Social Fund (ESF) under Objective 3 (national programme) and was targeted at improving the participation of women in the labour market by putting into practice recommendations from previous research, namely – ‘Can mentoring and networking be effective in raising the employability of women?’ Under Policy Field 5 Measure 1 Theme D (Solutions to Gender Discrimination), the project developed, coordinated and delivered a Personal Development Programme to 52 women from six different organisations across the North East of England to help move them closer to employability. The programme was designed specifically as a resource for women – to be delivered in a ‘women only’ space - and was intended to help in raising selfesteem, confidence and aspirations.

A succesful workshop event entitled 'Building Higher Level Skills Solutions for a Demand Led Future' took place on 2 October 2007 at Seaham Hall, County Durham.

The Celebration of Learning and Skills (CoLaS) Awards 2007, held at the Sage Gateshead on 12th October, are designed to honour and reward some of the North East’s most outstanding individuals and employers, recognising their innovative and progressive approach to skills development and learning excellence.

A total of 10 awards were up for grabs on the evening, at the Oscar-style CoLaS awards ceremony, where they joined 1,000 other invited guests to enjoy an evening of recognition and local entertainment, hosted by television personality Kirsty Gallacher.

This is the sixth report (undertaken on a six-monthly basis) providing an economic profile for Boroughs in the Tees Valley.

Prepared by Steve Besley, Education Policy Manager, Edexcel.  The updated version of the 'Who does what?' Guide which lists most of the main bodies and agencies operating in the world of education and training. The need to keep things simple has meant that details are necessarily kept to a minimum. It is best used as a reference guide.

In 2004 research into the employment and skills issues facing the was undertaken by SINE to inform the development of the 2005-06 Action Plan by the regional skills partnership - Skills North East.

In early 2005, Skills North East, The Regional Skills Partnership, published the 2005 – 2006 Skills Action Plan, a framework and starting point towards making a reality of the North East’s vision.

The Fit for Business Pertemps/CBI 12th survey includes views from employers at national and regional level. If you would like to find out more please click on the above link.

The future skills levels of this region depend upon organisations like those featured in the attached publication.  They have taken work-based learning and looked at it from a new perspective. Whether this has involved innovative new approaches to learning, unusual collaborations, or simply a different way of working, these organisations have one thing in common.  They all understand the importance of skills development, to support economic growth and inclusion.

A summary of the most recent data on international migrant workers in the North East.

Since the publication of the Leitch Review of Skills -  ‘Prosperity for all in the global economy - world class skills’ in December 2006, Skills North East, the Regional Skills Partnership held an event in April 2007 to discuss what those challenges meant for the region, and for businesses.

The Government's response to Leitch Review of Skills - "World Class Skills" was published on 18 July 2007.

The Leitch Review considered the UK's long-term skills needs to maximise economic growth, productivity and social justice outlined proposals for the actions required to achieve this. 

The NEHSN has prepared a brief summary of the Government response. 

The attached paper gives a brief overview of the Labour Market Statistics Headlines for the North East.

Providing affordable, carbon efficient homes in safe, prosperous communities is a national priority. It means improving older properties and, crucially, building new homes in well-connected places with a range of facilities such as schools, health centres, shops and parks. The creation and maintenance of such places – what we call ‘sustainable communities’ – depends on the efforts of a wide range of occupations, including architecture, planning, civil engineering, surveying, housing, community development, neighbourhood management, economic development and, increasingly, environmental management.  However, there is growing evidence that many of these professions face acute recruitment shortages and in several activity areas there is a lack of essential generic skills such as visioning and strategy building, project management, leadership, partnership working and communication.

The findings of this report are intended to inform all those involved in meeting this challenge to anticipate labour market conditions, plan for the future and be better equipped to deal with complexity and change as well as stimulating dialogue across this wide-ranging sector and lead to practical solutions. 

The fourth National Employers Skills Survey (NESS) has revealed a steady upward trend in most areas of skills development, according to the views of over 79,000 employers.

NESS gathers and analyses data on the issues employers face in terms of recruitment, skills gaps and training.

This note summarises the regional data in a recent data release of National Insurance registrations by non-UK nationals in 2006/07. The tables - at http://www.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd1/niall/registration_tables2007.xls  - show the distribution of registrations by region, local authority and parliamentary constituency.

The monthly e-bulletin aims to keep you informed of learning and skills developments in the North East Voluntary & Community Sector.

The North East Higher Skills Network is a dynamic and groundbreaking new initiative that brings together all of the region’s 28 universities and colleges.

Their goal is to enable the North East’s vocational learners and employers to have access to the most relevant, accessible, innovative and fully articulated higher level learning opportunities (Level 4 and above) in the country.

Capital investment has a major part to play in transforming the learning and skills infrastructure and creating world class facilities for individuals and employers.  This plan sets out how the LSC and One NorthEast will focus investment in skills and learning infrastructure jointly and individually in order that the region achieves the ambition for skills it has set out in the Regional Economic Strategy. 

The North East Regional Strategic Analysis 2007 is the strategic analysis to underpin the priorities and commissioning strategy which the LSC North East will set out inthe Regional Commissioning Plan for 2008/09, later this year. The strategic analysis looks at the investment in learning and skills, and what it has meant for young people, adults and employers. It celebratesthe successes, and will inform the investment decisions in the coming year.  Please click on the link below to visit the LSC website to download the report.

The Regional Strategic Analysis forms a key part of the Learning and Skills Council’s annual business cycle. It underpins their Regional Commissioning Plan, assessing what they have achieved so far and identifying where they need to do more. This year's strategic analysis provides the evidence to inform decisions about their strategic priorities, and about the learning provision they need to commission from their providers, in 2009/10.

They expect to publish the strategic analysis report in early October. The report will take the form of a high-level summary which draws on research and analysis undertaken or commissioned by the LSC during the last year. They will also publish some of this research and analysis in more detail - a number of briefing papers are available by following the below link, and more will be added in the coming weeks.

The North East must increasingly orient itself to compete in the global economy as it seeks to increase its economic performance. An authoritative new report from the OECD ‘Education at a Glance 2007’ provides extensive analysis and benchmarking of national education and training systems and outcomes in our economic competitors.

Despite being called ‘Education at a glance’ this report runs to a very dense 451 pages!  The Skills North East team have combed through this report and have extracted key findings and statistics likely to be of relevance to regional policymaking.  We have arranged these by theme in the attached “digested read” (only 8 pages!).

There are international comparisons in this document that will be of particular interest to colleagues with an interest in:

• Aspirations and achievement of young people
• Higher level skills and the impact on economic growth and participation
• Talent attraction / foreign students in HE / STEM skills
• Funding and enabling further expansion in higher level skills
• There are also one or two points relevant to workforce development and access and progression.

A study of experience and use of the job preparation premium

This report evaluates the job preparation premium element of the Pathways to Work programme. The job preparation premium is a weekly payment of £20 for a maximum of 26 weeks for people who do some form of activity towards paid employment. The report considers the experiences of benefit administrators and recipients.

Please see below the 6 monthly progress update report and Annexes for the Regional Skills Partnership which was submitted to national partners (DIUS and DBERR) on 5 October 2007.

A review of Government's Science & Innovation Policies by Lord Sainsbury October 2007. 

In Autumn 2004, Northern Architecture in partnership with One NorthEast, the Commission for the Built Environment (CABE) and English Heritage embarked on a project to map design skills, policies and practiceamongst the 25 local authorities in the North East of England. Through a questionnaire survey, targeted at the local authorities as key agents in promoting good design, Northern Architecture aimed to identify areas of both strength and weakness in design capacity and skills.

This evaluation of the Regional Skills Development Managers (RSDMs) Pilot was commissioned by One NorthEast on behalf of the Regional Skills Partnership and undertaken by Rocket Science UK Ltd between September and November 2005.

The overall aim of the evaluation was to determine the extent to which the RSDM Pilot project objectives were met, in order to inform both the future direction of the project and decisions that the core partners need to make about the project’s exit strategy.

The UK has a strong economy but future prosperity depends on sustained economic growth driven both by increased employment and productivity.This presents numerous and significant challenges.

Recent studies of the UK’s competitiveness relative to other countries have highlighted the importance of skills and a highly trained workforce in creating economic growth.

The summary matrix Sector Skills Needs in the North East presents key statistics to illustrate the nature and scale of skills needs in the North East region by sector and occupation.

The attached paper describes the indicators presented in the Sector Skills Needs in the North East matrix, and the data sources from which they are drawn.

The Regional Skills Partnership has prepared the Skills Action Plan to identify additional action that needs to be taken in the North East, beginning in 2005-2006 to respond to the challenges outlined.

In March 2005 Skills North East, The Regional Skills Partnership, published its Skills Action Plan. With activities and experiences over the last year, this has guided the actions set out in the updated Skills Action Plan for 2006-2007.

Volumes 1-4: Published 26 September 2007

Skills in England 2007 provides an up-to-date assessment of the skills arena and highlights the key skills issues facing the LSC and its partners following a comprehensive review of development and evidence over the past year.  The report complements the key government publications in the skills arena, including the Leitch Review of Skills and the Freud Report.

In March 2005 Skills North East - the Regional Skills Partnership - published its Skills Action Plan. This was the first step towards addressing the challenges outlined in the National Skills Strategy 21st Century Skills and of achieving our vision that employers have the skills to support the success of their businesses and that individuals have the skills they need to be both employable and fulfilled.

The Skills Pledge is a voluntary, public commitment by the leadership of a company or organisation to support all its employees to develop their basic skills, including literacy and numeracy, and work towards relevant, valuable qualifications to at least Level 2 (equivalent to 5 good GCSEs). The purpose is to ensure that all staff are skilled, competent and able to make a full contribution to the success of the company/organisation.

Previous research has found that the economic value of basic skills is particularly high in the UK, which implies a relative scarcity of individuals with good basic skills. 

This report provides a more up to date analysis of the economic value of basic skills in the British labour market, based on data drawn from the British Cohort Study for people born in 1970 and data from the Skills for Life Initiative.  The report is rather technical in both its method and discussion for the non-statistician.

In 2005 the government established a review of Information, Advice and Guidance services for adults in order to help achieve the long-term objective outlined in the White Paper, Skills: Getting on in Business, Getting on in Work (2005).This called for a universally available, high quality and well-used service offering linked information, advice and guidance for adults covering jobs, qualifications, training and related support such as childcare. One element of the review was to conduct and evaluate a trial extension of the UfI/learndirect telephone guidance service to handle a substantially larger volume of calls, and to test a three-stage call-back and action planning model.

In a recent report undertaken for the East Midlands Development Agency (emda), Experian’s Economics team investigated the importance, impact and extent of atypical working practices across the region, the findings of which will inform the development agency’s strategy to encourage atypical working.

In a recent report undertaken for the East Midlands Development Agency (emda), Experian’s Economics team investigated the importance, impact and extent of atypical working practices across the region, the findings of which will inform the development agency’s strategy to encourage atypical working.

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