December 2005
Merry Christmas from everyone at Rocket Science
Do they know it's Christmas?
Instead of sending Christmas cards this year, we are sponsoring, through Oxfam, an HIV/AIDs carer and two months' teaching of children in one of the world's poorest communities.
You can find out more about sponsorship opportunities like these at oxfamunwrapped@oxfam.org.uk
LCEBA angels
Like a puppy, a great idea is not just for Christmas. Education business links present opportunities and deliver big benefits to students, teachers and businesses every term-time. And we can help.
The London Central Education Business Alliance (LCEBA) is a collaborative consortium of 16 education business link organisations in central London, which delivers a range of programmes including volunteering, mentoring, work experience and enterprise initiatives.
Rocket Science is working with LCEBA to review their strategy and structure in the light of the review of education business links being undertaken by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) and the Learning and Skills Council (LSC). The policy developments which are influencing the work of LCEBA include:
The government's efficiency review, which stemmed from the recommendations of Sir Peter Gershon. (LSC has already announced proposals for a major transformation programme that will make it a 'smaller, more dynamic and more customer-facing organisation.' It expects to save £40 million on management and running costs, which will be redirected to learners).
The increasing regionalisation of government has seen increased responsibilities for the planning and delivery of education, learning and skills assigned to agencies and partners that work at a regional level.
The roll out of the second wave of Local Area Agreements will affect the way local authorities approach partnership working in future. In London this includes the City of Westminster, Camden, Islington and Kensington and Chelsea. Government is keen to promote greater local flexibility and local choice.
The Education White Paper, Higher Standards, Better Schools for All, proposes greater freedom and autonomy to schools, while the role of the local authority may change from that of direct provider to more of a strategic commissioner.
These developments present opportunities and challenges for LCEBA and other education business link organisations. Our role is to help them develop a strategy that will enable them to take advantage of the changes as they emerge. For further information contact Andrew Carter.
New Year's resolution
Make a date in your new diary to check out the Approaches website www.approaches.org.
A report from the highly successful NHS Health Scotland conference we co-organised, about young people and health, should appear very shortly. (We would have posted a PDF to the website earlier, but you know what the post is like at this time of year).
For more information about our work on young people and health please contact Debbie Adams. For information about events organisation please contact Andrew Carter.
Capital game plan
East London is looking to benefit from the regenerative powers of hosting the 2012 Olympics but, like Cinderella, the local workforce may be in danger of missing the ball.
Home to the London Olympics in 2012, close to one of the world's most successful financial centres and a place of unrivalled development opportunities, the area know as London Thames Gateway is forecast to grow substantially. It already provides over 1.1 million jobs with a projected increase of as many as 250,000 more over the next 10 years, including 14,000 new public sector/social infrastructure jobs. Rocket Science recently produced a Skills and Employment Action Plan for the London Development Agency (LDA) which, along with the LSC and Jobcentre Plus, is one of the key strategic investors in the area's future skills development.
LDA spends between £12m-£15m per annum on skills and employment investment within London Thames Gateway. The LSC London East budget is £700m per annum. Consequently, LDA recognises that it must deploy its budget flexibly in order to maximise, complement and add value to other partners' investments - and to deliver maximum impact for the intended beneficiaries (job seekers, employees and employers).
The development of the Government's Welfare to Work agenda (Beyond New Deal or BoND) and the focus of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) on the employment rates of the UK's major urban areas, provides a new opportunity for joined-up working amongst partners within the London Thames Gateway. Having identified that there are up to 70 different funding streams around the issues of employment and disadvantage in urban areas, DWP has signalled its intention to develop new policies involving the coordination of funding streams and their possible consolidation into area-focused Employment Trusts. The Trusts would include local government, departmental, community and employer representatives. Trusts would take the lead on the use of pooled funds, setting out agreed expenditure plans for an area in order to deliver local employment targets. Further details are currently under consideration, not least to ascertain how Trusts would interact with the ODPM-driven Local Area Agreements. (There will soon be six Local Area Agreements in the London Thames Gateway sub-region).
However, it is the coming of the Olympic Games to London in 2012 that offers the biggest opportunity to achieve a step change in the way the key statutory sector partners work together on skills and employment. A Local Employment and Training Framework (LETF) - a requirement of the initial Olympic Planning Permission - is currently being developed by the LDA, with input from partners including the LSC. This will look at a range of interventions between 2005 - 2015, focusing on the five Olympic boroughs (Greenwich, Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest).
It will be vital that this is not seen as a stand-alone Framework but co-ordinated with other interventions and mainstream services across both the sub-region and London region as a whole. The overarching aim should be to maximise the potential capacity of the local and regional labour market to meet the requirements of the Games by providing access routes for disadvantaged communities to take up new employment opportunities. Building on a pilot we have developed in the Forth Valley, Rocket Science is advocating the use of an employer-driven skills forecasting tool in order to ascertain more precisely the employability and skills demands of London Thames Gateway's employers; it provides an extra element of labour market intelligence to ensure that future public-funded employment initiatives are genuinely 'demand led.' For further information contact John Griffiths
Bob, bob, bobbin along
Bob Forsyth, one of Rocket Science Founding Directors, is heading south for what may be a longish winter.
Luckily, he isn't leaving the Rocket Science nest for good. He will be back in new plumage as a Senior Associate after his seasonal moult.
Santa's little helpers
Merry Christmas to... us!
Congratulations to Debbie Adams and Susan Byrne, who have been promoted to Principal Consultant and Senior Consultant respectively - and to Shelley Gray and Farrah Meherali, who join us as Consultants in our Edinburgh office. Find out more about our staff on our website.
Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer
Quite a simple one really, we don't want to tax you too much at Christmas (and we've given you a hint already). How many reindeer does Santa have?
Send your answer (including the names of the reindeer) by email Debbie Adams.
Congratulations to Meirion Thomas from Cardiff Business Technology Centre, Phil Bowen from the Home Office and others who knew the answer to last month's teaser. It is St Andrew who has had a day, town, university and an open named after him.