Delivering Skills for the Future

The SELEP Skills Strategy highlights the widespread shortage of tutors, teachers and trainers across the area, also illustrated through vacancies.

Recruitment challenges

Training providers, colleges and universities have reported challenges in recruitment. This is particularly the case for priority sectors such as construction, logistics, engineering, health, care, and digital and is therefore a significant impediment to economic growth and productivity. This has created a major obstacle to addressing skills shortages.

Addressing challenges

In order to address these core challenges, a project is proposed comprising of:

• A high quality awareness raising campaign which will showcase the sector locally, demonstrate the range of innovative and inspirational facilities and articulating the benefits of working in the sector. The campaign will utilise video and targeted digital marketing techniques.
• A contribution to teacher training costs aligned to priority sectors comprising of 40+ grants of up to £4,000 to be issued across the LEP and to raise awareness of the issue and SELEP/partners commitment to addressing it.
• Programme management to carry out the project and capture and showcase existing and related support available such as ‘Teach-Too’ and the tutor CPD work undertaken by local skills boards.

This project aims to unlock one of the biggest barriers and bottlenecks to skills training and jobs growth. This stifles productivity and growth locally. It will serve as a pilot and test case which could have national application and as such would clearly offer even greater value for money.

The project will run for 12 months with the intention that it forms a blueprint for the apprenticeship teaching qualification, future ESF and online learning.

Sector Support Fund

The Sector Support Fund (SSF) was established to support one-off, discrete pieces of work of a pan-LEP nature with a sector focus that bring demonstrable benefit and which have support across the LEP area.

The SSF used Growing Places Fund (GPF) Revenue grant to fund a programme of works which supported the sector focussed activities being undertaken on a pan-LEP basis and which were predominantly led by the SELEP working groups.