Opening Address Baroness Blackstone Minister of State with responsibility for lifelong learning Some of you here today will have attended the first national partnership conference last year, where the idea of Learning Partnerships was conceived. We set a huge challenge at that conference and I am really delighted that there has been such excellent progress since then in establishing them right across the country. It is unquestionable that working relationships between the organisations that you represent have become significantly - and I really mean significantly - closer during the last year and a half. The enthusiasm and the effort shown by all those who have been involved in getting them off the ground I think has been the main factor determining this progress and I really do think it deserves heartfelt congratulations, so I do salute all of you who have been involved in making it happen. This morning I want to reaffirm the importance of partnership working and the importance of Learning Partnerships in post-16 education and training. I also want to say a little about what the Government's vision for the future is. The Government is committed to the development as you all know of a learning society in which everyone expects to go on learning throughout their lives and everyone really genuinely has a chance to develop their potential. Something we know hasn't happened throughout this century. The partnership approach is now fundamental to the way we do business and it has been the crucial factor in some of our most successful initiatives - in Sure Start, New Start and the New Deal network to name just a few examples. I hope you will see from this Conference today that our commitment to partners and working in partnership is both very real and very deep. Many of you will be aware of the recent OFSTED FEFC joint report on post-16 collaboration. I mention this because it cites some excellent examples of what can be achieved through effective partnership working. Copies of the report are available here today and I do hope that you will be able to pick one up and read if you haven't already done so. I know that some partnerships are already very active and that typically these have evolved from existing fairly well established groups. One example is Greater Nottingham, where all the core partners are represented at senior level and where effective links have already been made with other key partners - with employers, the community and voluntary groups, churches, business and commercial groups, and other existing partnerships. I am equally aware that some partnerships are really quite new and still have to fully agree their roles, their responsibilities and what their targets are. It is, of course, the case that really effective partnerships do take a bit of time to build, but one of the great strengths of this initiative has been collaboration at all levels: at national, regional and local level. My Department's officials have worked very closely with their counterparts in national partner organisations throughout and many others have made their own vital contribution at regional and local levels. In particular, regional Government Office staff have played a very important role in bringing learning partnerships together and I do want to thank them for all the work that they have put in. I have been very impressed to see the way that many partnerships have already extended their membership beyond the core partners and I am encouraged that three-quarters of partnerships include schools. I do think it is important that schools should be involved. They are, after all, part of lifelong learning and what we can actually impart to young people when they are still at school about the importance of continuing learning throughout their lives is, I think, vital to all of this. Nearly two-thirds involve people from higher education, and I can see one or two representatives from HE here today. Again, I greatly welcome that. I am delighted that our universities and colleges are continuing to reach out through widening participation programmes, through their mainstream programmes to older people, to increasing numbers of part-time students who combine working with study. Over half have representation from the Employment Service. Again, I think, terribly important because for some of the people that we want to help, the link for them to making learning a priority is that it will help them in their jobs. Nearly half do include employers; ten partnerships are in fact chaired by business representatives and again that is something that the Government is delighted about. Learning Partnerships will have an increasingly important role in pulling together collaborative activity. I know that several already have close relationships with Education Business Partnerships, for example, and I hope that this can be developed further so those of you who are involved in a particular partnership where that kind of link hasn't been made, if I could encourage you to do so, I think that would be enormously helpful. I do think the Learning Partnerships can benefit from strong links with employers and EPBs have cultivated these sorts of links rather successfully now over some years. I am equally impressed with the way that many Learning Partnerships have so quickly got on with the task in hand. I know, for example, that many have been closely involved in establishing University for Industry Learning Hubs. Again, the UfI is one of our flagships for delivering lifelong learning. A huge amount of learning in future is going to be virtual, albeit virtual quite often with some tutorial support and backup. Developing plans for adult Information Advice and Guidance; again terribly important. We have tended in the past to focus on careers guidance for young people. We do have to, in the 21st century, recognise that many older people are going to change their careers several times in their working lives and quite often will need some advice and help, ideas and guidance about the right direction to go in. Finally, and very important is developing the Learning Gateway. I am also very pleased that good local collaboration is already providing the vital added value to many existing activities. In Northamptonshire, for example, the Partnership is developing a leaflet for post-16 students which will explain the support available to them for learning for the first time. This will pull together all the options that are open to young people in the area in terms of both funding and support and again, I think if that can be replicated around the country that would be enormously valuable. In Wiltshire and Swindon, the Partnership is bringing together all the appropriate local partners including the police, the probation service and the youth service, to take forward the Learning Gateway model. Amongst a wide range of ideas, it is developing an innovative incentive scheme to encourage disengaged young people back into learning and we do know that there are still far too many of such young people. There is impressive collaboration between the post-16 sector and local employers in West Berkshire. This is built on work at Newbury College where a successful centre for training people in circuit board design has been established. The Learning Partnership is drawing together the right partners to encourage this provision. Ultimately, it will be able to advise the local Learning and Skills Council on the training needs of companies in its area, helping to ensure that local provision matches those needs. Again, something, of course, that is fundamental to our White Paper proposals. I hope you will be able to share experiences of this kind in the workshops that I know are going to take place later today. I am also pleased that my colleagues in the Department are developing a long-term strategy for the sharing of good practice, including through the existing Learning Partnerships website. So I hope that you will be making maximum use of that to pick up ideas from each other and put your own ideas on the web. Since your first Conference last year we have been through a period of pretty rapid change and there is more to come. We have received over a thousand responses to our consultation on the Learning to Succeed White Paper and I know that a great many of you have responded. Thank you for doing that and your views really do matter, we are listening, we do want to consult. We can't actually invent everything from the centre and even if we could it would be extremely undesirable. So what exactly will be the role of Learning Partnerships in the post-16 arrangement after 2001? I see two absolutely key roles: firstly, Learning Partnerships are best placed to reach out into local communities and find out what it is that local people really need, what local people really want. So we will be relying on you to do that work, to find out, to discover, to get people to express their views and then for you to reflect that in the advice that you give. The partnerships will be able to provide the local Learning and Skills Councils with truly invaluable information on adult and community learning needs and on employer skill needs and we will make sure that these new bodies do seek and take account of Learning Partnerships' advice and that will be one of the requirements that they have to meet. Secondly, Learning Partnerships will continue to provide a forum for collaboration where local providers and others can share their plans, working together to ensure provision is as efficient, is as cost-effective as it possibly can be. They can ensure that gaps in local provision are filled and that duplication is avoided by co-ordinating local curriculum planning and staff development. Now, none of us should underestimate the challenge of meeting the needs of the most disadvantaged groups and individuals. Those involved in Learning Partnerships know and understand the local conditions that influence the decisions that people make. They know the reasons why people don't participate in learning or achieve the qualifications that they almost certainly are capable of achieving; they can identify local solutions to local problems and ensure that everyone, even in the most difficult areas, is encouraged and has the opportunity to participate in learning. We will shortly be announcing the boundaries to the local arms of the Learning and Skills Council. I am sure that local partners will take the opportunity to consider the best local arrangements in the light of these. It won't be sensible for Learning Partnerships to cross local Council boundaries. I am afraid that that may mean redrawing the boundaries of certain Learning Partnerships so that they fit in with Council areas. Although this is unlikely to be necessary in the vast majority of cases, where it is, I do hope that the efforts that local partners have made so far aren't wasted. I know that a great deal of work has gone into reaching agreement on partnership areas, not least in London, but I hope that any necessary changes can be made as smoothly as possible and with the agreement of everybody that is involved. The respective roles of Learning Partnerships and the local Learning and Skills Councils will be distinct but complimentary. The local Councils will cover relatively large areas - as you know we have a target of between 45-50 across the country - but their work will need to be informed by an understanding of local labour market needs, so I think the Learning Partnerships really are uniquely placed to provide that understanding. Learning Partnerships will continue to be voluntary groupings of providers and users with a more local focus, identifying local needs and, as I have said earlier, representing them to the local Council. The Government will publish its detailed plans for implementing the proposals in the White Paper in December. At the same time, officials will issue further guidance to Learning Partnerships and this will clarify their role further and give details of the full range of their responsibilities. The guidance won't, however, be prescriptive. Again, I don't think we should be too top-down about this; those of you involved in the partnerships know what is best for you and what is best for your own areas. If Learning Partnerships are going to cement their place in those new arrangements it is vital that the momentum built up in establishing them is maintained and I want to touch now on some of the areas where I think efforts will need to be particularly concentrated. One of the key tasks is to drive forward progress towards our very ambitious national learning targets. Partnership and collaboration will continue to be the guiding principles here. It is important that all partners involved are pulling in the same direction if they are going to maximise local provision and make the real difference needed to achieve those targets. The targets express our aspirations for young people; 160,000 of them between the ages of 16-18 are still not in any form of learning or in any kind of work. That really can't go on, that kind of awful waste amongst our young people has got to come to an end. These young people deserve more from our education system than many of them have had in the past, but I think that by working together local partners can offer them more choices. They can be guided towards the learning that suits them and I recognise that some of them are difficult, some of them have all kinds of problems in their past, in terms of their own educational performance and commitment, but I don't think we should ever give up on them. Together we can ensure that fewer of them fall through the cracks between different providers. I want to see the views of young people actually influencing provision in their own areas. I want them to know that their voices are being heard and I hope everybody here today will agree that that is important. If we want to engage them, we have got to involve them and give them a feeling that they are being listened to and that they have some ownership over what is available to them. The new Youth Support Service will help us address the current, rather fragmented, provision of support to young people by bringing together the agencies that provide that support. The setting up of feedback mechanisms through which learners can influence provision will, I think, be key here. I know that there are already a great many examples such as in Sunderland, where the City Council and its partners have set up youth forums right across the city and these are enabling young people to have a real say in shaping the delivery of education and training in their city. I think that is a good example, a good role model, that again I hope people will be able to look at and see whether they can replicate, not necessarily in an identical form, but perhaps something rather similar. While we work to establish the new Youth Support Service, I expect Learning Partnerships to do all they can to capture the views of young people by drawing upon existing arrangements such as the one I have just described in Sunderland. DfEE officials are working hard with colleagues across the country to ensure that our new ConneXions programme will increase coherence at a national level, but they will be reliant on the Partnership to develop the innovative approaches that we do need locally; to ensure the best local delivery of the Learning Gateway, building on the best of New Start, where I think some really splendid work has been done in the different pilot programmes, and to promote and support the Right to Time off for study or Training and the Educational Maintenance Allowances which we are now piloting in a number of different parts of the country. I do want to emphasise how much importance the Government does attach to the Time off for Study or Training arrangements that we have put in place with the new legislation the year before last and, again, I would find it very helpful to have feedback as to how this is going. Partnerships have already shown in their local learning plans how individual partners will work together to provide local Information Advice and Guidance services for adults. I know that some have successfully gained Pathfinder status and I congratulate those that have. A key contribution here will be identifying the basic skill needs of your communities. You all know that one in five adults have real problems with literacy and numeracy and it is really a matter of the highest priority. Again, I am sure everybody here will agree with me that we must address it. Learning Partnerships, I think, can also add a great deal of value to developing University for Industry initiatives, particularly through contributing to the development of local Learning Centres and effective local campaigns to promote lifelong learning. ICT Learning Centres will also have a very key role in helping us to bridge the gap. If Partnerships are going to influence provision in their areas, and properly advise the local Learning and Skills Councils, they will need to work even more closely with existing groups and organisations. It is critical that the business sector is engaged; nearly 40% of employers still report significant gaps between the skills of their younger employees and those needed for the job, and our prosperity really does depend on, again, dealing with that particular gap. I know that the Windsor and Maidenhead partnership have plans to work with local employers, to promote accreditation and I am sure others will aim to secure employer involvement in a whole range of different ways. What I have set out under the new post-16 arrangements is certainly a very tall order. If partnerships are to manage their activities effectively, and establish proper consultative mechanisms with their communities, they will need adequate resources. I am very pleased, therefore, that my Department will be able to contribute £10m to Learning Partnerships in each of the next two years to help them do all the things that we want to see happen. Effectively that does represent a quadrupling of the funding currently available for support costs and a 50% increase on that for local collaborative projects so I hope you will welcome this extra £10m a year over the next two years. In conclusion, I think I just want to leave you with three messages. First, the progress made in getting your partnerships off the ground so quickly I think is worthy of great praise, but like the football team which wins its first few games, they haven't yet got the trophy. They are at the beginning of what we might describe as a long, hard season. Second, this Government believes in the crucial importance of collaboration, of local groups that pull together all of those who have a vested interest in learning, making use of their respective strengths. They all have different kinds of strengths after all in working together towards this common end that we all share. Learning Partnerships, I think, can be a steadying influence throughout the coming period of some upheaval and I do believe will be a corner-stone of the new system. Finally, you can make a difference, a very big difference, a real difference to the lives and futures of the thousands and thousands of people both young and old. You can help ensure that they have the highest quality education and training that we can possibly provide. You have the chance, I think, to put aside parochial issues, to work together for the benefit of the people who matter and to prove that the whole really can be greater than the sum of its parts. Thank you very much indeed.

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