20 February 2007

An interesting phenomena in recent times has been the growth of the intermediary – the agent, adviser or guide who works the space between those who provide education and training services and those who seek to use them. It’s all part of trying to help people navigate what’s often seen as a complex education and training system and secure a better fit between demand and supply.

One such group of intermediaries is the skills brokers, the independent contractors who provide advice, guidance and support to employers, especially those that are hard to reach, under the Train to Gain service. It’s a challenging role. Brokers are expected to “diagnose business needs and source appropriate training provision.” They have to be impartial but able to direct custom towards best fit providers and provision; they have to have a good general understanding of local business but advise on particular sector developments; and they have to help identify business needs and match them to appropriate qualification outcomes. Both Jack and ‘Master’ of all trades in effect.

On top of that, when it was first announced under the 2005 Skills White Paper the brokerage system itself was not greeted with universal enthusiasm. ‘Wielding too much influence,’ ‘getting in the way,’ ‘soaking up funds’ were just some of the initial comments but this early evaluation, commissioned by the LSC, and covering the first four Train to Gain ‘waves’ last year, suggests that in some areas, employer skills brokerage can have an important role to play.

Generally, according to this research, the four most common ways in which employers get to hear about the service are in order; through training providers, by word of mouth, through Business Link and the LSC with the good old telephone the most common way of making contact.

What employers seem to be seeking in the first instance is specialist help, with assessment of training needs lower down their list of priorities. This can be seen in the ranking of expectations from employers. ‘Brokers ability to identify potential funding to support training activities’ and ‘expertise and knowledge of the broker’ are the top two expectations followed rapidly by ‘brokers knowledge of training solutions within T2G,’ ‘brokers ability to translate company needs into an action plan’ and ‘brokers understanding of training and development needs.’ Yet two of these, the ability of the broker to identify potential funding to support training activities and to translate the needs of the company into an action plan appear high up those aspects of the service reckoned to be in need of improvement.

As ever with such services, matching expectation with reality can be a tough call and there are some interesting messages in here for those who see employer engagement as a straightforward exercise in getting the supply side to respond to the needs of the demand side. Actually, as the Foster Report noted, the demand side often finds it hard to articulate its needs and it sometimes feels that two separate dictionaries are being used.

Overall, this research uses eleven separate measures grouped under three broad headings of impartiality, responsiveness and knowledge, to evaluate how the brokerage system is working.

On impartiality, the most important thing that an employer is looking for is an understanding of their training needs yet this is an area in which the satisfaction gap is at its greatest. Respondents to the consultation seemed to be suggesting that the level of advice they received was too general or too limited, “the broker only gave us some initial information and nothing more” wrote one respondent. In addition, one in twenty employers were dissatisfied with brokers’ ability to signpost a range of providers.

On responsiveness, getting hold of a broker seemed to be less of a problem than getting the follow up sorted out. Employers look for clear and rapid outcomes and the dissatisfaction with the speed of follow up featured quite highly in responses. On knowledge, as already indicated there were gulfs in expectation between what was sought and what was realised though this needs to be seen in context. Employers, for example, often seek a simple set of fully funded solutions yet of course Government policies are moving strongly towards co funding.

In general, however, satisfaction levels from this survey were pretty high, 8.23 on a 10 point scale but of course the extent to which this can be maintained as Train to Gain rolls out wider and wider will, as they say, represent a ‘challenge.’ There was indeed some evidence in this research that satisfaction levels in wave 4 were not as high for those in the first three waves suggesting that spreading too thin needs to be watched.

Few respondents filled in the ‘any other comment’ box but those that did highlighted the need for better communication links followed by the need for more funds, more follow up support and more specific advice. That’s the trouble with asking – you get another set of expectations.

© Edexcel Policy Watch 2007. Steve Besley is General Manger of Education Policy at Edexcel. Policy watch is a service intended to help busy people understand developments in the world of education. Visit Edexcel at www.edexcel.org.uk