September 2009

Welcome to the September issue of Skills Update. With this year’s Summer of Skills activity drawing to a close, the new enrolment season is well underway as new learners across the country embark on courses, gaining valuable skills to help keep their lives moving forward.

We’re delighted that the Five Step Guide to the Summer of Skills has proved useful for your marketing campaigns - it’s been downloaded over 190 times since the start of July. We’ll be developing further Five Step Guides so look out for more details in issues to come.

It’s great to see that many of you have been accessing the Campaign Resources Site over the summer. We hope you continue to find it a useful ‘one stop shop’ for helpful, practical collateral. Sarah Dodwell, Director of Marketing & Communications at Central Sussex College in Crawley, West Sussex certainly does. She says:

“‘Our future. It’s in our hands’ is an inspirational message and fits in perfectly with our ‘Bright Futures start at Central Sussex College’ campaign. Both describe a journey which will improve local people’s lives. And with many colleges’ campaigns aiming to achieve similar goals, the overarching Skills Campaign is an invaluable platform for communicating to local learners.”

Read more about how Sarah uses the Campaign Resources Site for her campaigns.
If you’ve got an interesting story about your successful summer marketing activity, contact us at skillscampaign@lsc.gov.uk

New for download this month on the Campaign Resources Site is a useful at-a-glance campaign planner, so you can plot your own marketing activity against national campaigns, plus some really helpful ‘Facts at your Fingertips’ about skills and learning that you might like to incorporate in your own materials.

Also new for September is a useful Guide to the Careers Advice Service National Learning Directory (NLD), explaining why colleges and training providers should keep the directory up to date and how, using the course manager system.

In this month’s Skills Update, you’ll find:

• Details of forthcoming national marketing activity promoting the benefits of skills and how to get involved, broken down by the weeks and months to come
• Links to starter packs, toolkits, information, guidance and relevant collateral
• Updates on recent national campaign activity
• Up and coming key dates

The Skills Campaign team is always here to help so please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions on 020 7419 7335 or at skillscampaign@lsc.gov.uk. If there’s any collateral or marketing materials that you feel would help you with your own campaigns, let us know.

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In the coming weeks...

So what’s coming up these next few weeks?

• In October, visit the Campaign Resources Site for an updated leaflet containing the latest Train to Gain information plus a refreshed image bank.
• The Skills/Careers Advice Service (CAS) team is currently developing a digital strategy, including Twitter feeds, which will be completed by the end of September and will provide regular updates and web links to those signing up. Also in development is a social media press room and blog site widget. More detail will follow in the October issue of Skills Update.
• The Skills Pledge team is currently revising its toolkit items to help stakeholders promote Skills Pledge within their own organisations. Materials will include new press release and case study templates, leaflets, presentation, logo strapline, key fact sheet, a champion’s guide, Business Link Adviser Guide, PR guide, and an achievements and good practice document. The toolkit will be available on the Campaign Resources Site from the end of September.
• In line with the refresh of www.direct.gov.uk/skillsaccounts at the end of October, there will be new learner leaflets and a new communications brief for Skills Accounts, both of which will be available on the Campaign Resources Site.
• Following June’s successful Skills for Life Get On and Sainsbury’s pilot in Whitechapel, London, the Sainsbury’s partnership rolls out across the country from 5-7 October at a Sainsbury’s store in every LSC region. nextstep and local college staff will man branded stands in store entrances, highlighting the value of Maths and English skills. Activity aims to secure further face to face interviews with nextstep staff, enrolments at local colleges and increase Get On helpline calls. Meanwhile, evaluation of the June Skills for Life black and minority ethnic campaigns in London and Birmingham is underway with results currently being collated. Topline analysis tells us that:
  • Signs of improvement in terms of attitudes towards learning in general and Maths in particular;
  • A third of respondents recognised the adverts;
  • Having seen the ads, half claim they will or probably will find out more info;
  • 60% say they are more likely to take a Maths course as a result of seeing the ads. For more information, contact julie.gough@lsc.gov.uk.
• There will be further, targeted promotion of Free Childcare for Training and Learning for Work from the middle of this month in the 15 key local areas that have the highest number of potential recipients. Households will receive a leaflet through their letter box telling eligible out-of-work parents that they can get help with childcare costs while they do some training to help them get a job. For more information contact Philip Brewins (philip.brewins@lsc.gov.uk).
• October is set to be a momentous month for Train to Gain which celebrates its millionth learner. PR activity will mark the occasion including a case study aimed at trade media.
• 1 October marks the launch of the BIS Learning Revolution Festival, a month-long celebration of informal adult learning and the benefits it brings to individuals, organisations and communities. Throughout October, hundreds of events will give people a chance to celebrate what they enjoy and try something new. Libraries, galleries, adult education providers, sports clubs, voluntary organisations, self organised groups and many other organisations can get involved by showcasing activities that are already available and offering or signposting new activities to get people started. There are many ways to get involved:
  • Employers could arrange for staff to learn a new skill or hobby over lunchtime or in the evening;
  • Those with any kind of space in a village, town or city centre could offer to share it for an evening or day time slot with a local learning group;
  • Learning providers or organisers could offer their services to the community and give a class or demonstration for free;
  • Publish learning events on your own website and on The Learning Revolution website at www.direct.gov.uk/learningrevolution which goes live at the end of September;
  • Visit www.direct.gov.uk/learningrevolution to find tips and advice on putting on and publicising an event and join discussions with other organisations that share a passion for informal learning.

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Planning ahead

With the new enrolment season underway, here’s what’s happening in the months to come:

• Following the success of last year, Colleges Week 2009 is up and running and using ‘Our future. It’s in our hands.’ Colleges Week is a celebration of the opportunities colleges create for individuals, businesses and Britain. Their world class workforce nurtures talent, helping people to progress and businesses to build for the future. The Colleges Week website is now live at www.collegesweek.org and it would be great to get as many people involved as possible. Visit the site to download posters and leaflets, find out how to take part in events in your community and champion your local college.
• The Adult Learning Grant team are looking for case studies this autumn so please contact Gaby Hateley, Gaby.Hateley@coi.gsi.gov.uk if you can help.

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Updates and news

In this section, catch up with campaign news and updates:

• Phase 4 of the Skills for Life Get On TV and radio campaign has been a success as it has driven up call volumes and web-hits over August. Topline results will follow in October with another burst of TV and radio activity set for January 2010.
• The Skills for Life Get On campaign launched its 2009/10 Football Chant Competition at the finale of this year’s competition with widespread national broadcast coverage secured including GMTV, the BBC’s One Show and Today programme, plus national and regional print media coverage. For more information, please visit www.direct.gov.uk/geton.
• A major phone audit amongst readers of the Skills Accounts e-bulletin took place this summer with 80 stakeholders including learning providers, FE associations, nextstep and Skills/CAS taking part. Following feedback, the e-bulletin is being refreshed to include more articles on sharing best practice, case studies and news on the future of Skills Accounts once year two of the trials has ended. The Skills Accounts team is still looking for case studies of people using the accounts. To provide case studies or subscribe to the monthly stakeholder e-bulletin, please contact Shagufta Mustafa: shagufta.mustafa@lsc.gov.uk
• 2 September saw the new Training Quality Standard website go live. As well as a new look and feel, the site has new features, which include:
  • A regional search function for employers to find training providers with TQS;
  • A Part B (those providers who also have a specialism) selector page;
  • Enhanced employer content;
  • An events calendar;
  • A search function;
  • Interactive TQS Framework and assessment processes pages;
  • Password protected sections for certificated providers and Part B reviewers.
• The National Skills Academy section on the Campaign Resources Site has been updated to reflect the new branding guidelines which were recently issued. The new section now contains:
  • New brand guidelines;
  • A quick guide to those guidelines, designed for use by marketing managers and for distribution to training providers and other stakeholders;
  • New stationery templates;
  • New 2D versions of all sector logos;
  • A link to the Vector Display website showing the display equipment available for National Skills Academy use.
• On 3 September, the Skills/Careers Advice Service (CAS) ‘When I grow up’ news story was issued. Exploring adults’ current working life versus their childhood career aspirations, the story was picked up widely across BBC radio and Working Lunch with Jon Gamble, Director for Adults and Lifelong Learning as a key spokesperson. A Skills/CAS-sponsored supplement in The Mirror, dedicated to helping people move their working life forward, appeared on 1 September and drove an increase in calls to the helpline. A full evaluation will be available in a future issue.
• The Skills/CAS Careers Advice Booth visited Nottingham’s Smithy Row on 26 August and Sheffield’s Fargate City Centre on 9 September, reaching thousands of people with advice and information about career options and generating enquiries through to CAS and nextstep. Some of the regions visited by the tour are looking into hosting more events in the near future in their area.
• The Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) team has produced a short film about A-level results day at Newham College, London. The film features EMA recipients talking about how the extra money has made a real difference to their lives and helped them to achieve their goals. It is on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5Rn9Ba7qUQ) and had received 139 views by 3 September.
• Well-known singer and mum Suzanne Shaw has been talking on local radio stations this month about the benefits of learning new skills. She has been advising couples with children where one parent is out-of-work that they may be eligible for help with their childcare costs through the Free Childcare for Training and Learning for Work scheme while they train to help them get a job.

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National Apprenticeship Service
Apprenticeship Week will take place 1-5 February 2010. Planning for the Week is already underway and a toolkit and templates for partners to use will be available later in the year. In February 2009, there was a tremendous response with hundreds of extra activities taking place up and down the country by a range of partners which resulted in over 600 pieces of coverage during the Week. With the help of partners and stakeholders, there’s no doubt that the third Apprenticeship Week will be even more successful.

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Backing Young Britain
We thought you might be interested to know that after learning about Backing Young Britain (www.hmg.gov.uk/backingyoungbritain) when putting together a previous issue of Skills Update, Band & Brown, the PR agency that manages Skills Update on behalf of the LSC, has launched the industry’s first ever PR Apprenticeship. Convinced of the sense it made to their business, the agency is giving two 16-plus young people the chance to combine earning a real wage in a real PR job with recognised training towards business administration NVQs at City and Islington College. In addition, an existing employee will undertake a marketing and communications Apprenticeship with Outsource Training and Development.

Young people can apply through the College and via the Apprenticeship vacancies website at www.apprenticeships.org.uk

Following successful completion of a Level 2 Business Administration Apprenticeship, the Band & Brown apprentices will be able to follow a career path within the company – taking an Advanced Apprenticeship in marketing and communications, graphic design, IT infrastructure, digital marketing or corporate services (such as Accounting).

Band & Brown found it easy to get involved and used the helpful www.apprenticeships.org.uk website for support.

Kevin Brennan MP, Minister for FE, Skills, Apprenticeships and Consumer Affairs, congratulated Band & Brown on the announcement:

"We're delighted that Band & Brown is backing young Britain in actions as well as words. We want as many young people as possible to have access to high-quality Apprenticeships and work experience programmes so they can combine real world experiences with formal learning."

Further details can be found at www.bbpr.com

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Key dates:

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