Tackling the Skills Challenge in Wales

Mike James, Principal and Chief Executive: Cardiff and Vale College

College Vision

•To be Influential

•To be Inspirational• •To be Inclusive

Curriculum Strategy

There needs to be a clear link between a college course and progression into work, i.e. Employability.

Skill acquisition needs to provide both individuals and local business with both flexibility and sustainable prosperity.

Why a relationship with People 1st will work.

The important role of People 1st as Sector Skills Council in researching employers needs and as the employer voice in skills, education and training, so the skills are demand and not supply led. 

The successful role People 1st has played during the last five years in helping deliver a coherent framework of qualifications that meet industry needs and the removal of several hundred qualifications that don’t!

2011/15Change, Challenge and Culture

 

Change1.Create a far more flexible delivery platform for skills and qualifications.2.Using national agreed frameworks to create local credibility by allowing business to endorse qualifications through advocacy.3.Create where possible collaborative skills hubs offering employers and employees a one stop shop, listen more and respond faster .4.Deliver skills not just qualifications, employers will pay if the service is high quality and demand led.5.Use apprenticeships as the “ Gold Vocational Standard” provide pledged progression routes.

Challenge

1.Does our offer match the jobs available2.Do we really understand what our local employers want3.Is there a clear link in students minds between college and progression into HE, Apprenticeships or work4.Do we offer students the best chances of progressing 5.Our all our delivery platforms really flexible6.Can we offer more for the same resource 7.Is all that we do outstanding8.Do we update our lectures skills enough 9.Is our offer really demand led and if so, what impact does it have on the local economy10.The skills of today are the history lessons of the future, are we really “ World Class”

Culture1.Support a really can do culture 2.Continue to be the most efficient education sector in the UK in terms of vale for money3.Champion our track record in responding to vocational change, “being at the front”.4.Continue to champion apprenticeships as a real option to University5.Provide our sector as “Centre Place”•A sector that quite literally has trained the fast majority of the L2/L3 working population in one shape or another•A sector that deals on a daily basis with tens of thousands of business •A sector that wants to make Wales great by supporting the communities it serves

In SummaryWe will change, with inspirational leadership and support from People 1st.

We can challenge, with Influential staff that deliver world class skills.

We can provide a better culture by being inclusive in all that we do.

Thank you

Any Questions