Members of Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce and Greater Manchester Learning Provider Network have been working on a joint initiative over the last 12 months, to help further education institutions develop vocational courses that businesses want and need.
Funded by the Education and Training Foundation, the ‘Taking Teaching Further’ programme, has shown that by getting employers and further education in the same room to design training, we can make sure that people and industry have the right skills to help people success in life.
As a result of this project, there are a number of free resources available through the Chamber’s and Network’s websites, which are useful for employers, further education staff, young people who are starting their career and adults looking to upskill or change career.
Joy Sewart, Director of Skills & Social Enterprise Policy at the Chamber, commented: “Part of our vision as to create a ‘Greater Manchester Labour Market Dashboard’, which takes up to date regional employment and business data, at a local authority level, and gives an overview of growth and decline of opportunities by sector in a web-based interactive format. As the dashboard is interactive, we hope it will enable the audience to locate where the job opportunities are by job type and sector, as well as being used as a teaching aid in further education, providing students with real time Labour Market Intelligence.”
Around 100 Greater Manchester businesses and over 40 further education institutions and independent training providers kindly gave up their valuable time to get involved in the development of this programme over the last year.
Anne Gornall, Executive Director of the Greater Manchester Learning Provider Network commented: “This Labour Market Toolkit is an example of what can be achieved when the provider voice and employer voice are brought together by our two organisations. It is complimented by a Curriculum Co-Design toolkit. This approach, facilitated by GMCC and GMLPN, should be a model of joint working in the future.”
The Greater Manchester Labour Market Information Electronic Toolkit is now live and can be viewed on the Chamber’s website via: https://www.gmchamber.co.uk/campaigns/taking-teaching-further/
The Greater Manchester Curriculum Co-Design Toolkit is available, as follows: https://gmlpn.co.uk/our-projects/takingteachingfurther/