|
Skills and Enterprise Training for College Success
Engaging Employers • Boosting Student Employability • Delivering Qualifications |
|
|
Call 0870 7201071 |
|
|
Expanding FE Employability and Enterprise Skills Provision
Working Knowledge has entered the Barclays “Take One Small Step” business competition (https://www.takeonesmallstep.co.uk/Entry/View/2474/) which is a national business competition with regional prizes of £50k in cash.
If we win we will use the money to run more pilot projects within more FE colleges. Why? We have found in our pilot to date that many colleges have trouble identifying the initial cash to test our programme. Those that do pilot the activity tend to find it easier to provide the evidence to convince decision makers that the programme should be integrated into the curriculum for their students. So, external funds really help to get the programme rolling.
Indeed, £50,000 would enable us to build capacity to deliver events to 5,000 more students and 1,000 employers this year and then enable those colleges to continue to provide the same every year thereafter.
Fundamentally, we believe that our programmes contribute to changing the culture within colleges and consequently provide more opportunities in the communities that they service. This can result in greater opportunities for local employment, the creation of new small businesses and ultimately a reduction in young people who are not engaged in economic activity.
FE colleges by their very nature act to reflect the local community in which they are based. However, as large institutions they tend to find it hard to engage SME business owners who do not tend to look at FE as a source of talented labour or for business development support.
This is particularly true for the new apprenticeships in IT and Creative Industries; sectors dominated by small businesses that are not aware of the benefits that an apprentice could provide them.
By providing the college with the tools to equip students with the appropriate skills, our approach enables students to build and showcase their employability skills in front of prospective employers.
In order to win the competition we need to get as many votes for our proposition as possible so please add your vote to the tally and ask your colleagues and friends and family to do the same so that we can make sure that these students don’t just take one small step but take a few large ones!
To vote, go to (https://www.takeonesmallstep.co.uk/Entry/View/2474/) and support our plan to extend our provision to even more students. Just add your vote to 'Back this idea' section.
|
|
