Growing up as a council estate kid with stars in my eyes, so much had to go right for me to get my break as an actor, before entering politics later in life.
Harold Wilson’s commitment to widening out decent education to all children gave me crucial opportunities that had been denied to my parents. Tony Blair’s focus on the creative industries as a key driver of economic growth set the scene for me to thrive as a freelancer. The skills I learnt from the Labour Women’s Network empowered me to represent my community, first as the MP for Batley and Spen, and then as the Mayor of West Yorkshire.
Now, so much is going wrong for our young people, holding them back from a fair chance to flourish. High house prices have combined with unreliable public transport and inaccessible routes into good technical education, stacking the odds against their ambitions. Young people today are not short of talent or ambition, but opportunity.
But here in West Yorkshire, devolution is empowering us to do things differently. Where once we were beholden to centralised skills priorities, with little regard for unique sector strengths and business base, now we can turn the tide against low skills.
A booming advanced manufacturing and engineering sector. A flourishing financial services sector, the biggest in England outside of London. Exciting careers in green tech, health tech and digital tech, waiting to be seized.
West Yorkshire is a region where opportunity lives. But decades of centralisation and disempowerment have made it harder for us to join the dots between our young people, our colleges and universities, and our growing businesses. Now, with deepening devolution and a single funding settlement on the horizon, West Yorkshire is fast becoming a region of learning and creativity. A place where everyone can fulfil their potential.
The government’s first mission is to unleash economic growth, and to grow our economy, we must unlock everyone’s potential. That’s why we’re opening doors for people to access new opportunities to flourish, no matter their circumstances or background.
Skills are at the heart of our multibillion-pound Local Growth Plan, because all of our regional ambitions depend on it, from building a fully integrated transport network to retrofitting every social home in the region. Helping people access skills and reliable public transport is fundamental for a growing economy. We need to provide our employers with the talent pool they need to boost productivity, innovation and growth.
Thanks to our devolved £65m Adult Skills Fund, we supported over 40,000 learners in the past academic year. Crucially, more ethnic-minority learners, disabled learners and learners from disadvantaged communities participated in training compared to any previous year. From construction bootcamps delivered in prisons to engineering courses delivered around childcare and other caring responsibilities, we’re supporting people to learn life-changing skills in careers they hadn’t previously considered.
Devolution and local control mean that we can be nimble, flexing our funding to fill gaps in the local labour market. With a dedicated responsiveness pot, we’ve trained thousands of people into the essential jobs our region needs, from bus drivers to telecoms engineers. We’re constantly joining the dots between our businesses and education providers to ensure we have the right skills to meet labour market demand. Our graduate scheme will see up to a thousand graduates receive rigorous training to prepare them for jobs in local businesses. We’ve supported over a thousand apprenticeships through levy funding from some of our region’s largest employers.
Over 80 per cent of job vacancies in West Yorkshire have basic requirements like English, maths and digital skills, so we’re delivering free courses to ensure that everyone can gain these essential skills.
Seventeen per cent more people have learned English because of our recruitment drive of ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) tutors, and we’ve commissioned maths and English qualifications for NHS staff to progress into better-paid roles. This is all while piloting groundbreaking new ways to make a difference to people’s lives. We’re working with West Yorkshire Police and our local authorities to divert women offenders away from the criminal justice system with a dedicated skills programme designed to raise aspirations, employability and real-world work experience. But deeper devolution, with freedoms, will allow us to go so much further. To unleash the potential of our region, we need one, easy-to-understand, universal route into skills training – not five, fragmented, national schemes that fail to respond to local need.
Because the current system isn’t working. Government requirements over what our regional skills funding is spent on are too restrictive and complicated. And it’s resulting in an alarming number of young people feeling left in the dark about the options available to them. This is where we as mayors can step in – due to our proximity to local labour markets and increasing control of transport networks. We can link our talent directly to business. With an integrated funding settlement, we will halve the number of people with low or no qualifications over the next ten years in West Yorkshire. We will give more of our disadvantaged young people that vital leg up into the labour market, by building up their basic skills, their confidence, and their employability. And with the right powers and funding, we will build a region of learning and creativity, supporting the creation of well-paid jobs, putting more money in people’s pockets, and ensuring that every person and every business has the skills they need to contribute to a stronger, brighter West Yorkshire.
Read the full report on how apprenticeships are the road to prosperity.
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