Chambers welcome £4.2 million to enhance education and skills provision

Last week, the Department for Education (DfE) announced that over £200 million is being distributed to colleges and universities across the country, in service of growing the national economy, ensuring that training is readily available in certain key industries, and getting more people into high-quality jobs that are closer to home.

As a result, colleges and training providers across South Yorkshire have worked in collaboration to successfully secure £4.2 million of investment from the Local Skills Improvement Fund (LSIF) that will be used to support a step change in the skills provision needed to transform the regional economy and drive a high-tech future.

The funding programme will be used to make the skills system more accessible to employers, to remove barriers that are currently making it difficult to recruit apprentices, to raise the level of digital training offered by our providers, and to ultimately improve the opportunities and prospects that are available to residents. In this sense, it will be vital in addressing many of the priorities that were identified by the South Yorkshire Local Skills Improvement Plan (LSIP) earlier in the year.

Reacting to this positive development, the three South Yorkshire Chambers (those being the respective networks for Doncaster, Sheffield and Barnsley & Rotherham), issued the following joint statement: “When it comes to skills, there is a great deal that we should be proud and appreciative of here in the region. After all, we are home to three brilliant University Technical Colleges — with another one on the way — all of our further education providers are ranked Oftsed good or better, and we benefit from a number of strong and highly effective partnerships.

“Yet this crucially does not mean that there isn’t room from improvement. Indeed, we should always aspire to better ourselves and know that this is a view shared by many of our partners across South Yorkshire.

“In fact, those very same education providers that we just mentioned were absolutely instrumental in the development of our South Yorkshire LSIP and constructively engaged with the project right from the beginning. They did this because they too realise the importance of being agile and responsive to the needs, not just of their learners, but also of local employers.

“We therefore welcome this additional funding from the Department for Education, as it will help bring many of the recommendations from that LSIP to fruition and help colleges and universities to fulfil their laudable ambitions.

“Learners will be afforded new opportunities to develop the skills they need to thrive in the modern workplace — particularly embracing digital technology —while businesses will be able to harness the resulting talent to innovate and grow towards a more prosperous future.

“To reiterate, it is of vital importance that we have a skills system in the region that meets the needs of both local employers and learners.

"While we already have some fantastic provision in that respect, we believe that this investment from DfE will help take it to the next level and we have already commenced work with our excellent providers to realise the full value of the investment and meet our ambitions for South Yorkshire.”