The Greater Birmingham and Solihull employability briefing highlights a notable skills gap among young people, with a significant disparity in student-employer encounters compared to other regions. It advocates for increased business engagement in schools to enhance career guidance and opportunities for students, aiming for at least four employer encounters per student annually. The initiative emphasizes collaboration to empower students and close the skills gap, particularly in key growth sectors.

1. KEY STAKEHOLDER BRIEFING (Birmingham)
May 2017

2. 2
GREATER BIRMINGHAM AND SOLIHULL EMPLOYABILITY SUMMARY
1. There are 196 business leaders in Greater Birmingham and Solihull LEP that have
turnover > 1 Million that are growing and available to teachers over our service
2. 33 of them have already accepted teachers’ invitations to their classroom
3. 43 of the businesses in your LEP are growing at rates below 20% and 67 are
growing at 20% or more.
4. Birmingham Local Authority shows 25 Student-Employer Encounters/1000 student
population compared to Camden’s 623 Student-Employer Encounters/1000 student
population
5. Greater Birmingham and Solihull LEP has 15 Student-employer encounters per 1000
students, against Greater Peterborough & Cambridgeshire’s 121, Thames Valley
Berkshire’s 65, London’s 64…
6. We’d like to work with you to boost the number of students that meet employers at
school….

3. “Tinker Tailor Soldier or Spy”

4. THERE IS A MAJOR
SKILLS GAP
AMONGST UK'S
YOUNG PEOPLE
The Problem

5. 100 %
Net New Jobs created in Europe in the past 5 years were from companies less than 5 years old….
THE PACE OF CHANGE IN OUR ECONOMIES IS HIGH AND
INCREASING

8. #scaleu

9. I would be able to grow
my company faster if
applicants had the skills
needed to meet my
customer demand.
82%OF 163 SCALE-UPS
AGREE
79%OF 442 CEOs
AGREE

10. 82%
“I would be able to grow my
company faster if applicants
had the skills needed to meet
my customer demand”

11. THE SKILLS GAP IS SET TO GET LARGER….
#scaleu

12. THE SKILLS GAP IS SET TO GET LARGER….
#scaleu

15. Figure 4. The value of Apps in helping learning (students)
(Longfield iPad Research, 2012)
Figure 5. The value of Apps in helping teaching (staff)
(Longfield iPad research, 2012)
Teacher ProductivityLearner Attainment

17. Over the next decade, more than one billion young
people will enter the global labour market and only
40% will be in jobs that currently exist.
-The Economist January 2016

19. UNLEASHING THE
POWER OF THE
BUSINESS
COMMUNITY INTO
THE CLASSROOM
Student Employer Encounters

20. OUR GOALS
➤ improve young people’s ability to make
informed career decisions and improve
their optimism about the future;
➤ help young people to increase their
attainment and be more likely to enrol in
post-secondary education;
➤ increase the employability of young
people; and
➤ increase young people’s earnings after
they complete their schooling
➤ By getting teachers to 4 student-employer
encounters per annum
➤ By getting students 140 hours of work
experience

21. Ramesh Raskar, MIT Media Lab
Successful Entrepreneurs travel to schools to speak with students

22. Lucinda Bruce Gardyne from Genius Foods
Inspired by her child’s allergy to
gluten and her passion for
chemistry, Lucinda set about
creating a loaf so her eight year
old son Robin, who had a wheat
allergy, could dip bread soldiers
in his boiled eggs at breakfast.

23. Workfinder.com
“The speakers told us
stories about students of our
age who had created
businesses and so I thought
if they can do it, I could too.
Maitri
Panchal

24. TIMING OF THE INTERVENTION IS KEY
➤ The timing of the intervention that will
provide inspiration along with the soft and
hard skills that will help a young person
become employable is critical from a
financial perspective.
➤ As the figure here highlights, the cost of
training a young person increases
exponentially with age: at age 14, the cost
is less than £ 1, at age 18 it is less than
£1000 but at age 25, it jumps to £10,000.

25. DELIVERING MEANINGFUL
ENCOUNTERSFounders4Schools enables teachers to access
local business leaders to schedule the following
encounters:
➤ Role model events
➤ Group or speed mentoring
➤ Mock interviews
➤ Career Fairs
➤ Keynote career speeches
➤ Workplace visits
➤ Plus much more
To date, Founders4Schools has facilitated over
155,000 student-employer encounters for
60,000 students with the help of more than
1,000 business leaders who talked to students
about jobs they might hold or create in the
future.

26. DELIVERING MEANINGFUL
ENCOUNTERS

27. DELIVERING MEANINGFUL
ENCOUNTERS

28. DELIVERING MEANINGFUL
ENCOUNTERS

29. UCL Academy, North West London
(click on the images to see an example of each series of events)
Case Studies
●Impact:
○Sharpened students understanding of future careers.
○Showed intricate links between the Science, Maths, Technology and Engineering areas.
○Showed students how interesting and fun STEM can be.

30. Bobby Ahmadzadeh, a Teach First ambassador
Brentford School for Girls, West London
I was excited by how well it went and
how positive the reactions were.
Several experienced members of
staff at our school that often organise
public speaking events said they had
never seen an event so amazing!
It was extremely impactful, and the
variety and caliber of people took our
breath away.
Bobby Ahmadzadeh, a Teach First ambassador heard about Founders4schools from a colleague and created an event for his
economics students. Immediately after the event, the school’s assistant headteacher asked him how this was organised and
booked one more event for the beginning of the next academic year, for their Year 10 students. She then repeated this for the ir
next cohort.
Case Studies

31. GOOD CAREER
GUIDANCE IS
CRITICAL IF YOUNG
PEOPLE ARE TO
RAISE THEIR
ASPIRATIONS AND
CAPITALISE ON THE
OPPORTUNITIES
AVAILABLE TO THEM.
The Research

32. THE GATSBY
BENCHMARKS
➤ A stable careers programme
➤ Learning from career and labour market informa
➤ Addressing the needs of each pupil
➤ Linking curriculum learning to careers
➤ Encounters with employers and employees
➤ Experiences of workplaces
➤ Encounters with further and higher education
➤ Personal guidance

33. UP-SKILL WITH
SCALE UPS TO
SOLVE THE SKILLS
GAP
Guidance to teachers…..

34. #scaleup @scaleupinst scaleupinstitute.org.uk
SCALEUPS AT A LOCAL LEVEL : SCOTLAND

36. Turnover Growth (GBP) vs Growth Rate (%)

39. 39
Your local labour market is unusually strong with regards to STEM subject matches to the curriculum and the
industries that present as the fastest growing are:
- Technology
- Economics
- Maths
Greater Birmingham and Solihull Employability Briefing

41. UP-SKILL WITH
SCALE UPS TO
SOLVE THE SKILLS
GAP
Work Experience Placements

42. “I would be able to grow my
company faster if applicants
had the skills needed to meet
my customer demand”

43. 82%
“I would be able to grow my
company faster if applicants
had the skills needed to meet
my customer demand”

44. Workfinder
Get experience at
Britain’s best companies
in a few taps.

45. USING WORKFINDER
STUDENTS CAN:
➤ Discover: Browse and discover local fast
growing companies - spark your
imagination
➤ Filter: Refine searches by your favourite
subjects - find companies that excite you
➤ Apply: Apply for roles using template
cover letters - it’s quick and easy
➤ Contact: Apply for positions directly and
take an active approach
➤ Experience: Gain valuable experience
and get ahead of the crowd

46. Every secondary school and college
should have up-to-date, user-friendly
labour market intelligence/information
(LMI) readily accessible.

47. Every young person could have at least 100
hours experience of the world of work, in
some form, by the time they reach the age of
18

48. Workfinder.com
We know how important closing
the attainment gap is to our long-
term economic prosperity, so it’s
fantastic that apps like Workfinder
give businesses a new and
innovative way to connect with
students all across the UK
Well done for coming up with such
a pioneering idea”.
Paul Drechsler, CBI President

49. Workfinder.com
“Our members regularly tell us that
they struggle to find young adults
who are properly equipped for the
workplace”
“today’s launch of Workfinder
marks a huge step forward in
tackling this issue. Not only does it
provide young people with great
opportunities, it does so in the
digital space – the natural domain
of those who will excel in the high-
tech, high-skilled workplaces of the
future.”
Mike Cherry
Federation of Small Businesses

50. UP-SKILL WITH
SCALE UPS TO
SOLVE THE SKILLS
GAP
Dashboards for Local
Authorities…

51. 51
Greater Birmingham and Solihull Employability Briefing

52. 52
Greater Birmingham and Solihull LEP Employability Briefing

53. BIRMINGHAM HAS 25 SEE/1000 VS CAMDEN’S 623/1000
Birmingham Local Authority
Camden Local Authority
South Cambridge Local Authority

54. 54
Greater Birmingham and Solihull Employability Briefing
Birmingham Schools that have used Founders4Schools

55. 55
We’d like to work with you to boost the number of student-employer encounters significantly - our goal is that each
student has at least 4 encounters with an employer per year on average.
National Employability Briefing: Young People

56. 56
National Employability Briefing

57. 57
Birmingham Employability Briefing

58. Workfinder.comWorkfinder.com
Key takeaway Working together, we can close
the skills gap and empower
students, whatever their
background
Creating a pipeline of post-
brexit talent for our scaleups….

59. EMPLOYABILITY TRAINING
SEMINARS
23 MAY 12:30
27 JUNE 12:300

60. https://www.founders4schools.org.uk/
THANK YOU