Skills for life planner

Elizabeth Usher, the council’s head of learning and development, oversees generic training across the county, including skills for life. “The main challenge in addressing the skills needs of the wider school workforce is effective communication,” she says. “These members of staff seldom have access to the school staff room, and this is usually where our information ends up. We have to develop excellent relationships with school secretaries to make sure that information that we send actually reaches members of the wider workforce.”

Elizabeth explains that union learning representatives play a key role in cascading information. Vicky Lang, member of a school catering team and a union learning representative, has been involved in various roadshows to promote learning for a range of support staff. She works with Derbyshire council, contributing to presentations and talks and speaking to individual support staff. Vicky and her colleagues attend training programmes for support staff, using this as an opportunity to promote further learning opportunities including skills for life. 

The council also hosts ROWA! (Read On-Write Away), a county-wide initiative which uses mobile buses to deliver literacy and numeracy skills training to adults. “The buses provide a quick and easy way of delivering skills for life to small learning groups,” explains Grace Kempster, ROWA!’s director. “The upper deck has an ICT suite with internet access, meaning that online resources are available for use. The ground floor has a crèche for learners with young children.” Buses can be positioned wherever there are potential learners, from supermarket car parks to specific places of work.