What's the proposition?

• Research from the Open University suggests that as much as £1.28bn is left in digital accounts from the apprenticeship levy.
• Rather than treating the levy as an opportunity, many businesses are treating it more as a tax.  It is designed to deliver more apprentices, but is not delivering as much as originally hoped.
• Rebrand the apprenticeship levy as the skills levy and increasing the flexibility in the way that businesses can use the levy to invest in skills, to have a wider impact on training and development.
• We could broaden to offer more flexible funding that creates new, relevant skills at the end. We could provide existing employees access to further education, social mobility or disability. 

How will you drive adoption?

• Persuade Govt to change apprenticeship criteria
• Reward new skills training
• Break the status quo
• Big businesses to help communicate the change and the opportunity.

What are the bold first steps?

Coalition of businesses and educators (FE, universities etc) to create new/transferable course/skills which would be highly business relevant. Develop courses to build aptitude, rather than purely practical skills.

What's the proposition?

We need to enable schools to understand the possibilities of tech and what it can mean for them. Empowering teams in schools to tackle the problem. 

Business could create a Digital resource pack 101 and volunteer time to school’s leadership teams to immerse and upskill them in the capabilities of technology.

How will you drive adoption?

This would provide a practical experience for schools. Business could feed into after school clubs, existing programmes such as ‘Girls who code’. Business would engage with head teachers and careers leaders once a year.

What are the bold first steps? 

Define what digital is to schools (is digital even the right word?).

What's the proposition?

We need to help young people and their parents/carers gain awareness and visibility of different jobs and industries. We would create a diagnostic tool/resource, e.g. What problems interest you? This would help motivate young people to build the skills they need, and drive people to careers with shortages.

How will you drive adoption?

Working with newly-appointed Careers Leaders within schools, as well as influencers (e.g. YouTubers) to highlight skills/jobs.

What are the bold first steps?

Coalition of business, government and third sector (including the digital dunk team!) would need to come together and business would need to contribute financially.

What's the proposition?

We want to change the way we recruit, to be based on aptitude and skills. We want to get organisations thinking about what they really need – to critically assess all roles. We’d need to reengineer the process and create new tool. We’d want to develop a learning plan for all joiners.

How will you drive adoption?

• Recruitment agency / social enterprise. CVs banned. Job description banned.
• Gamify it
• Could be a tool to use internally to help people move around within an organisation.

What are the bold first steps?

Get employers to critically evaluate what they need.

What's the proposition?

Our aspiration is to create an upskilling portal that is open to everyone. We’d start small (e.g. targeting people returning to work after a careers break) but could then expand out. We’d need a platform to host L&D content.

How will you drive adoption?

• This is a shop window for businesses, to engage potential employees with their L&D tools
• Businesses would get access to data around the uptake of the L&D
• Businesses are also generating a recruitment pipeline.

What are the bold first steps?

Scope appetite from business to share. Consider funding to create platform.