HART LEARNING GROUP THREE DIMENSIONAL STRATEGY

HART LEARNING GROUP THREE DIMENSIONAL STRATEGY APRIL 2016

INTRODUCTION OUR MISSION OUR GOALS The Hart Learning Group s mission is to create social and economic value for individuals, businesses and the communities we serve through learning. OUR GROUP The Hart Learning Group includes: North Hertfordshire College: an occupationallyfocussed further education college with campuses in Stevenage, Hitchin and Letchworth. Hart L&D: a progressive learning and development business which helps businesses of all sizes, locally and nationally, to invest in emerging talent. The Hart Schools Trust: a burgeoning multiacademy trust which currently sponsors three secondary schools in North Hertfordshire. Colleges of Excellence: in partnership with Hertford Regional College and Samama we operate three vocational education colleges in Saudi Arabia. Our mission is about helping individuals to get where they want to be in life, helping businesses to improve and grow, and helping communities to thrive. In hard-edged terms that means: NHC will self-assess as Outstanding by 2018/19. Hart L&D will generate 5m of surpluses p.a. by 2020. The Hart Schools Trust will support 15-20 local schools by 2020. We are currently developing a basket of measures that we will use to measure progress and determine our operational priorities each year. We ll share those measures with stakeholders so that you can see the progress we re making. We re passionate about the relationship between businesses, citizens and communities. We believe that understanding and making the right connections between the three enables us to deliver teaching and learning experiences that have real impact for our students: Hart L&D s client proposition is about helping businesses to think about how they engage with emerging talent in the round, going beyond point solutions to help them develop an approach that will really help them improve and grow. NHC s focus is on helping students to get where they want to be in life. We do that best by working closely with local businesses to make sure that our programme offer is aligned with their needs, and that we re preparing students for the reality of the world of work. The Hart Schools Trust is about sharing experience, expertise and opportunities with the schools we support, going beyond the provision of shared services and focussing on the distinctive value that we can add because of the Trust s relationships with NHC and Hart L&D. In supporting young people, adults and businesses to develop their skills and capabilities we help each of them to become more self-sufficient participants in, and contributors to, the local community. We are also hugely committed to making a direct contribution to the communities we serve by opening up our facilities to the local community and through the charitable work that our staff engage in throughout the year. Our mission is about helping individuals to get where they want to be in life, helping businesses to improve and grow, and helping communities to thrive. 1 2

HELPING BUSINESSES TO IMPROVE AND GROW THROUGH HART L&D Hart L&D encourage businesses of all sizes to think about how they engage with emerging talent across three distinct phases: The engaging phase is about businesses building a relationship with their future workforce, working with young people to inform and inspire them about careers in their sector and providing them with invaluable work experience. The training phase is about how businesses attract and train young people through apprenticeship, graduate trainee and other programmes. The progressing phase is about how businesses retain and help their talented employees to progress in their business through e.g. higher level apprenticeships, professional development and future leaders initiatives. We often find that businesses are more active across these phases than they realise because of the amount of work they do under a community banner. Making the right connections between those efforts and their work to attract and train new staff can have a huge impact, for example by helping them attract candidates to apprenticeship and other vacancies. We love apprenticeships. They have a unique power to transform the lives of young people, and help businesses meet their current and future skills needs. It s our experience that the best apprenticeship programmes are preceded by great engagement with young people in schools and colleges, and followed up with great progression arrangements. We love apprenticeships. They have a unique power to transform the lives of young people, and help businesses meet their current and future skills needs. OUTREACH ACTIVITIES CURRICULUM INPUT ATTRACTION CAMPAIGNS GRADUATE PROGRAMMES HIGHER LEVEL APPRENTICESHIPS CAREERS TALKS WORK EXPERIENCE TRAINEESHIPS APPRENTICESHIPS PROGRESSION PATHWAYS FUTURE LEADERS INITIATIVES 1. Engaging 2. Training 3. Progressing 3 3 4 4

HELPING STUDENTS TO GET WHERE THEY WANT TO BE IN LIFE THROUGH NHC Everything we do at NHC is about helping students to get where they want to be in life. That means helping them to develop both the knowledge and skills they need to progress in their chosen occupational area, and the employability skills that we know employers expect of young people when they enter the work of work including a good grounding in maths and English. Hart L&D s work with local and national businesses is hugely additive to NHC. We recently completed a piece of work with local businesses to define what they expect of their new recruits. For 2016/17 we will embed that employability standard in all of our full time programmes for NHC students as well as Hart L&D s traineeship and apprenticeship programmes. Hart L&D also help us secure invaluable employer engagement in our full time programmes including e.g. careers talks, student projects and high quality work experience placements. Our focus on student destinations, and our appetite for employer engagement in the curriculum, are underpinned by an obsession with high quality teaching and learning. That obsession starts with the recruitment, development and retention of the best teaching staff. We re incredibly proud of our team. Their passion, professionalism and industry expertise define our students experience of NHC. ADDING REAL VALUE TO SCHOOLS THROUGH THE HART SCHOOLS TRUST To realise our mission we need to start helping young people before the age of 16. Through the Hart Schools Trust we share expertise, resources and relationships with the schools we support so that their pupils can realise their full potential. In supporting the schools we focus on: Providing school leaders with access to the specialist expertise, resources and support they need to improve their school. Securing meaningful business engagement with schools to help them bring the world of work to life for their pupils. Opportunities for curriculum collaboration between NHC, Hart L&D and the schools we support including pre-16 vocational provision for school pupils. We also provide corporate services to the schools we support. For us this is a sensible way of sharing resources and optimising services rather than the prime driver for our engagement. We expect the Trust will grow over the period to 2020, embracing secondary and primary schools in our local area. We re more interested in the value that we add than we are in growing the number of schools we support; we won t embrace new schools if we re not content with the progress being made in the schools we already support. SUPPORTING THE DEVELOPMENT OF VIBRANT, PROSPEROUS AND SAFE COMMUNITIES Our distinctive contribution to the communities of Stevenage and North Hertfordshire flows primarily from the way in which we deploy our expertise in teaching and learning to support individuals and businesses. In helping young people and adults to improve their skills and employment prospects, we help them become self-sufficient contributors to the local community. Better educated, more employable, citizens are less likely to rely on the state for support, more likely to be healthy, and more likely to play an active, positive, role in the local community. In helping businesses to improve and grow, we help them to create more, better jobs in the local community. By aligning the NHC curriculum offer with the current and future needs of the local economy we help make Stevenage and North Hertfordshire an attractive place to do business supporting business start-up, inward investment and organic growth. And our focus on employer engagement in education helps businesses to contribute themselves. We are also keen to make a direct contribution to the local community through student projects, support for local charities, and by opening up our facilities for use by local community partners. For 2016/17 we have launched a student guarantee which reflects our commitment to help students progress. We expect them to attend, behave and complete their vocational qualification. If they do we guarantee that they ll secure a job, apprenticeship or place on a higher education course. If they don t we will give them 1,000 to help them kick-start their career. 5 6

OUR PRIORITY SECTORS OUR PRIORITY SECTORS OUR PRIORITY SECTORS We exist to meet the needs of the local labour market. We recently completed a thorough analysis of the current and likely future needs of the economic geographies we serve. As a result of that piece of work we have identified six priority sectors: Business and financial services: which already account for over a quarter of all jobs in Hertfordshire. Employment in Hertfordshire in these sectors is forecast to grow by 14% over the period to 2022. There are also huge employment opportunities in London in this sector. The creative industries: one of the fastest growing sectors in the UK economy with turnover up by some 9% in 2014/15. Hertfordshire is home a number of the big players in the industry including the BBC, Elstree Studios and Warner Bros. Our proximity to London is also hugely relevant in this sector. Engineering, construction and advanced manufacturing: the manufacturing sector alone employs some 36,000 people in Hertfordshire. A quarter of the manufacturing employers in the county are based in Stevenage / North Hertfordshire, where sector employment is 61% above the national average. An ageing workforce means there is substantial employment demand. Health and social care: employment opportunities in this sector are expanding rapidly as the population grows and ages. By 2022 10% of Hertfordshire employment will be in health and care organisations. Current, chronic, skills shortages have created a heavy reliance on migrant and agency workers. Technology: another high-growth sector, 25,000 people in Hertfordshire currently work for tech businesses including BT, EE, ComputaCenter, Fujitsu, and Imagination Technologies. Sector employment in Hertfordshire is forecast to grow by 5% by 2022 though there is potential for stronger growth. Sport: a substantial sector, with growing employment opportunities in sports science and management spheres, as well as the more traditional gym, health club and coaching occupations. Sector employment in Hertfordshire is expected to grow by 5% by 2022. We are now working with local employers to develop five year business plans for each of these areas. That employer consultation will shape our curriculum offer, our investment in infrastructure and our student recruitment priorities - helping us ensure that our provision meets the current and expected future needs of the local economy. 7 8

OUR VALUES Our values are really important to us. They define how we work and enable our success: Quality: we strive constantly to improve the quality of our teaching and learning. We are intolerant of poor quality and always aim for Outstanding. Innovation: we agitate for new and better ways of doing things. We will look within and beyond the education sector for transformational innovations. Accountability: we set clear, reasonable expectations and we expect colleagues to deliver. We don t make excuses. Integrity: we have a strong moral compass, and we do the right thing for our customers, for our colleagues, and for the group. Sustainability: we take decisions that work for the medium- and long-term: socially, economically, and environmentally. Our values are really important to us. They define how we work and enable our success. 9 10

Hart Learning Group hartlearninggroup.co.uk Hart Learning & Development hartld.co.uk hart_ld North Hertfordshire College nhc.ac.uk N_HertsCollege