South West Regional Skills Enterprise and Employment Analysis 2007/2008
Final Report
4.14 Information, Advice and Guidance (IAG)
The White Paper 2003, 21st Century Skills: Realising our Potential, set out the need to reform adult IAG services and this has again been reiterated in the White Paper 2005, Skills: Getting on in Business, Getting on at Work. To meet the challenge to reform IAG, the LSC published its vision for coherent IAG services for adults. The strategy aims to improve the participation and achievement of adults in learning and work by ensuring that good information and advice on skills, training and qualifications is at the heart of provision and delivery of learning.
IAG is very much in focus for policy-makers within the UK. The LSC states that “the availability of high-quality local Information, Advice and Guidance (IAG) services for learning and work is key to the success of national policies for learning and skills development”(74). The LSC believes that the number and range of adults involved in learning will increase over the next few years, widening and raising levels of achievement. As a result people will “need access to excellent quality, comprehensive and impartial information and advice about local learning and work opportunities and their relevance to the labour market”.
There are two types of IAG for adults funded by the LSC: discrete and embedded. Discrete services – nextstep, skills coaching and learndirect advice - have budgets and targets associated directly with service delivery. Embedded IAG forms part of a service offering by student support services and tutorial delivery within the curriculum across all further, personal and community development and WBL provision.
The IAG service also forms an integral part of the Offender Learning and Skills Service as well as for the Train to Gain Service.
The key performance indicators that LSC agreed with DfES are:
- Number of information sessions delivered;
- Number of advice sessions to service users yet to achieve a Level 2 qualification;
- 95% of service advisers to be accredited to the matrix standard;
- 85% of service users.
In the South West, a total of 365,648 information sessions were delivered in 2004-05. This represents a 30% year-on-year increase. However, the region saw a reduction in the number of advice sessions provided from 44,313 in 2003-04 to 39,267 (-11.3%). There was also growth in the number of enhanced service activities provided from 2,098 in 2003-04 to 2,404 in 2004-05.
Figure 19: Information, Advice and Guidance, South West, 2003-2005 (click image to open in new window)
Source: LSC IAG MI system, 2006
4.14.5 Digital Technology and skills and learning
(74) Coherent Information, Advice and Guidance Services for Adults. LSC, February 2005 p1
