Business Secretary Vince Cable has named three local enterprise partnerships to pilot a sweetener scheme aimed at improving relationships between colleges and local enterprise partnerships.

Partnerships in the North East, Stoke and Staffordshire, and also the West of England have been chosen for the Skills Funding Agency-backed trial to incentivise co-operation.

“I can announce an initiative that will design clear incentives for skills providers and partnerships to forge active partnerships, so people acquire the skills required to get local jobs,” said Dr Cable in a speech at the annual Local Government Association conference in Manchester yesterday.

“We have already set out the important role that partnerships must play in setting strategic plans for skills which reflect local priorities.

“Now, in the pilots we’re about to run, I will ask the agency to put in place powerful incentives to encourage partnerships to work with FE colleges to deliver the courses that the local labour market demands.”

The move follows a report from the Association of Colleges in September called Local Enterprise Partnerships and Colleges that revealed “patchy” engagement between the two.

Julian Gravatt, association assistant chief executive, said at the time: “Successful partnerships understand the importance of skills and the role of colleges but, disappointingly, the majority still have work to do to tap into this fantastic resource.”

However, Dr Cable said the incentive scheme showed central government was “acting”.

And the North East partnership had been “particularly supportive” of the scheme, he said.

“It has the potential to give partnerhips real teeth,” added Dr Cable.

“It’s a solid example of central government listening to what localities are saying and then acting on innovative ideas.”

Andrew Hodgson, North East partnership board member, welcomed the pilot.

“We have put the focus firmly on skills from the outset, and this model will be hugely important in helping to develop skills at every level, essential to the development of individual people, as well as economic performance,” he said.

“Effective skills and training programmes tailored to fit our area’s key sectors, for all ages of workers, answer the immediate needs of employers as well as the future demands of our local economy.”

Stoke-on-Trent City Council leader Mohammed Pervez said: “For some time, councils, businesses, colleges and universities across the area have been pioneering work to match workforce skills with business needs both now and in the years ahead.

“Our perseverance and commitment to work together to address this problem has clearly paid off and we welcome this financial show of support to accelerate the work we are doing.”

No one from the West of England partnership was available for comment.

A government spokesperson told FE Week that timescales and further details of he scheme were “yet to be finalised”.

The move follows the creation of a single pot of cash, in response to Lord Heseltine’s review No Stone Unturned, to support investment and stimulate growth across local areas.

In last week’s Spending Review, £2bn a-year was pledged to partnerships through the new Single Local Growth Fund announced by Chancellor George Osborne.

As WorldSkills UK media partner, FE Week has been granted one-on-one time with some pretty heavyweight people in Leipzig 2013.

Among them have been WorldSkills International president Simon Bartley and chef-turned-author — and WorldSkills UK ambassador — Will Torrent, who at Japan WorldSkills 2007 became the first Team UK pastry chef to win a medallion of excellence.

Here are snippets of their interviews that will feature in our Leipzig WorldSkills supplement, due out very soon.

Simon Bartley (pictured below)

What lessons have been learned from the organisation of previous WorldSkills events?

WorldSkills learns lessons from every competition it’s involved in. The learning experience actually started back in 2005 when I think WorldSkills realised this competition was becoming such a large thing that it was an event and not a competition.

With 1,000 competitors, up to 8,000 people at the opening ceremony, delegations and ministers from nearly 100 countries, it can’t be run by the people who run the national organisation.

That was first worked out around 2005 for the following WorldSkills events which were run by people brought in with experience of running events.

That has advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that you have people who can pull it off.

The disadvantage is they don’t have WorldSkills embedded in them — no one in the German organising team, I think, comes from a skills background; they were the best for logistics, communications or whatever, and it was the same in London.

That means there’s a huge learning curve for a country as they seek to host an event.

Were any lessons learned from WorldSkills London 2011?

What I think Germany learned was that they needed to start earlier than London did.

From a technical point of view you need your shopmasters to have done a competition before they come here.

I think WorldSkills learned that and encouraged Germany to do that — or try to do more, earlier. That’s one lesson learned from London.

I think Germany and WorldSkills also learned from London that our conference programme outside the skills competitions didn’t work — there were too many small sessions.

Here, there’s seven or eight really quite big conferences which have attracted some pretty big players — we’ve had two commissioners, we’ve had a past Brazilian president we’ve had people from Unesco [United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation], Unido [United Nations Industrial Development Organisation], the ILO [International Labour Organisation] and World Bank.

What we’ve learned is that if you can have those come to a conference they then go and have a look at the competition and will go back as converts.

Will Torrent (pictured below)

What sector-specific knowledge did you develop through WorldSkills?

When I was competing in Japan, and they walked the pastry competition — they were absolutely superb — but the way they work, and this might sound weird, it’s almost like watching dance. It’s just so elegant.

I might have frantically moved from one place to another, but they would just glide. It’s about perception and that duck scenario of paddling like crazy below, but people only see the calm on top. I picked that up a lot from Japan and we try to build that into the training.

It’s something I hope to have been able to give our current confectioner/pastry chef competitor, Stephen Smith, as part of Yolande’s [Yolande Stanley, training manager and WorldSkills chief expert] training team — the psychological thing that you’re on show against the rest of the world. I don’t want to see a mate — and we are all mates — frantically rushing around with mess everywhere.

A mess is one thing inside, but on show you’re representing the UK and we want to see that you’re calm, collected and you know what you’re doing because that will set your tone among the judges. Plus it comes through in the final product. One thing Yolande used to say to me — because she trained me, too — and I’ve got to take out a certain word in this, was something like, work in a mess, dish is a mess.

Why might a provider want to get involved in WorldSkills?

It’s an obvious way of promoting yourself if your student gets through, but more than that it encourages deeper learning and not just skirting around the subject.

When I was training at University of West London, I learned all the basics, but for me as WorldSkills competitor I went deeper to learn more, because when I come to competition I knew I would need all the skills to back it up. It also promotes a perception of excellence because it is the highest level.

It should also encourage teachers and lecturers to further their skills. It upsets me when I see college lecturers, or university lecturers for that matter, who have been out of the trade for years and they don’t have any connection with the current trade and the trends in it.

I think if these lecturers are giving all their skills over to the next generation, then they’re not teaching the up-to-date and modern skills of that industry.

I’d love to see more lecturers and principals coming to WorldSkills and even at the Skills Show to go and see the new skills.

I don’t know all the skills, but I will constantly want to learn and I can give that onto someone else.

Another key thing it does is enforce the international value of vocational skills — you can go anywhere in the world and get a skilled job if you train properly.

A new ‘Tech-level’ qualification for vocational education was announced by the government today to sit alongside the A-level academic route.

They will run from next year and were described by Skills Minister Matthew Hancock as “unashamedly aspirational” — aimed at raising the status of vocational education in England.

Local employers will be asked to support Tech-levels either through work experience or by helping to design courses.

They will count towards the TechBacc, which measures the achievements of students taking vocational courses.

“With Tech-levels we will support the best technical qualifications, endorsed by employers, to help young people into the occupation of their choice,” he said.

“Tech-levels will recognise rigorous and responsive technical education. High-quality rigorous vocational education is essential to future prosperity, and the life chances of millions.”

He added: “These reforms are unashamedly aspirational and will ensure Tech-levels help people into apprenticeships and jobs.”

Meanwhile, the government announced the launch of “applied general qualifications” — vocational qualifications not directly linked to an occupation, but providing broader study of a vocational area which will need the backing of three universities.

The Association of Colleges said its research supported endorsement of qualifications by businesses and universities.

Gill Clipson, deputy chief executive of the association, said: “We support this call for endorsement, which will inevitably lead to changes in the way the system works.

“Exam boards will need to make sure that employer involvement in qualification development includes representation from national employers as well as from those representing small and medium-sized enterprises — without making exams more expensive for colleges and their students.”

The two new schemes are part of the government’s response to its consultation on the vocational qualifications which will continue to count in performance tables for colleges and school sixth forms.

Only those level three, or advanced, qualifications which have the support of businesses or universities will be included in new-look 16 to 19 performance tables from 2016, for young people taking courses from September next year.

The changes will mean that at least 80 per cent of the 5,000 current vocational qualifications will be scrapped from league tables, according to the government.

However, Shadow Junior Education Minister Tristram Hunt said the government was simply “playing catch-up” after “downgrading” the vocational pathway.

“After three years of the government downgrading vocational education, there are almost a million young people unemployed — it’s no surprise that David Cameron and Michael Gove are now desperately playing catch-up while Labour sets the agenda on skills,” he said.

“It is right that pupils have a choice of taking new vocational courses, but Mr Gove needs to reassure parents that it will be a gold standard to sit alongside A-levels and not an afterthought.”

The announcement follows Professor Alison Wolf’s report into vocational education which said that, “at least 350,000 young people in a given 16 to 19 cohort are poorly served by current arrangements. Their programmes and experiences fail to promote progression into either stable, paid employment or higher level education and training in a consistent or an effective way.”