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Learning and Skills Council

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Overview

The Learning and Skills Council (LSC), working together with employers, colleges, and our other partners and stakeholders, exists to improve the skills of England’s young people and adults, irrespective of their gender. We want our country to have a workforce of world-class standard – this will not only ensure our economic prosperity, but it will also have a positive impact on social deprivation and inequality.

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Motivation

The LSC recognises that the changing demographics of our population will present challenges in making education and training accessible to men and women with family or caring responsbilities. Everyone should have the opportunity to acquire the qualifications that will help them to participate fully in the world of work and in society, with fewer employers having skills gaps in the workforce because either men or women have historically been unable to access the development they needed to progress.

The LSC are committed to tackling disadvantage and under-achievement and will use funding policies to target support at those men and women who are most in need of learning.

As an employer the LSC aims to lead by example in the way in which all employees, irrespective of gender and working pattern, are given the opportunity to realise their full potential. The LSC seeks to be an employer of choice where all men and women have an equal chance to develop, progress and succeed and where everyone enjoys equal treatment and pay.     

 The current distribution of LSC employees by gender is:

  • 61.6% of our overall workforce (1950 out of 3163) is female
  • 79.4% of staff in our lowest staff grade (369 out of 465) are female
  • 54% of employees in our senior staff grades (208 out of 385) are male
  • 15.72% of our female employees and 0.98% of our male employees work on a part-time basis, compared to 43.2% and 10.5% respectively on a national basis.     

Success in action

In response to the organisational reshaping of the LSC in 2006 the LSC introduced in March 2006, ‘Springboard', a women's development programme aimed at non-managers in the lower bands of the organisation.  The development programme was delivered; by Springboard Consultancy.  The programme was delivered over four one-day workshops over  a two-month period in conjunction with the Springboard workbook which individuals were given to work through in their own time.

The LSC offered 10 Springboard programmes, one in every LSC region and National Office. Each programme had places for up to 32 people.

The ‘Springboard’ women’s development programme, were designed for people in non-management grades to:-

  • Realistically assess their current situation
  • Decide on the next steps for their personal work development
  • Equip them with the positive attitude and skills to take these steps
  • Accept responsibility for their own development

The programme covered personal as well as work issues in order to fully develop the whole person.  The programme ensured the development was integrated and because so many personal issues have a strong impact on people’s work performance it was imperative that personal issues were fully incorporated into the programme.

Feedback from colleagues who attended the ‘Springboard’ workshop has been excellent. Some of the things they have said are:

            “I’ve got more direction and focus on what I want to do.”

            “I’m much more optimistic about the future.”

            “This has given me the energy and motivation to move forward.”

            “Highlighted possible options to further develop skills.”

            “Excellent networking.”

'The programme has been a success and has met and surpassed the workforce goal of increasing the number of women in senior and middle management roles within the organisation.  The number of women in middle management positions has increased over the past year.’

Impact

The impact of the ‘Springboard’ programme has been extremely positive. The distribution of middle management staff has altered with more women in middle management roles post ‘Springboard’.

Following on from this success the LSC has set a new workforce diversity goal to Increase the proportion of women in senior roles (Band 3 and above) to 51% by 2010. (Baseline Sept 2002 – 43.8%).