Leaders at Tees Valley Combined Authority have said tomorrow’s workers need to be trained now, starting in schools and colleges, for the “jobs for your lifetime” which are on their way.
The authority’s overview and scrutiny committee will start a review of education, employment and skills, focusing on how it will support a future “pipeline of talent”. However it is waiting on figures for how many jobs had actually been created to meet a predicted 10,000 vacancies per year.
Business solutions manager and skills lead Jacqui Banks said, “It’s absolutely recognised that there’s an awful lot of work we need to do and we’re starting to do in really articulating and getting the message out to everybody that this is real now, that these jobs are going to be created, that this is going to happen in Tees Valley, and these are potentially jobs for your lifetime.
“And we need to make sure that they are accessing the right subjects in school at Year 9 to move into those at post-16,” she told the committee’s latest meeting on Wednesday 16 October.
She was responding to a question from Councillor Andy Keir, who asked if universities, schools and colleges had made any changes towards the new jobs in their curriculums. He said, “If it’s 2027 to 2030 and that creeps up quick.”
Ms Banks said: “We have a dedicated careers team who work very closely with the 73 schools and colleges across the Tees Valley to support them to improve the quality of careers education in schools. They’re working with schools and businesses to come together for the benefit of our young people.”
She said they were recruiting “enterprise advisors” and “career business champions” to work in secondary schools and tell young people about business, employers’ needs and interview preparation. She added: “Our primary schools are very much involved in our careers activities as well.”
She added they had funding for “equipping those (aged) 19+ residents with the essential skills they need for work”, courses for over-24s, and boot camps and bespoke programmes to tackle skills gaps and shortages. She said they worked with businesses and employers to understand and meet their workforce needs.
The TVCA’s employment and skills strategy predicted 10,000 job openings per year from 2022 to 2027 on Teesside, and another 41,000 expected by 2030 because of Teesside Freeport. These were expected to come from offshore wind, trade, accommodation, transport, life sciences, advanced manufacturing, net zero and public and private sector services, to a projected total of 332,500 jobs on Teesside by 2030.
Ms Banks could not confirm the number of jobs but said there would be up-to-date figures on employment statistics through an economic assessment.
