Evaluation of Partnerships for People and Place - Birmingham Project
This evaluative assessment has been undertaken by City-REDI and the School of Education based at the University of Birmingham. It aims to capture learning and early impacts of the activities supported by Partnerships for People and Place (PfPP) funding in East Birmingham to improve young people’s access to relevant and meaningful careers support.
Read the report
This report supplements the national evaluation of the PfPP programme completed by IPOS-Mori commissioned by the former Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (now the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government). PfPP supports place-based partnerships to 1. trial new ways of working across local and central government and deliver innovative, locally led solutions to key challenges that communities face and 2. look at whether improved government structures, more flexible funding models and greater collaboration across the public sector could be effective in addressing specific issues in local areas.
The funding of the Birmingham PfPP project enabled testing of new approaches to careers support more general awareness of employment opportunities for young people in East Birmingham. It aimed to raise awareness of a range of career pathways – including vocational career pathways – and reduce the risk of young people becoming NEET. Also funded was a complementary workstream investigating data sources available locally in Birmingham City Council and nationally (including from central government departments – such as the Department for Education [DfE], the Department for Work and Pensions and DHLGC) that have the potential to provide further information on, and relevant to, the experiences of young people transitioning from school into employment and, or further and higher education. PfPP funded a secondee from City-REDI to work with Birmingham City Council and the newly formed Birmingham City Observatory.
This report provides an initial assessment of:
- schools’, stakeholder organisations’, professionals’, and young people’s experiences of PfPP approaches in East Birmingham; and
- the impact of these approaches on: (a)organisations and professional practices and (b) young people’s perceptions of themselves, the options available to them, and initial indications of outcomes.
It provides information on:
- involvement of local voices in the design of the project and the need to be agile in delivering different aspects of the project
- why a new approach based around young people’s concerns to careers support was needed and how it was delivered including innovative Be Bold, Be the Future Reverse Mentoring Event where employers could find out what young people look for in a job and vice versa.
- challenges experienced by schools and their students included parental expectation around suitable careers who had preference for their children entering the professions
- the partnership creating collaborative advantage in terms of partners achieving more together against a common goal including proof of concept for the partnership approach developed to support careers education for young people in East Birmingham
The report sets seven key lessons from the perspective of partners involved and eight recommendations.
WMREDI
The Evaluation Lab
April 2022 - September 2023
The project was funded by Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Partnerships for People and Place (PfPP) programme. The University of Birmingham contribution being the evaluation partner for strand A and provided support for strand B through seconding a member of City-REDI team to newly established observatory established by Birmingham City Council.
The project was in response to:
- decline in capacity and resources of schools to deliver careers information ,advice and guidance (CIAG) associated with positive young people’s employment outcomes and intrinsic sense of well-being.
- young people lacking confidence due to limited understanding of workplace from lack of meaningful placements and opportunities to meet employers.
- need to tailor and improve accessibility and relevance of provision for differently advantaged communities of young people not aware of a wider range of career pathways available to them and potentially opting for pathways they may be not suited increasing their risk of being NEET.
- potential employers desire to understand their future workforce thereby enabling them to adapt their approaches to recruitment and be more attractive as employers.
It was necessary to deploy an agile approach to the evaluative assessment of the PfPP Birmingham Project. The evaluation team has adopted a developmental evaluation approach which includes capturing ‘local experience’ and provides an ‘impacts review’ of interventions funded to help improve young people’s access to relevant and meaningful CIAG in East Birmingham.
The objectives were to provide an assessment of:
1) Schools’, stakeholder organisations’, professionals’ and young people’s experiences of PfPP approaches in East Birmingham; and
2) The impact of these approaches on:
- organisations and professional practices and
- young people’s perceptions of themselves, the options available to them, and initial indications of outcomes.
3) Proof of concept of local partnership model in delivering CIAG
4) Available data sources and how they might be used to inform and monitor longer term impacts of interventions with young people.
City-REDI
School of Education, University of Birmingham
The team were supported by the project partners Birmingham City Council, Pioneer Group, GBSLEP and participating schools.
WMREDI is funded by Research England and the WMREDI partnership
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