Tees Valley Education representatives Call on Government to Remove Employment Barriers

The High Tide Foundation joined a team of experts in career education across Tees Valley to attend the Labour party conference to prompt the Government to take more action with supporting students in Teesside. High Tide general manager, Lauren Bywater, sat alongside co-founder and the region’s largest private employer, PD Ports at their conference fringe event which also gained the support of Labour’s MP for Redcar, Anna Turley.

The PD Ports hosted event allowed for some interesting discussions that highlighted the significant barriers to employment. The individuals around the table shared their knowledge of the challenges the young people they work with face on a daily basis, and how these challenges have a substantial impact on their chances of employment. The team felt strongly that more needs to be done in order to increase employment opportunities for young people in Tees Valley, which ranks as one of the most deprived in the UK.  

Several ideas emerged about how these barriers can be overcome, including:

• Provide funding for businesses to increase the number of entry-level jobs for young people, learning from successful models in Germany and Norway.
• Remove disincentives to work by excluding 16- to 19-year-olds’ income from calculating households’ entitlement to Universal Credit and other benefits.
• Improve accessibility to employment and training by providing 16- to 19-year-olds from low-income households with free travel.
• Focus on promoting careers and employment in primary schools as well as later stages of education.
• Deliver initiatives to boost the visibility of job opportunities in small and medium sized companies.

Lauren took the opportunity to highlight the importance of work experience with the support of Jacqui Hutchinson – Education, Employment and Skills Lead and Primary Careers Coordinator for RCVDA, who shared a powerful fact with the group ‘ A young person that participates in one work experience opportunity is 75% less likely to be long term unemployed’. 

Speaking after the event, High Tide patron and PD Ports Executive Chairman, Jerry Hopkinson, said, “PD Ports is committed to introducing 3,000 young people to careers in maritime by 2030. As the UK’s leading ports operator for supporting young people, our event at the Labour party conference builds on that commitment. We really hope that the event will provide a strong foundation for making a positive difference to the communities we are part of.”

Lauren raised concerns around the lack of funding available to providers of career education opportunities. High Tide prides itself on creating and delivering life-changing programmes to provide secondary school students with the insight into job roles and sectors, allowing them to make better decisions around their future pathways to employment. 

Labour’s MP for Redcar Anna Turley showed great support and enthusiasm for the region’s employers and career education providers and had this to say “I will be writing to my colleagues in Government to share the ideas that were raised and to invite them to visit our region to see how we can turn those ideas into action.  The Tees Valley could serve as the ideal testbed for some ideas, especially those which have wider implications for other areas of Government policy.”