Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill
12:00 pm
Kieran Gordon: I think that it will happen where local authorities are encouraged to work actively in a collegiate way with the local authorities covering a travel-to-work or travel-to-learn area and where providers within a local authority patch are not protected out of loyalty or whatever. It is very important that we understand that when we talk about commissioning, we are not just talking about procurement. Very often, people actually mean procurement. Commissioning must start with the learners’ needs. It must be based on a robust assessment of learner need, which is informed by what young people themselves and advocates, such as guidance workers, say. Understand that, look at the trend analysis, and look at the performance of providers in situ and of those that could be brought in, because good commissioning, at times, involves decommissioning provision. It is a big task for local authorities to undertake and they cannot do it in isolation.