Full Time and Part Time Adult Skills Learners – Destinations (2022-23 Year-End)

All levels

Level 1

Level 2

Level 3

Destination of unemployed adults

The destination data included in this report relates to leavers in academic year 2021/22. The college employs a permanent Destinations Officer to enable us to more proactively pursue learners who have left us in order to improve the tracking of our outcomes.

The destinations of adult learners studying level 3 programmes demonstrate 87.9% positive destinations. At level 2 this drops slightly to 84.7% and at entry and level 1 sits at 80.%.

Our SWAP provision has been particularly strong at moving significant numbers of unemployed learners into sustainable jobs – including 51 learners moving into Retail and Hospitality, 36 moving into Logistics and 22 moving into security jobs in the region. As a result, we continue to reduce the number of adults who are unemployed when they join us and remain unemployed when they leave us.

Impact on Regional Skills and the Regional Economy

Breakdown of Learner Type

Our adult education provision can be broadly categorised into three strands:

• Strand 1: Young Adults Completing Full Time Programmes. This provision is for a small group of learners usually aged between 19 and 21 years old who complete their full-time technical education programme alongside full time learners aged 16-18 years.
• Strand 2: Professional and Technical Updating Programmes for Adults. These programmes will help adults develop skills for progression in their careers or for entry into higher education.
• Strand 3: Essential Skills Programmes for Adults. These are programmes aimed at developing essential skills for adults to support them progressing in work and life.

Adult learners by strand

The chart shows how our adult learners are split between these three strands. The table demonstrates a three-year trend in increasing the numbers of adult studying technical and professional programmes from 13% in 19/20, 45% in 21/22 and 46% in 2022/23 demonstrating our continued work to meet local and regional skills needs of adults in the West Midlands Combined Authority.

Having an Impact Locally

The chart below shows the proportion of our adult learners that reside in the Dudley Local Authority, in the neighbouring authorities (Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Sandwell & Walsall) and outside of the region. More than half of our adult learners live in the Dudley borough (57%.) 98% of our adults are from Dudley or the neighbouring borough demonstrating the impact we are having locally.

Adult learners based within region

STEM in the curriculum – trend analysis

The local economy relies on a workforce with high level skills and skills in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).

The chart above shows the percentage of qualifications completed by adult learners that were in STEM related subjects. In 2022/23, 49% of our adults followed STEM programmes of study, an increase of 13% drop compared to the previous year.