Engagement and Consultation

After GMCA and the Mayor announced the proposals for a technical education city region, we embarked on a process of engagement and consultation to vet them against a wide network of stakeholders. This included business in a range of sectors across Greater Manchester, the education sector locally and nationally, as well as central Government.

Over the summer of 2023, we ran two significant engagement and consultation exercises. The first ran on GM Consult and targeted key stakeholders across the city region. The second was targeted at parents in Greater Manchester with at least one child of school age

Our consultation with wider stakeholders

Our first consultation ran from the 19^th May to the 7^th June 2023. We’ve now analysed the responses and produced the following feedback document.

Headlines

The consultation’s richness of the feedback from a wide range of organisations has helped to give a real flavour for the themes and discussion points within the proposals. Out of the 92 responses on the online survey, there were 50 organisations represented and over 250 detailed qualitative responses.

Graph showing the sentiment of respondents to our consultation. 46 respondents were positive, 10 were neutral and 9 were negative.

Over 60% of respondents ‘strongly agreed’ with the ambitions and 27% ‘agreed’. Respondents reacted well to the ambitions and their suggestions of where they could go further were encouraging and appreciative of the energy already put in.

Graph showing the responses to the question "How strongly do you agree or disagree with our ambitions for integrating technical education, skills and work?" 62% of respondents strongly agree, 27% agreed, 3% neither agreed nor disagreed, 5% disagreed, 0% strongly disagreed, and 1% didn't answer.

Read the full feedback document below.

Technical Education City Region Engagement Feedback Report (PDF, 0.5 MB)

The People's Poll - Our consultation with parents

Between the 20^th July and 1^st August 2023, GMCA ran a survey of parents in Greater Manchester. The responses have now been analysed to produce the documents below.

Headlines

There is a sense amongst respondents that current provision leans towards more emphasis on academic subjects when advising children in year 9 about their future. Respondents support a more equal approach – making technical education as valued as academic education.
There is more awareness of A-levels and apprenticeships, than other qualifications or routes for young people. Even those that are familiar with more technical courses, many wouldn’t know how to access them (some of the stats for this are startlingly low – ie: only 24% know what a T level is, and of that 24% only 47% would know what steps are required for a YP to take this route)
Awareness of the Mbacc is higher in Manchester than other Districts (but still relatively low). Overall the support is higher – especially from those parents who have children either at or approaching the age where they start to make educational decisions.

Read the full documents below.

Headline analysis in presentation form - People's Poll Headline Analysis Presentation (PowerPoint, 0.5MB)

Full analysis document - People's Poll Analysis Document (Word, 0.1MB)