Business InsightBusiness

Thursday November 13 2014

Ready to climb

A Northern view for Export Week

Pages 2-4

Leading school’sfail-safe system

Page 10

Bridging the skills gap: page 8

In association with

Samantha Webb, overhead line apprentice

Business Insight

Welcome

Inside Filling the skills gapThe challenge for UKCESPage 8

Independent education focusBacking a fail-safe systemPage 10

The Times Business Insight reaches more senior business people in the North of England than any other quality newspaper. Indeed, with 184,000 readers* and reaching almost 20 per cent of the all c-suite executives**, there is no better place to be seen.*Source NRS July 2011 - June 2012 **Source BBS 2011

To advertise in the next North of England edition of Business Insight:Freephone 0800 027 0403or contact: stuart@timesnorth.co.uk

Go-it-alone confi denceWelcome to an issue where we see businesses in the North continuing to fl ex their economic muscles as they lay the groundwork for a time when promises of devolution may turn into reality for the entire region – not just for Greater Manchester – and allow us all to escape the whims of Whitehall.

Starting with The Times Forum to mark Export Week, we see how the Liverpool and Sefton Chambers of Commerce are helping to steer a range of Merseyside businesses towards taking full advantage of the overseas opportunities that await them. This includes the colourful story of one Liverpudlian entrepreneur who is making a tidy living from selling Christmas decorations to Muslim Dubai.

Then we switch to what the Government is doing, through the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, to fi ll the national skills gap which is threatening to derail economic recovery not only here in the North but throughout the entire UK.

As part of our skills coverage, we drill down to look at what is happening in the key area of energy – where a successful pilot scheme in the North West could provide not only the answer to the skills shortage but also help to ease long-term youth unemployment by offering some jobs for life.

In turn, nuclear energy comes under the microscope as the sector – including its heartland in Cumbria – rushes to ramp up its recruitment programme in order to meet the urgent staffi ng needs of the next generation of super-plants that have been commissioned, while not forgetting those that are being decommissioned.

Finally, we meet the head of a leading independent school who believes that failure should be part of the process of preparing her pupils to take their place in the world of work.

ForumForum on export growth

Liverpool’s talkingheads keep up thefestival momentum, writes Mike Cowley

Ever heard the story of the Liv-erpool entrepreneur who sold Christmas decorations to fi ve-star hotels in the Muslim Emir-ates? It may smack of the tale

of persuading Eskimos to eat ice cream (which could well be true anyway), but this one is defi nitely genuine, as a Merseyside-based business – the aptly named Christmas Decorators – has been asked to fi t out the city of Dubai itself by the government there for the next festive season.

This is just one of many examples of local export success that emerged when Liverpool and Sefton Chambers of Com-merce hosted a Forum from The Times in the run-up to UK Export Week. A cross-section of key representatives of businesses which have benefi ted from the chambers’ pace-setting European Regional Development Fund-sponsored New Markets and Export Growth Pro-gramme were in attendance at the high-profi le event.

Here, then, was a platform to show that Liverpool has not lost any momen-tum since staging the International Fes-tival for Business earlier in the year. It also arguably helped to turn the export media spotlight away from neighbour-ing Greater Manchester – which seems to hog the headlines these days – even though there is a new maturity in the relationship between the two great cities and they are keen to express unanimity.

After all, together they make up the bulk of the third-largest economic region in the UK, after London and the South East, with total annual exports of around £27 billion (£27.664bn, to be precise), and they are happy to collaborate for the benefi t of the region – and for the North of England as a whole.

The Forum discussion made abun-dantly clear the success of the chambers’ New Markets and Export Growth Pro-gramme, which has already registered 88 local companies and is looking to push up this fi gure to over 100.

There was an awareness that the more the chambers can publicise their ex-port successes, the more companies will turn to them to seek their help. Using a combination of overseas trade missions (there is currently a party of eight in Chi-na, with another group of six headed for the United Arab Emirates), along with

the latest video conferencing technol-ogy to link up with a network of more than 40 associate chambers abroad, the programme team has been breaking new ground.

The Middle East is proving particu-larly fertile ground for Merseyside ex-porters, as shown by the documentation that has been produced, while Turkey – where the Istanbul Chamber of Com-merce has more than 400,000 members – is coming up fast on the rails.

The local chamber is increasingly well-versed in getting Merseyside’s SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises), which are still licking their wounds from the ravages of recession, to accept the mantra that by exporting they are 10 per cent to 12 per cent more likely to survive than if they don’t.

Liverpool and Sefton also hold an ace card over other chambers in the country, one which they have been playing to the full: they are able to offer up to 35 per cent of travel and accommodation costs when companies search for new business opportunities overseas.

Among those business people who have benefi ted from the programme – and who were keen to endorse it at the Forum – was Paul Lally, managing direc-tor of the Christmas Decorators, whose story is not only attention-grabbing but also inspirational in its own right.

Having gone to Dubai with his wife for a post-festive break, he jokingly asked the staff at the hotel where they were staying who did their Christmas decora-tions. “No one – do you want to do it?” was both the answer and the question.

Naturally, Mr Lally recognised the scale of the opportunity – Dubai is the destination for around 800,000 Euro-pean tourists during the festive season – but he was understandably concerned about the issues of supplying to and working in the Middle East.

Having been successful in the UK in winning contracts for decorating hotels and city centres (and even the homes of celebrity footballers), and having already dipped a toe in the export market with a few excursions into Europe, he saw Dubai as being a potential minefi eld of legislation.

So he turned to the team headed by Andy Snell, director of international trade at the Liverpool and Sefton cham-bers and a man experienced in helping companies deal with unusual market situations abroad. (A recent one involved a fi rm looking to sell mosquito repellent in Bogota, Colombia.)

Effectively holding his hand every step of the way, the chambers – with help from

UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) advisor Andy Watmough – have ensured Mr Lal-ly turned what started out as a joke into reality, and established his company in a market with “amazing potential”. The Christmas Decorators have become the proud installers of the largest Christmas tree in the Middle East, in Bethlehem’s Manger Square.

It is of course the colourful stories such as these that are the attention-grabbers, but the chambers have been no less suc-cessful in helping a range of businesses operating in more conventional sectors across Merseyside. To prove this, the Fo-rum heard from a cross-section of local companies which have both registered for and benefi ted from the programme. (See panel at foot of page 3.)

The Forum was not just a showcase for successful local companies, however. It also provided a platform to take an in-depth look at the subject of exporting – not only in Merseyside but across the entire North. It was chaired by Alasdair Nimmo, of The Times Business Insight, who fi rst posed the question of just how important exporting is to the economy.

Andy Snell told the panel that its po-tential impact was such that the Liver-pool and Sefton chambers are currently working with all the chambers across the North West to formulate a specifi c ex-port plan for the next fi ve years. “Here in Liverpool,” he said, “we have been look-ing at the sectors in which we are typi-cally strong as a port economy, such as advanced engineering, chemicals.

“Also, the new emerging sectors of the last ten years – the creative, digital and business services – all of these contrib-ute to our export potential. People often make the mistake of thinking in terms of cargo on ships as a limit of our export range, but advice is a massive export, so the offering is a lot broader than most people realise.”

Also on the Forum panel was Steve Cowles, a regional advisor for UK Ex-port Finance, which provides advice for companies throughout the UK (see page 4). He pointed out that the North has been strong historically in terms of in-dustry, and remains so to this day – and this makes it a signifi cant player in terms of exports.

“In many ways, we punch above our weight,” Mr Cowles said, “but help is still needed from Government – with export credit agencies like ourselves being one of the ways to make lives easier for ex-porters.”

Nigel Cooper, the area manager for Barclays Bank – the Liverpool and Sefton chambers’ most active partner in terms

How a smallerworld means big business

Business Insight

It looked likea minefield at first... but now I’min a market with endlesspotential

The benefits of registering on the European Regional Development Fund New Markets programme were further endorsed by rep-

resentatives of a trio of Merseyside companies who attended The Times Business Insight Forum.�� The Mast Group For more than 50 years, Mast has been a supplier of clinical diagnostic products for detection of infectious diseases. Its current focus is on pharmaceuticals and diagnostics for new antibiotics, with exports being made to over

60 countries. Mast also has sub-sidiaries in Germany and France. “The encouragement and sup-port we get from the programme is very important to us,” said Sandy Daun, sales director at Mast Group. “As there is different legislation in our sector in every market, we need to be aware of what all the requirements are and meet them. The chamber is invaluable in helping us do this.” �� United Automation United Automation Ltd is a manufacturer of industrial power control products, and – like

the Mast Group – has been in business for half a century. It currently exports to 88 different countries, and in the last 15 years has seen export activities become 70 per cent of its business. Using the British brand has proved very important to the success of the company. “Finding a good distributor has also been key, in that it helps you build your reputation in the international marketplace,” said Graeme McLaren, the United Automation sales manager. “We have been exporting for a long

time, but we can and still do learn from our involvement with the chamber programme.”�� Caffe Cream Manufacturer of traditional artisan gourmet ice cream, the award-winning Caffe Cream company is a relative newcomer to exporting. Its team went to Italy to learn techniques, but have adapted their end-product to meet UK tastes in terms of flavours. Now the company is looking to export to countries as far afield as South-East Asia, where there will be a need to

once again adapt and produce dairy-free products to meet local requirements. The company’s line of attack is to target the ex-pat communities in each new terri-tory, then to expand out into the mainstream market. “It is early days for us, but being on the programme – the actual workshops and support – has been incredibly useful,” said Caffe Cream founder and director Justin Dooley. “You can learn not only best practice, but also things like how to conduct yourself in different markets.”

of exports, having helped to set up the city’s Export Hub last year – saw entre-preneurship as being key to the region’s future both at home and abroad.

He revealed that Barclays had recently commissioned a survey into the hotspots for entrepreneurs in the UK – with Lon-don and the South East almost inevitably coming out on top, but with “the corridor running from Liverpool through Man-chester to York” emerging a close third.

“With 28 per cent of all start-ups now exporting within the first year thanks mainly to the internet,” Mr Cooper said, “this bodes well for the region.”

The maritime sector is also destined to play a significant role in exports in the North West, according to John Hulmes of Hill Dickinson. He was attending the Forum wearing two hats – one as a part-ner for the leading law firm offering ad-vice to exporters, the other as part-time chairman of Mersey Marine Ltd.

“There are 2,700 businesses in this region in the maritime sector,” he said,

“and this is a sector that is more inter-national than most. Maritime has not only fared better than most during the recession, but now we are seeing big in-vestment coming through from larger companies – which is driving down to smaller companies who are seeing a lot of benefit.”

Graham Gibson, representing one of the major companies present – Hale-wood International – was in an unusual position in that he found himself in a declining market in the UK, so exports were increasingly being seen as a lifeline. The reason for this is that Halewood op-erates in the alcoholic drinks sector – its better-known brands include Crabbie’s Alcoholic Ginger Beer, Lambrini and Red Square Vodka – and consumption is declining in the UK due to a number of factors including increased awareness of lifestyle health issues and pressure from the Government.

“We have had to look increasingly overseas for sales,” Mr Gibson said, “and

this has been achieved thanks to the help that exists out there from UKTI and the chambers. We are active exporters, but we still need the advice that is out there.”

The debate then switched to what could be done to encourage more com-panies to export, the key to this being to ensure it is not seen as “a daunting pro-cess”, given that help is available not just from local chambers but from the world-wide network of chamber representa-tives as well.

Mr Snell insisted that there was no better way to get people involved in ex-porting than to put another exporter in front of them. “When they hear stories such as ‘We weren’t exporting last year, now we are into Malaysia, Indonesia, Columbia’ – that’s when they get inter-ested,” he said.

“We see our members as our testimo-nials – and, thanks to global communica-tions, it is so much easier now. We have spoken to most markets in the world via video conferencing. You don’t have to get

The Euro-fund programme with added stimulation

on a plane straightaway any more. That’s how we get people into exporting, and when they are ready to go to the market we can help them with that, too.”

Then, of course, there is good old hand-holding, the research into what products will sell in what markets, the introductions to reliable people on the ground, and the help with the inevitable legislative paperwork and logistics. All of this in turn becomes best practice, which provides the safeguards for exporters at all levels.

“There is a lot of best practice which will save you years and years of pain if you just know who to go and speak to,” Mr Gibson said.

Paul Lally is one who readily admits he would never have achieved his Dubai dream without the chambers working with him every step of the way. “Dubai being a Muslim country, it was daunting to me that they would think of Christ-mas,” he recalled. “It looked like a mine-field at first, but the chamber people were there for me to ensure I got through it all safely and as easily as possible.

“They gave me the confidence I need-ed to do it, and are still with me today. Now I am in a market with endless po-tential, but I couldn’t have done it with-out the chamber.”

Who’s who on the Forum panel: From left – Graham Gibson, Nigel Cooper, Graeme McLaren, Steve Cowles, Sarah Wallis, Andy Snell, Alasdair Nimmo (The Times), Justin Dooley and Paul Lally T

he New Markets and Export Growth Programme from the Liverpool and Sefton Chambers of Commerce

is unique, in that it offers up to 35 per cent of travel and accommoda-tion costs for companies searching for new business opportunities overseas.

The money can be used for independent overseas trips or for joining a chamber trade mission. The next scheduled one of these is to the United Arab Emirates in December, while Turkey, South America and South-East Asia are on the itinerary for 2015.

It can also be used towards any other costs that allow businesses to grow internationally, such as websites, e-commerce and even promotional material. �� This funding is open to any small and medium-sized enter-prise based in Merseyside. To find out more, call 0151-227 1234, or email export@liverpoolcham-ber.org.uk

Business Insight

for us. I advise exporters to engage UKEF as soon as possible. They have a real sense of purpose.”

Over in the west. Hughes Safety Showers won a £1m contract to provide BP’s Rotterdam liquid natural gas plant with 44 customised showers. This was

a big contract – but the company was required to give its client performance bonds and an advance payment bond worth a total of £140,000.

At any one time, Hughes Safety Showers has around 20 bonds in place, worth up to a total of £1m, but an ad-ditional £140,000 in cash deposits for the BP contract would have placed a significant strain on cashflow.

“In our industry, bonds are a standard requirement,” says Stephen Dootson, the Hughes Safety Showers financial director. “Our bank was uncomfortable with the level of exposure these bonds entailed, and asked us for 100 per cent cash cover.

“We can only supply so many bonds without running out of security, leav-ing us unable to look for more work until earlier bonds are returned, so we approached UKEF for help.”

UKEF agreed, under its Bond Sup-port Scheme, to cover 50 per cent of the bank’s liability for the BP bonds, as well as to underwrite all of the com-pany’s existing export bonds. This help raised the Hughes Safety Showers bond limit from £250,000 to £500,000.

Increasing the export flow with UKEF’s support will allow Hughes Safety Showers to bid for contracts worth up to a total of £5m. The com-pany – which had a turnover of £15.5m in 2013 and expects this to rise to £16m in 2014 – was founded in 1950 and sup-plies the oil and gas industry, hospitals and laboratories with emergency show-ers and eyebaths for use after chemical spillages.

Around 65 per cent of the 110-strong company’s work is overseas, and the turnover in the year it received help to win the BP contract was £14m.

“Since getting the help from UKEF, we’ve won six more contracts, in South Korea and the Middle East, worth over £1m in total,” Mr Dootson says. “We’re looking to expand in North America and the Far East. Now this bond facil-ity is in place we can aim for more jobs, or bigger jobs, confident that we can af-ford to take them on.

“I don’t think we’d have achieved this growth without UKEF’s help.”

Finance

UK export finance initiative helps firmsfund a way abroad, writes Mike Cowley

One of the major hurdles fac-ing UK exporters is, some-what surprisingly, success. With every contract won comes the problem, for

many companies, of how to finance it – and the bigger the deal means the big-ger the financial headache.

It is estimated that between 2,000 and 3,000 small businesses and 500 medium-sized and large businesses in the UK could need specific support over the next three years – where “medium-sized” is defined as having turnover of between £25 million and £250m.

Commercial banks and insurers usually provide the support exporters need, but changes to regulations, eco-nomic downturns and reduced capital mean they are not always able to sup-port exporters in certain markets or regions – thus reducing access to trade finance. Increasingly, firms throughout the North of England are finding the answer in a Government provision that does what it says on the tin: the UK Ex-port Finance (UKEF) department.

The role of UKEF is to complement the private sector by sharing the risk and increasing the capacity to help export-ers. The department supports exporters by providing products that range from its Export Working Capital Scheme – which gives UK exporters access to the extra working capital they need to deliver a sizeable export contract – to an Export Insurance Policy that pro-tects exporters against non-payment and provides guarantees that allow an exporter’s bank to issue the bond which an overseas buyer will usually require in order to guarantee delivery.

Two firms – one based in Cramling-ton in the North East, the other in Bredbury, Greater Manchester – are among companies from the North which have successfully called on the UKEF department to help them secure major overseas contracts which might well otherwise have been lost.

Techflow Marine of Cramlington used the Bond Support Scheme to se-cure its biggest-ever Chinese contract.

The company was founded in 2005 to provide the oil and gas industry with specialised hose reels which are used to offload crude oil from drill ships and tankers, and more than 90 per cent of its business is overseas, mainly in the Far East and in North and South Amer-ica.

Techflow Marine won a contract, worth $5.8m, to provide the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) with a custom-made oil tanker offloading system. To clinch this, CNOOC needed the company to pro-

vide a 10 per cent performance bond – and, while its bank was able to issue the bond, Techflow Marine would have found the 100 per cent cash cover re-quired to secure it very restrictive.

Knowing it needed enough cashflow to pursue other overseas work, the com-pany therefore asked UKEF for help.

“We had a turnover of £4.6m then, so this Chinese contract was significant for us,” says Graham Clark, director at Techflow Marine. “It also represents our continued growth within the Chi-nese market. We didn’t want to turn it down, which has happened with large contracts in the past simply because of the large bonds involved.”

Having already met with UKEF, Techflow Marine approached it to ask for help with the $580,000 performance bond. UKEF suggested the Bond Sup-port Scheme – and, with help from its bank, the company submitted a pro-posal.

UKEF agreed to guarantee a propor-tion of the bond, which reduced the amount of cash cover Techflow Ma-rine needed to provide. Once the bond was secured, the company could ask CNOOC for its first-stage payment – and, thanks to the CNOOC contract, Techflow Marine more than doubled its turnover from £4.6m to £10m. The company expects a turnover of £12m in 2014, with work in China representing a large portion of this growth.

“Because we have this extra money to secure the bonds, we can still take on additional work worth up to $12m,” Mr Clark says. “The Bond Support Scheme is helping us to grow. Without its help, this contract would have been too big

A bond to bank onin global missions

Without this help I think thecontractmay havebeen too big for us

Clean away: Hughes Safety Showers has around 20 bonds in place at any one time

How UK Export Finance can help Northern exporters

UK Export Finance has a regional network of 23 export finance advisers, all with local knowledge and a specialist understanding of export finance. These include three advisers who specialise in medium-sized businesses.

The UKEF local contacts are as follows: Steve Cowles 07966 308452, steve.cowles@ukef.gsi.gov.uk, Paul Wright 07812 667312, paul.wright@ukef.gsi.gov.uk and Jon Boyce (for medium-sized businesses) 07990 887852, jon.boyce@ukef.gsi.gov.ukSteve Cowles

Does your export business qualify?

The criteria to qualify for export finance support from UK Export Finance vary according to the product that meets the needs of your

business. At its simplest, goods and services supported by UKEF should be supplied by a person carrying out business in the UK to an overseas buyer.

In cases such as UKEF’s Bond Support Scheme, the export contract must have a minimum of 20 per cent UK content. For the Export Working Capital Scheme, the maximum value of the working capital facility cannot be greater than 75 per cent of the export contract’s value.

The best way to see if your business meets the UKEF criteria is to contact your local export finance adviser.

Business Insight

Energy minister interviewed

Underneath the headlinesthere is an awful lot of work goingon to ensure that the lights stay on...

Speaking out: Junior energy minister Baroness Verma

The UK’s energy future depends on weighingthe opportunities and the threats, Baroness Sandip Verma makes clear to Chris Nelson

Winter is coming – and it will bring more public soul-searching and de-bate about how best to meet the UK’s energy

needs, along with stark warnings on fu-ture climate change.

The Times Business Insight has been speaking with Baroness Sandip Verma, parliamentary under secretary of state at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). The Baroness has an intimate knowledge of the issues and op-portunities ahead for the nuclear, renew-able and fossil fuel sectors, and is tasked with helping to realise the Government’s vision of a balanced energy strategy.

Each sector has been able to record its own recent milestones. Over the sum-mer, Toshiba and GDF Suez completed a deal that will boost development of the Moorside nuclear power plant on the West Cumbrian coast, Britain’s nuclear heartland. The project will bring at least £10 billion of investment and create up to 21,000 jobs over the construction peri-od. Once operational in 2024, the Moor-side plant reactors will deliver power to 6 million homes.

Meanwhile, a day in October saw the UK’s wind turbines generate more power than all of the country’s nuclear power stations, thanks to a combina-tion of high winds and faults in nuclear plants. The crucial scoreline read as fol-lows: wind 14.2 per cent of all generation, nuclear 13.2 per cent.

Onshore wind farms are the subject of fierce controversy, legal battles and pro-tests – but, as the Government chokes off planning permission for new onshore sites, it continues to encourage offshore development. On October 30, the ener-gy secretary Ed Davey officially opened the West of Duddon Sands wind farm in the Irish Sea, developed by DONG Energy and ScottishPower Renewables. Now fully operational, the 108 turbines can generate 389 megawatts, enough electricity to meet the annual demands of approximately 280,000 homes.

Meanwhile, a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says the unrestricted use of fossil fuels should be phased out by 2100 if the world is to avoid dangerous climate change. The IPCC’s Synthesis Report argues that most of the world’s electricity can and must be produced from lower carbon sources by 2050, or the world will face “severe, pervasive and irreversible damage”. The report sug-gests that renewables will have to grow from their current 30 per cent share of the power sector to 80 per cent by 2050.

Another threat is the forecast short-age of scientists and engineers needed to drive the UK’s energy sector, with a continuing struggle to encourage young people to study science, technology, engineering and mathematics – the so-

A vital balance of power

called STEM subjects – alongside the ticking timebomb of an ageing work-force.

Baroness Verma must consider all of these uncertainties in her work for the DECC, but of one thing she is absolutely certain: the lights are most definitely going to stay on in the UK. The under secretary of state is acutely aware of the media concerns about energy security – but insists that, while the UK is oper-ating on tighter energy margins, those margins are still manageable.

“We have taken measures to ensure there is capacity available,” she says. “Underneath the headlines there is an awful lot of work that goes on, and we need to reassure the public that the Gov-ernment has taken steps to ensure the lights stay on.

“Yes, we have had outages [in nuclear power stations], but we have taken that on board and have built in enough re-serve to have that measure of realism.”

The Baroness welcomes the cross-party consensus that future energy secu-rity lies in a good mix of different gener-ating sources, with wind, solar and other renewable technologies sitting alongside fossil fuels and a new generation of nu-clear power stations.

“We need to listen to public opinion and look at the cost of renewables,” the Baroness says, “and ensure that, when technologies become mature and need less support, we draw down that support and concentrate it on new emerging forms of energy. It is always going to be an evolving energy market and that is a good place to be.”

The Government has built in compe-tition to increase the supplier base, and more independent companies are play-ing a part in driving down the cost of en-ergy to Britain’s homes and businesses – but Baroness Verma believes the public

also has a role to play in Britain’s future energy security.

“We need to help people to take great-er charge of how they use energy in their own homes,” she says, “and our smart meter programme gives consumers more control of how they view energy and how they use energy.”

Shale gas exploration and exploitation is a huge issue in some areas of the UK, but the Baroness says more informa-tion is needed: “The Chancellor and the Prime Minister have been very clear that we have huge potential, but until we have done some exploration we won’t know the quantities.

“Given that we have large potential re-serves, it is only right that those develop-ers that want to invest to explore are able to do so – under very robust environmen-tal conditions. It is important that com-munities also buy into it and that there is proper engagement.”

Baroness Verma welcomed European Commission approval of state aid for the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station [in Somerset]. The EU regulators were examining whether the funding for the project broke state aid rules, and it is the first time the Commission has approved significant state aid for a new nuclear power station.

The decision is seen as a big step for-ward for the European nuclear industry and will serve as a precedent for other countries seeking to expand their nuclear capabilities. But Austria has complained that there is no convincing economic or ecological case for the decision, and other member states are concerned that it un-dermines the EU’s promotion of renew-able energy sources.

“Commission approval proves that we have met the robust conditions,” the Baroness notes. “It will be disappointing if Austria was to challenge, but we feel

we have consensus from the large ma-jority of member states – and this deci-sion gives greater confidence to member states that wish to follow what the UK is doing.

“We are very confident that our nucle-ar build programme will go ahead, and interest from investors shows that they are also confident. This programme is necessary for the UK. Nuclear is a clean, safe energy source that helps us to meet our carbon reduction emission targets as well as securing our energy supply.”

The UK has not built a new nuclear plant for more than 20 years, however, and the Baroness does not underesti-mate the potential knowledge gap.

“This is a global challenge,” Baroness Verma says, “which is why it is important to put a lot of emphasis on getting young people to take up STEM subjects and de-cide on careers in science and technol-ogy, taking the opportunities offered by apprenticeships and graduate courses. We know there is a gap and we have a number of schemes in place responding to the challenge.

“Part of that challenge is encourag-ing young people to look at the sciences and to make them exciting, with positive role models. We have to find a way to get the energy sector to engage better with schools. I have seen some fantastic work by apprentices and graduates interacting with young people.

“Industry knows it must reach out to more young people to go into the sci-ences and fill the gaps that are obviously coming, and we will need more people with STEM backgrounds.”

Baroness Verma was the guest speaker at the 2014 Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) Estate Supply Chain event in Manchester, where she praised the work of the NDA. It had achieved some great successes, she said. Sellafield was one of the oldest nuclear sites and was a difficult decommissioning project that presented significant challenges, but progress was being made.

“We have never had an incident that has caused any concern,” she added. “It is a safe industry and it is one of the best regulated industries in the world. People look to us for expertise and advice on the decommissioning projects in their own countries.

“The NDA is doing an excellent job and the results are there – we have seen decommissioning happening safely and securely.”

The NDA Estate Supply Chain event is the largest of its kind in the UK, and the Baroness told more than 1,500 exhibitors and delegates that their innovation, ex-pertise and enterprise was ensuring that the UK remained a world leader in nu-clear decommissioning with a staggering array of global opportunities.

As the DECC minister with respon-sibility for small and medium-sized en-terprises (SMEs), Baroness Verma said she was delighted to see the NDA event going from strength to strength, with its new initiatives to involve and encourage small companies.

The UK energy industry needs a vi-brant and healthy supply chain, she said. SMEs were often dynamic and innova-tive, and it was therefore particularly encouraging to see larger companies en-gaging so effectively with them.

Business Insight

Training

It’s a way not only to help theindustry but to give somethingback to the communities

...and the woman whofaces it specifically for the nuclear sector. Meeting Mike Cowley

If you find yourself as a key player in a team tasked to tackle the skills shortfall in the energy sector, you need to have not only a serious background in train-ing but also the ability to think outside

the box. The sheer scale of the problem – with 50 per cent of the workforce being due to retire in the next decade, combined with a planned investment in infrastruc-ture and creating a shortfall of more than 200,000 jobs – demands no less.

It is fortunate, therefore, that Neil Rob-ertson, chief executive of the Energy and Utility Skills Group, ticks both boxes. He has spent most of his working life in skills and training for industry, part of it steeped in apprentice recruitment as director of training at Babcock International.

To put things in perspective, his spare time is spent helping retrain young of-fenders, as he chairs RUTS – an unusual charity which uses motorbikes as the focus to equip youngsters to achieve their poten-tial and raise their aspirations. And young offenders, as a group, would arguably be among the first to fall below the conven-tional employability radar.

Mr Robertson has been successful in marrying his day job with his ongoing charity interests by helping to ensure that the door to apprenticeships in his sec-tor (a key requirement in addressing the skills shortage) is held firmly open to all youngsters, including those who are “the furthest away from work”. It is a phrase he readily admits is a euphemism for the group of kids least likely to get a job.

“We have set up a pre-apprentice scheme where youngsters from diverse backgrounds will get the opportunity to train to move up to become apprentices,” Mr Robertson says, “which in our sector means they will have a job for life. This is a unique initiative which looks to draw upon the expertise of key employers to support individuals furthest from the jobs market, with much of the training being done by the highly skilled people heading for re-tirement.

“We have done it with the enthusiastic backing of all the major companies in the sector, who see this is as a way not only to help the industry but to provide them with an opportunity to give something back to the communities that are their customers.”

So how does Mr Robertson know for certain that everyone is committed to what is a revolutionary concept?

“I’m the guy who is sitting there and asking ‘Do you want to do this?’ he says.

“And they are saying yes and being ab-solutely crystal clear – it is coming from the top and it is real.”

This breakthrough approach, which will involve employing the previously unemployable, has been set up under the auspices of the Energy and Effi-ciency Industrial Partnership – one of eight such bodies established with a joint fund from the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES), the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the Skills Funding Agency – to address the overall skills shortage in the UK which is threatening to throw the recovery off-track.

Like the other groupings, the Energy and Efficiency Industrial Partnership – which is led by the National Grid with the help of Neil Robertson’s group and embraces 67 employers – has commit-ted to co-invest with the Government to develop the sector. In the case of energy, the sum involved is £115 mil-lion, with the expected outcome being 5,500 apprenticeships and 14,300 non-apprentices.

Mr Robertson admits that the timing has helped win the support needed for both the pre-apprenticeship initiative and the overall upskilling campaign to meet the shortfall. “This is due to en-tering the new phases of the regulatory cycles for water gas and electricity – to

which half the industry is contracted – so creating stability,” he says. “And we are now looking at procurement as a way to drive training, making it manda-tory for firms to undertake training as a condition of winning the contract.”

What really sets the energy sector’s initiative apart, however, is the pre- apprenticeship programme. This not only has the potential to help ease the sector’s skills problem, but at the same time reaches out to one of the groups that the Government urgently wants to address – the NEETs, or those Not in Education, Employment or Training.

It is not simply a case of headline-grabbing window-dressing. “A pilot scheme has been running successfully in the North West for some time,” Mr Robertson notes. “This is a collaborative Youth Engagement Programme set up by key employers with a combined vi-sion to train young people [aged 16 to 24] in the skills that their businesses re-quire. The learners are from a range of backgrounds – this was done on purpose to build a cohort to support each other.

“Led by United Utilities, the collec-tive has recruited young people from a range of local service providers, includ-ing Jobcentre Plus (ten) and housing as-sociations (two), and has offered them an 11-week training opportunity. All candidates are NEETs and have been able to engage with the programme through flexibility found in the new Universal Credit – we have been sup-ported in this by the Department for Work and Pensions.

“This opening-up of jobs to people who wouldn’t normally get them is part of a wider recognition that we have failed some communities collectively with our previous apprenticeships. There are lots of reasons they have got screened out through application processes, but we are getting away from this. We are meeting shortly to assess the success of the scheme and I am expecting the re-sult will be to give the go-ahead to roll out the programme throughout the UK come January. “

Meanwhile, over in the nuclear sec-tor, Jean Llewellyn, chief executive of the National Skills Academy for Nu-clear (NSAN), is facing the daunting task of finding skilled people to run not only the next generation of new-build nuclear establishments, but also the 18 sites that are being decommissioned.

The Magnox-led Nuclear Industrial Partnership – in which the NSAN is playing a leading role – has, however, one key advantage over the other sector partnerships. “We are not a new body,” Mrs Llewellyn says, “but an extension of what we have been doing since 2008,

simply bringing in more partners to help with delivery with funding accessed via UKCES through its Employer Owner-ship of Skills programme.

“But that doesn’t alter the scale of the problem we face. Whereas we have had to recruit around 1,000 per year up to now, as of next year that will be quadru-pled to 4,000.”

The reason for this is the Govern-ment’s green light for the nuclear new-build programme of Hinkley Point C,

Wylfa Newydd and Moorside to com-mence construction by 2020, and Size-well C and Oldbury by 2023.

“Currently, new-build forms 3 per cent of the nuclear workforce, which will increase to 35 per cent over the next seven years,” the NSAN chief ex-ecutive says, “creating additional full-time equivalent employment opportu-nities covering a range of disciplines.”

Jean Llewellyn is also well aware that the nuclear sector, like its counterpart in energy, has an ageing workforce, with an attrition rate of around 50 per cent over the next decade including re-tirements.

“We also have to deal with decom-missioning,” she says, “which seems to suggest the end when the reality is that this will last for 50 years or more. Yet it offers the opportunity to work with processes and technologies that are world-beating.”

The Nuclear Industrial Partnership has attracted 115 members – 48 more than the Energy and Efficiency Indus-trial Partnership – but has a smaller delivery budget of £8m. “People often think of this sector as being all about university graduates,” Mrs Llewellyn says, “but there is a huge demand for skills across the entire workforce start-ing with apprentices.

“There is also a significant move to transfer knowledge from one genera-tion to another by setting up a cohort of existing experts as Visiting Fellows. We also have an online learning por-tal, www.nucleartrainingnetwork.com, where companies can share and ex-change knowledge and learning mate-rials.”

It is this collaboration between com-peting companies in the Nuclear Indus-trial Partnership which has now set the UK sector apart from the rest of the world. “People overseas are amazed at what is happening here,” Jean Llewellyn says. “But there is a realisation that col-laboration is the only way we will solve the problem.”

Boss with NEETanswer to energystaffing challenge

Neil Robertson: chief executive enjoying ‘enthusiastic backing’

Jean Llewellyn, head of NSAN

Business Insight

Energy

NNL stands for thekey British elementin nuclear research, writes Chris Nelson

The National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) is playing a major role in the global nuclear sector, with sev-eral facilities based in the North West of England: at Sellafield,

Workington, Preston and Warrington. Few people, however, understand or appreciate the breadth of work undertaken by NNL, or its global standing among key nuclear play-ers and the research community.

“When people see the words Cumbria and nuclear they automatically think Sella-field,” says NNL managing director Pro-fessor Paul Howarth, “but NNL is quite a different animal. We interface with interna-tional organisations including the European Commission and the US Department of En-ergy – and, as a result, we are playing a ma-jor role in putting the North West and the UK in the forefront of nuclear expertise.”

The laboratory works alongside the De-partment of Energy and Climate Change as the principal research organisation under-pinning civil nuclear fission projects in the UK. As such, it closely supports the Govern-ment on its nuclear agenda.

Sellafield is one of the long-standing NNL customers, and they have recently cel-ebrated a ten-year partnership developing and refining the process for safely storing nuclear waste using a vitrification process to encase it in glass. Other key nuclear play-ers utilising NNL expertise include EDF Energy, Westinghouse and the Low Level Waste Repository, all of which use its ser-vices to ensure that their science and tech-nology challenges are achieved safely and cost-effectively.

NNL also works closely with academic institutions such as the University of Man-chester, with which it has recently cre-ated the Nuclear Fuel Centre of Excellence. Here, fuels will be developed which will feed into the next generation of nuclear reactors.

Consulting on an international scale, NNL’s activities range from assisting with the clean-up at Fukushima in Japan, to helping develop new nuclear programmes

or assisting with decommissioning and waste-handling.

“We sit somewhere between fundamen-tal research and nuclear operations,” Profes-sor Howarth says. “We have outstanding re-search facilities and attract some of the best and brightest minds to use them – including subject-matter experts, chemists, physicists and mathematicians all engaged in lead-ing research. We bridge the gap between knowledge and nuclear.”

No other programme in the UK is en-gaged with nuclear generation while also dealing with legacy waste management, new-build nuclear plants, geological dis-posal programmes and advanced reactors for the future.

As a means of highlighting its ground-breaking work, NNL has even taken to Twitter to share facts about its impact on the West Cumbrian economy: the £10.6 million spend within the supply chain in the county alone, out of an overall annual turnover of £85m; the 600 local people be-ing employed in Cumbria; and the associ-ated £22m paid in salaries, much of which goes straight into the local economy.

With a strong base in Britain’s nuclear heartland of Cumbria, NNL is proud of its

Innovus programme which supports local technology-based ideas and entrepreneur-ship within the county. The laboratory is also firmly committed to developing home-grown talent, by investing in its young workforce and supporting them through training from apprenticeships up to degree courses.

“There is still a worrying lack of young people studying the STEM disciplines – science, technology, engineering and maths,” Professor Howarth adds, “and un-less something changes the current criti-cal shortage of professionals in these areas will simply get worse. We work closely with schools and colleges across the North West to get young people enthusi-astic about STEM subjects – which will of course provide them with excellent career paths for the future.

“Our business is most definitely not all egghead scientists in white coats. If you think of it in terms of fighter jets, then international experts might be our pilots but our local workforce is the support crew which makes flight possible. And, of course the young people joining us today will, we hope, one day be in the driving seat as the high-fliers of tomorrow.”

How do you safely store one of the planet’s most danger-ous substances, nuclear waste material? By vitrifica-tion, that’s how: the process

of turning highly radioactive liquids into a solid stable glass for storage and eventual disposal.

But how do you continually improve and refine that process when you cannot afford a single mistake? You carry out the work in a precisely reconstructed test environment.

That is the basis of a ten-year partnership marked last month by the National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) and Sellafield Ltd. The Vitrification Test Rig is a full-scale copy of the core of the Sellafield vitrification plant, and inside the rig NNL scientists develop and test improvements to the process.

The team’s many successes include having helped to accelerate the reduction of highly radioactive liquids stored at Sellafield, which means fewer containers of glass waste for storage and eventual disposal – which in turn translates into a substantial saving for the UK taxpayer.

Graham Fairhall, NNL chief technologist, was in at the start, having realised that development in a non-radioactive environment could lead to step-changes in the technology. “We are proud to recognise the achieve-ments of the dedicated and highly motivated teams who have worked as one to continuously improve one of the most important operations on the Sellafield site,” he says.

Gilles Perrier is the Sellafield direc-tor with responsibility for vitrification, having worked for many years on the French equivalent to the Sellafield vitrification plant. “The teams from Sellafield Ltd and NNL have worked closely together,” he says, “to ensure that solutions to challenges posed over the years have been met in a safe and timely manner.”

Copeland MP Jamie Reed told the audience at an event marking the ten-year partnership that the Vitrifica-tion Test Rig project demonstrates the nuclear technical excellence which is essential in underpinning public confidence and in making the case for new reactors in the UK.

A ‘glass act’ in safer storage

A unique academic research capability that is central to the future energy security of the UK has been created at the Nuclear Fuel Centre of Excellence (NFCE), run jointly by

the University of Manchester and the National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL).

Professor Sir Mark Walport, the Govern-ment’s chief scientific adviser, officially launched the groundbreaking collaboration at the University of Manchester in October. Sup-ported by £8 million of Government funding to expand existing facilities, the NFCE will provide the equipment and expertise to develop advanced nuclear fuels with enhanced safety and economic benefits for new reactor systems.

It will also play a leading role in the optimi-sation of current fuel designs and provide an important skills pipeline from academia to the commercial nuclear sector.

Nuclear fuel research and development will be carried out across four NFCE locations – in Cumbria at the University of Manchester’s Dalton Facility and NNL Central Laboratory, and at the laboratories based at the University of Manchester and NNL’s Preston facility. All four locations will be available to UK academic and industry researchers.

The launch event was attended by industry leaders, Government officials and academics from the UK and overseas. They toured one of the new NFCE laboratories and heard from

Professor Andrew Sherry, director of the University of Manchester’s Dalton Nuclear Institute, from Dr Fiona Rayment, director of Fuel Cycle Solutions at NNL, and from Sir Mark Walport himself, who spoke about the centre’s importance to the UK’s nuclear research community.

The NFCE at Manchester will be led by Professor Tim Abram, holder of the Westing-house chair in nuclear fuel technology and visiting senior fellow for fuels and reactor systems at NNL. Dr Rayment will lead at NNL.

“We are delighted to work with our partners at NNL to establish the infrastruc-ture needed for the UK to play a leading role

in nuclear fuels research and development,” Professor Sherry says. “This investment establishes an integrated research and devel-opment capability and creates an innovation and skills pipeline between academia and the commercial nuclear sector.”

Professor Paul Howarth, managing direc-tor of NNL adds: “I’m really pleased that the Government decided to make a significant strategic investment in nuclear fuel research and development, and chose NNL and the University of Manchester’s Dalton Nuclear Institute to be the two host organisations for this new centre. I’m sure the centre will repay that confidence with excellent research and innovation.”

Collaboration that’s key to energy security

Global powerfor innovation

We have outstandingresearchfacilities and attract the best minds to use them

NNL Central Laboratory undertakes research on advanced fuel manufacturing related to the MOX (mixed oxide fuel) plant

Business Insight

Employment

UKCES wants more employer ownership of the challenge, itsboss tells Tom Grant

To be the head of a Government agency tasked with improving the skills of the nation, you had better be able to back up what you say. Luckily, Michael Davis,

the chief executive at the UK Commis-sion for Employment and Skills (UKC-ES), has a better view than most.

Chairing a specialist manufacturer in the previous decade has helped Mr Da-vis to put the wider UK skills needs into perspective. At Lastolite, a manufacturer of reflective screens for photographers, he was faced with an ageing workforce, a diminishing pool of labour and difficul-ties in recruiting specialist skills.

A similar set of problems fill his work-ing hours today, but this time across key sectors of the UK economy. Why? Be-cause these are endemic skills problems, exacerbated by the recession but not caused by it.

“We are seeing a profound shift in the shape of the labour market,” Mr Davis says. “Globalisation and technological ad-vances – offshoring and automation – are transforming the way we work, the jobs we do, and the markets that exist.

“It’s becoming more like an hourglass. There is great value at the top of the ladder, high-skill roles like engineering, accountancy, those sorts of roles. And there are a great number at the bottom, jobs that need a lower level of skill, like

care workers or in retail. But in between there’s a real squeeze as ‘middle jobs’ de-mand higher skills.”

UKCES research shows this is already happening. A survey of 90,000 UK em-ployers revealed that more than one in five of all vacancies are of the “skills shortage” type, where employers cannot find people with the necessary skills or qualifications.

So it is almost mystifying that nearly half of businesses also say they have staff with skills and qualifications beyond those required in their current role – which is another finding of the UKCES research. That equates to 4.3 million workers whose skills are not being fully used – or one in six employees – with all the potential impact on productivity lev-els that implies.

At the bottom level, over 5 million peo-ple are in low-paid jobs, and it is known

that there are fewer opportunities for peo-ple to combine learning with work so they can progress in their careers.

In summary, there are opportunities at the top, an overflow of people and skills at the bottom, and fewer and fewer ways to connect the two. The role of UKCES is to address these fundamental, long-term issues: not an easy task. So where to start? The answer lies in the term “ownership”, according to Michael Davis.

“Previously, there has been a tendency for business to feel [skills are] a Govern-ment problem,” he says. “And, as a result, there has been a collective underinvest-ment in skills by both industry and Gov-ernment over a long period.

“It is not the failing of any one Govern-ment, it is not the failing of business. In economics, you talk about no one own-ing a problem as the reason it stays un- addressed. That is what has happened here and why [UKCES] is arguing for greater employer ownership of skills.”

Nor can businesses simply look to hir-ing people to fill the gaps, according to the commission chief executive. “You will never get exactly the right Tetris block to slot in to what you need,” he says. “You need to think about where can we bring people up to what we need, and how can we work with partners and training pro-viders to do that.”

This forms an important strand of the work of UKCES: strengthening ties be-tween the worlds of business and educa-tion. “For a long time we had the tradi-tional linear model where we tried to load people with as much education as possi-ble,” Mr Davis says, “and this would get you through until you leave at 65. This is just not feasible any more, thanks to the pace of change.

“An iPad today contains the same com-puting power as a 1980s Cray mainframe – that illustrates the pace of technologi-

Minding the skills gap

cal change that is pressing in. It feels like the skills you get at the start won’t get you through any more. What we need are ca-reer pathways that support continued de-velopment of skills.”

The education system is recognising the issue and there are excellent examples of schools, colleges and universities around the UK working closely with business to address long-term skills needs. Leading the way is the University of Derby, where vice-chancellor Professor John Coyne is not only a commissioner at UKCES but has authored much of the research into how the education system needs to adapt to the changing demands of business.

Professor Coyne embraces the “em-ployer ownership” concept warmly, hav-ing accepted that the previous dynamic was wrong. “Perhaps it is a caricature,” he says, “but once upon a time awarding bodies, exam boards, would try to create as many qualifications as they could, then go to colleges and say: ‘Please use our qualifications’.

“Then the colleges would choose a port-folio to get in as many students as they could – and go knocking on doors and get employers to put employees on courses. This was all the wrong way round.”

Professor Coyne wants employers to think hard about their long-term needs, then work with colleges on courses and qualifications to fill their specific skills gaps, both now and in the future. And it seems that employers are sitting up and taking notice of the ownership message from UKCES – as illustrated by the find-ings of the UKCES Employer Skills Sur-vey.

“We are seeing increased action across all sectors,” Michael Davis says, pointing to the establishment of eight new “in-dustrial partnerships” as evidence of this. Each is led by a major company – Glaxo-SmithKline in science and Airbus in aero-

space, for example. The big employers form partnerships with smaller compa-nies down through their supply chains, as well as with colleges and trainers.

This approach of taking joint-owner-ship in their sector means being able to look at challenges ranging from stand-ards for apprenticeships up to specifying degree courses for professional develop-ment.

“We need to speak out and say busi-ness really needs to take ownership long-term,” Mr Davis says. “One of the things that has bedevilled training in the past is the feeling that Government is always changing things.

“We need long-term stability, as exem-plified in Germany and Switzerland. They have a different model, but the stability has come because they have had employ-ers with a bigger say, and unions with a bigger say. Skills and training are not just seen as something that Government manages.”

So what can employers do? The an-swer, in essence, is to get involved. “There are many ways for employers of all sizes to lead on skills development,” Mr Davis says, “from working with schools so that pupils are exposed to a range of careers options, to working with local organisa-tions such as LEPs [local enterprise part-nerships] and chambers of commerce to determine the specific regional issues that need to be addressed.

“A simple ask is to offer work experi-ence to help young people gain the skills they need to get into work. That helps at the bottom. A more complex ask is to change the mindset so that training is ap-proached in the same way as a new in-frastructure project or capital upgrade. It comes with long-term benefits, so it must be viewed as an investment.”�� To find out more, visit www.gov.uk/ukces

With the advance of technology the skills required of the young are becoming more specific

Chief executive Michael Davis

It’s becominglike an hour-glass, with skills top and bottombut a realsqueeze in between

Business Insight

Commercial Viewpoint

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Stopford strengthens Board and looks to international growth following investment

Process technology expert Stopford Projects Ltd has appointed a new Chair to support the strategic direction of the Board and help to structure the business for growth.

The industry-leading process technology, en-ergy and environment consultancy, with bases in Ellesmere Port and at Lancaster University’s Envi-ronment Centre, secured £1 million of investment from The North West Fund for Energy & Envi-ronmental, which is managed by 350 Investment Partners.

The investment, which was made in 2013, is be-ing used to develop Stopford’s business strategy in the UK and overseas markets, allowing the com-pany to realise its growth ambitions. Key to this has been the appointment of the company’s new Chair, Clare Hildred who is currently working closely with the Board.

With over 20 years’ experience working at Board level in a range of high growth organisations, Clare has specialised in building and delivering business strategy. With a focus on change management Clare has provided strategy implementation sup-

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“Receiving the £1 million investment from The North West Fund has been key to our growth plans. The finance is being used to support our cutting-edge development R&D activities across the North West, the UK and overseas.

Michael Bakewell, investment director at 350 IP, which manages The North West Fund for Energy & Environmental, said: “This is a fantastic invest-ment for us and we are excited to be joining Stop-ford at such a pivotal time in the growth of the business.

“With a 32 year history Stopford has expe-rienced significant change within the sectors it serves, which is reflective of the expertise and ca-pabilities that the team delivers today. We are cer-tain that this investment will help push the busi-ness even further along its impressive trajectory and we look forward to supporting the company in its continued global success.”��DOES YOUR BUSINESS NEED FINANCE? T: 01925 418 232 E: enquiries@thenorthwestfund.co.uk W: www.thenorthwestfund.co.uk

Inspiring entrepreneurs and financing ambition

Clare Hildred and Prith Rajendran from Stopford Projects

Business Insight

Independent education

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The Manchester Grammar School

A true adventure for boys with enquiring minds

Visit us and find out what makes us special

It can defi ne a pupil’sdirection, the head of Cheadle Hulme School informs Mike Cowley

It is important that independent schools allow their pupils to fail. That is the apparently surprising message to come from Lucy Pearson, the high-fl ying head of Cheadle Hulme

School – but she is not calling for fail-ure as the end product of the education system, rather as part of the learning process that will enable youngsters to face up to the realities of life when they eventually emerge from the academic cocoon.

“I’m a big fan of failure,” she says.” There are times when things don’t work out as we hoped – sometimes the real learning comes through that moment of failure.

“With the current A-level system you can spot failure coming for a 17-year-old because you get the AS results. If these are not great, what a child can learn at this point is they have some choices to

make about who they want to be, where they want to go and how they are going to get there.

“It is important that we try, fail, mess up. We only learn by getting something wrong because our brains think: I don’t want to do that again. It is a dangerous environment if you have an 18-year-old who has only known success.”

Failure is something that even Lucy Pearson experienced on her way to grad-uating in English literature and English language at Keble College at Oxford University before a high-profi le career in education. It happened when she was 17 and attending Oakham School as a boarder on a bursary, which ensured she would not have to leave if family and fi -nancial circumstances changed. She was dropped from the school’s hockey fi rst eleven – and this for someone who had always excelled at the sport.

“What it did,” she recalls, “was teach me a salutary lesson that you can’t al-ways expect a place to be open for you. I needed to apply myself more.”

She duly did and ended up an inter-national sportswoman, opening the bowling for the England women’s cricket

team, achieving record bowling fi gures in the second Ashes test in 2003 and twice being named player of the year.

So how do Lucy Pearson and her staff deal with failure at Cheadle Hulme, the alma mater of the BBC political editor Nick Robinson and the newscaster and presenter Katie Derham?

“A good school, a great school, will spend as much time talking with the student who has failed about the way forward as they would celebrating with someone who has done really well,” she says. “Indeed, they will take more time with the failing student as there is more to learn.

“A school can only provide the tools. The child has to pick up the tools for themselves – and if they don’t, then in the end they have to take responsibility – that’s their lesson.”

Lucy Pearson is a conviction teacher, in that if she believes in something, she doesn’t pull her punches. One thing she is convinced about is that co-education is the key to producing students with suf-fi cient all-round skills to slip easily into the outside world. She is well aware that Cheadle Hulme is in an area where the

Learning a fail-safe lesson

Speaking from experience: Cheadle Hulme School head Lucy Pearson

Business Insight

Newcastle Royal Grammar School, Eskdale Terrace, Newcastle upon Tyne NE2 4DX www.rgs.newcastle.sch.uk

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independent school sector is dominated by single-sex schools, including Man-chester Grammar School, Manchester High School for Girls and Withington Girls’ School – all “with significant ku-dos in the community”, as she puts it.

“People perceive that if a child goes to one of those schools then it is a guar-antee of academic achievement at the highest level,” the Cheadle Hulme head adds. “My point is that academic ability on its own is not a guarantee of longer-term success, as attitude has a bigger part to play in it.”

She also tackles the issue of single-sex schools offering “fewer distractions”, with co-ed being seen as simply “a hot-bed of hormones” in some quarters. “Boys and girls are pretty disinterested in each other for large parts of their teenage life,” she says. “The problem is often getting them to work together.”

Girls in particular offer important benefits to schools, she believes: “Girls can certainly bring an extra degree of academic focus because in many ways the exam system favours girls and the way they approach academic work.

“Girls can be more attuned to longer pieces of work and academic success can be more important to them than it is to boys, certainly between the ages of 14 and 16. Boys prefer to get on with work, get a quick result and get on with some-thing else. They like to achieve quickly and the current exam system involves taking your time over course work – which many girls love, but which boys often find more challenging. Naturally,

single-sex schools might challenge me on that.”

Lucy Pearson tackles head-on the is-sue of why single-sex schools such as Manchester Grammar and Withington regularly top the examination league ta-bles, even though Cheadle Hulme itself is well established in the first division. “Their selection process ensures they take the very best,” she says. “So you are going to get the best results – it is a sim-ple equation.

“If Manchester Grammar School and Withington weren’t getting the fantastic results they get, there would be some-thing very wrong. They’ve got a great crop of students, they have really good teachers and that is a happy equation.”

So how should parents and children know what is the right school for them? “There is a wide choice of good schools both in the independent and state sec-tors,” Lucy Pearson says, “and it is really about finding what is the best fit for that child and family.

“Parents in particular have to share that school’s aspirations, philosophy and values – and if they don’t then that school is not right for them or their child.”

But why independents? “Independ-ent schools have a long history of aca-demic achievement. They know how to get the best out of their students. If you have a very bright child,” she continues, “it doesn’t matter which independent school you put them into. If the child has the right attitude towards learning, they are going to fulfil their potential. That’s

the business of every independent school, that’s what they do.”

So why does Lucy Pearson believe that Cheadle Hulme and other co-ed inde-pendents should be automatically on the list for consideration? “In the main, co-ed education recognises there is more to developing a young person rather than focusing solely on academic skills,” she says, “because co-ed schools are more about developing character and skill in a broader sense. It is as much about the type of person as it is the academic skills.

“The true measure of this school is in the calibre of people it produces. The chil-dren who come out of here are confident

without being arrogant, well educated in that they have good qualifications and a good level of skills and talent. You listen to the CBI [Confederation of British In-dustry] and employers saying kids haven’t got the skills – they are qualified but don’t know how to operate in an office. My job is to say to the staff we cannot let that happen, and it doesn’t happen.

“Our kids know how to work in teams, they know how to do project work, they know how to listen to people who are old-er, younger, the opposite sex, of different ethnicity or faith. They also know what it means to fail. They are ready to take their place.”

Academic ability on its own is no guarantee of long-term success... attitude has a bigger part to play in it

Facts about independent schools�� 73 per cent of British parents have an open mind about sending their child to an independent school.�� There are 208,200 pupils in those independent schools – Cheadle Hulme being one – which are part of the Headmasters’ and Headmis-tresses’ Conference (HMC), the body representing the top schools.�� 13 per cent of pupils in independ-ents have an identified special educational need.�� Independent schools in England are more ethnically diverse than state schools.�� Independent schools contribute £11.7 billion to the economy.

��More than half of all sixth-formers at HMC schools get A or A* in their exams.�� They are three times more likely to get an A or A* than a state school pupil.��During the period 2010-13, HMC pupils were increasingly likely to receive offers from universities of their choice.��Over the past decade, half of all new places at Russell Group universities went to independent school applicants.�� The current year has seen in-creased offer rates for HMC pupils applying to Oxford and Cambridge.

When Barry wanted to sell overseas he took advantage of expert advice, tailored to his business. To arrange a face-to-face meeting with an International Trade Adviser:

visit www.greatbusiness.gov.uk/ukti

“�Now�we’re�exporting,�the�world�is�our�playground”Barry�Leahey,�Sales and Marketing Director at Playdale Playgrounds

GRE08S0002_UKTI_PLAYDALE_PRESS_338X264_MV1.indd 1 06/06/2014 12:14