Learning and Skills Council to spend £6m on training to improve literacy in the North East

The Learning and Skills Council will spend £6m on improving basic skills among the unemployed in the North East of England.

It has awarded the contract to Working Links (WL), a London-based partnership between the government, recruitment specialist Manpower and IT company CapGemini. It was formed in 2000 to help provide basic skills training to the UK’s most deprived communities and has worked through the Department of Work and Pensions and the government’s Social Inclusion Unit.

Working Links will provide basic literacy, numeracy, language and employabilitytraining to jobseekers in the North East‘s poorest communities. This will take the form of an employability skills programme, which will include training on communicating with others in the workplace and applying for jobs.

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Those who complete the training successfully will get an accreditation certificate to help market themselves to potential employers. “It will go a long way to enabling people to up-skill and find sustainable employment,” said WL’s head of skills Stuart Turner.

The programme will starton 1 August, and WL said anyone with a recognised teaching qualification who could help implement the programme should contact it.