As Andy Burnham unveils his plans to tackle youth unemployment, the centrepiece will be a national version of an idea born during his years as a regional mayor: the Greater Manchester Baccalaureate (MBacc).
The announcement will set out his ambition to reshape the education system so that young people have a clearer route from school into skilled work, apprenticeships and technical and vocational careers, with employers playing a much bigger role in shaping what they learn.
But the MBacc is only one page of the Manchester playbook.
The city-region has also been the testing ground for a series of interventions aimed at helping young people find opportunity and helping those who fall out of education, or work, get back on track.
In an interview with The i Paper during the Makerfield by-election campaign last month, Burnham set out, in his own words, a broader blueprint for the changes he believes would transform young people’s lives and improve their chances of finding work. We are publishing the answers from that interview in full for the first time.
From changing procurement rules so public money delivers apprenticeships and work placements, to giving 16 to 18-year-olds free travel linked to work opportunities, to devolving employment support and using data to understand young people’s wellbeing better, Burnham has already outlined a wider set of policies that could now form the basis of a national offer.
The question after today’s announcement is what else he might draw from Greater Manchester.
1. Use government contracts to create apprenticeships
One of Burnham’s most striking proposals is to change the way public money is spent.
His argument is that government should not only ask whether a contract offers financial value, but whether it delivers wider benefits for communities – including creating opportunities for young people.
Burnham believes the state should use its enormous purchasing power to encourage companies winning contracts to invest in the next generation.
He said: “I’d like just to touch on, if I could, a big change to British procurement and public spending, using full social value weighting.… It means when you lay a contract or you commission a service, that you can then require work placements for 16 to 18 year-olds or apprenticeships. We’re not using the full might of the British state, in terms of procurement, to get the benefits for young people that will help them have a path towards work.”
The proposal links closely to Burnham’s wider belief that education and employment cannot be separated. If young people are to see a clear route into the world of work, he argues, employers must become part of that journey.
That is the thinking behind his support for longer, meaningful work placements – including the 45-day model associated with technical education – giving teenagers a chance to experience workplaces before they leave school.
2. Give 16 to 18-year-olds free travel – linked to job opportunities
Burnham has already introduced a policy in Greater Manchester that he believes could be replicated nationally: free bus travel for 16 to 18-year-olds.
He argues that transport can become an invisible barrier preventing young people from taking up work opportunities. A free pass removes one obstacle – but he believes it should be matched with a guaranteed route into experience, training or employment.
He said: “I’ve done something here as mayor of Greater Manchester, where we give our 16 to 18s a free bus pass. I know it’s common in London, but elsewhere in England it isn’t.
“I want to match that guarantee of free travel to a high-quality [work experience] opportunity. And I think if you did that everywhere, you would have a significant impact on youth employment. Because if you… fall out at 16 and you don’t have that clear path, then it’s very, very hard once people hit their 20s to be able to put them back on track.”
The idea reflects a central theme of Burnham’s approach: intervention before problems become entrenched.
He argues that the years immediately after compulsory education are critical. If young people lose connection with learning, work or opportunity at 16, rebuilding that connection later becomes much harder.
3. Devolve job support
Perhaps the clearest example of Burnham’s Manchester philosophy is Working Well – a programme designed around the idea that unemployment is often not simply linked to a lack of job applications.
Working Well was created as part of Greater Manchester’s devolution journey and takes a different approach from traditional employment support programmes. Instead of focusing only on whether someone is applying for jobs, it looks at the wider issues that may prevent someone moving into work – including health, housing, debt, skills and personal circumstances.
Participants are supported by dedicated workers who help them move towards employment.Burnham believes this approach has shown that local areas can deliver better results when they have the freedom to design support around their own communities.
He said: “I think when it comes to the whole question of spending on benefits, it’s about supporting people upfront and having a more preventative approach. We’ve pioneered that in Greater Manchester.
“So, we took a different way of supporting people, not the tick box top-down approach, sometimes used by the DWP [Department of Work and Pensions], which just doesn’t get to the heart of why somebody isn’t in work but comes at it the other way round, and starts with the whole person, the housing situation, whether people have got debt worries.
“There are a whole host of wider reasons why people may not be able to move towards work. And what I would say when it comes to welfare reform, this is an area where I would strongly advocate that the country goes down the greater devolution route.
“If you support people starting in communities, working through community and voluntary organisations, I think you can actually get to the heart of the thing that is holding them back. And we’ve got experience in Greater Manchester of operating in that way and evidence that you get twice the rate of people back to work when you take that whole person approach, then you’re doing through the ‘computer says no’ approach.
“The simple thing is this… if people fear having interaction with the DWP, how on earth is that going to move them forward? But that is how people do feel when they go into Job Centre Plus; they feel they’re about to be tripped up, or something taken off them. Whereas I would argue for a much more devolved, much more empowering and supporting approach that we’ve got evidence actually achieves bigger and better results.”
The Working Well philosophy could be one of the biggest parts of Burnham’s Manchester inheritance if he seeks to reshape employment support nationally: a shift from managing unemployment to preventing it. According to a well-placed government source, Pat McFadden, the Work and Pensions Secretary, is already exploring proposals that will see mayors in other areas being given similar powers.
4. Listen to young people before they disengage
The fourth idea comes from another Greater Manchester innovation: #BeeWell.
The survey, introduced across secondary schools in the city-region, asks young people directly about their wellbeing, hopes, experiences and expectations for the future.
The purpose is simple but ambitious: understand what young people are experiencing before problems become crises.
The survey has given policymakers and schools a detailed picture of teenage life – including confidence, belonging, mental wellbeing and whether young people feel they have opportunities ahead of them.
For Burnham, this is essential because education cannot be reformed successfully without understanding how young people experience it.
He said: “Honestly, I feel that the education system needs a massive change. It’s built for some young people, rather than all young people, and that’s the truth of it. Schools have been judged on their performance on the English baccalaureate and they are the GCSEs most favoured by university.
“So the whole system is weighted in that way. We do a survey of teenagers in Greater Manchester… and you see some of them start to report a loss of engagement with the school by year 10. It’s high when they come in year seven, but it drops right down by year 10.
“The most troubling thing is we ask the question: do you have hope for the future? And in parts of this city region, and indeed parts of this borough, you know, that number is way too, way too low. They just cannot see what the opportunity is beyond school.”
Whether it is procurement, transport, employment support or education reform, Burnham’s Manchester model is built around one central argument: young people need to see a visible path from school into a future. The question now is how much of that approach he chooses to take to the national stage.
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