Numbers are an important part of our work. These targets have to be met in order that we keep our funding. Ideally we like to be less constrained by the numbers game, but we continue to count as we need the funding to support our work. Planning programmes or new activities is never easy. We work with schools, young people and employers, trying to juggle a number of conflicting timescales.
Pressures sometimes make it difficult for organisations to commit to a given activity.
Recently a business adviser to one of our Young Enterprise company's could no longer support the company because of increased work commitments. One of the schools is committed to the Young Enterprise scheme and as the students need another adviser it's our job to make sure they have one. We try to plan for the fact that where a scheme, such as Young Enterprise, requires a long term commitment from an employer, there may be times when they cannot fulfil those obligations. Differing expectations between schools and employers need to be addressed. We were supporting a school on developing an interview skills event and had arranged for a number of employers to come into the school and interview their 6th form students.