– Guy Horridge

Good morning President Foote and honoured members of the councils. It is a great privilege to be with you today to talk about my organisation, CVQO, leading the way and, in particular, how we work with youth at risk.

CVQO is an education charity which was established in its own right in 2001. It is based in the United Kingdom but covers many countries throughout the world. Our vision is to improve the lives of young people and adults through vocational education, training and development. We exist because we wanted to meet a need.

Originally, this was for young people in youth groups who were at risk. We wanted to validate their experience and show that what they had learned within their youth organisations had value outside, in both the workplace and beyond. CVQO exists today because more and more people need an alternative to traditional education to show that they are clever, creative and capable of achieving great things.

CVQO exists and thrives because more and more people like you, in many countries, are realising the value of a vocational education and how vital it is to the balanced development of their education system, workforce and, ultimately, the growth and development of their communities and commerce.

CVQO is particularly proud to be accredited by three of the world’s leading education bodies. These are:- Pearson/Edexcel, City and Guilds and the Institute of Leadership and Management. I think I can safely say that there are few organisations that can rival such an approval system from three such august awarding bodies.

That, in itself, is a great accolade for the young people who wish to do our qualifications.
So what do we do?

Quite simply, we improve lives through vocational education. Over 100,000 young people over the past 10 years have benefited from our imaginative and varied awards.

We believe that the knock-on effect of these qualifications is that by improving the individual there is a benefit to communities and, therefore, de facto to the wider social public and society. We work in partnership with youth organisations, schools, governments and any other relevant bodies to offer bespoke vocational qualifications.

We recognise that there is a global skills gap in leadership and management and our programmes are designed to help close this gap. Thus, CVQO can be seen as an enabler. It is a catalyst for change to education that leaves a lasting legacy of benefits and often with immediate results.

So what else do we do?
We enable young people and adults to show what they know by what they do. It is that practical aspect that shows that they have the capability. Therefore, our programmes are a long way from classic classroom learning. They are innovative and progressive training and include development activities that enable the learner to discover and develop their skills, confidence and self-worth.

At one extreme, this means that we take young people at risk who are struggling at school or facing exclusion and have an unsure future and we help them get back on track. In one overseas country, this has meant that our programmes are being used to rescue young people from a life of crime. We are involved in their youth rehabilitation service with their prison services for some of their young people who have not yet committed serious crimes but they are at risk of being sucked in to a downward spiral, perhaps drug taking and involved in petty theft. On some occasions we have actually had to deal with stabbings and gun crime as well.

The heart of what we do is progressive learning. We believe that learning is like an escalator. You get on to this escalator at the appropriate level for where you are and then you seamlessly move up and get off when you have reached your limit. For us there are no limits. We take young people and adults to where they need to get to.

Therefore, we have qualifications from a Level 1 for school-aged children, all the way through to a Level 7 Master’s degree. No other organisation, I believe, offers such variety and such intensity. We are extremely proud of this. For example, many of our adult learners who, for whatever reason did not go to University, have now achieved a Master’s level qualification. Understandably they are hugely proud of this because they have proved to the world and, more importantly, to themselves that they are very capable people.

A lot of vocational qualifications are about building self-confidence and this leads to respect and achievement. Thus, with this confidence, they have a sense of value and the empowerment to become an effective leader to make positive change.

So, you ask, why vocational qualifications? What is our goal for that? My answer is simply that learning can and must take many routes. Not everybody learns in the same way and because of that many people are denied those life-changing opportunities that are afforded by having a recognised qualification. So often, the less obvious skill sets are the ones that enable people to bring about change and, of course, they become great innovators and, hopefully, leaders as well. You only have to look at some of the most charismatic people that the world has seen and their formal qualifications were not always high level ones but they nonetheless showed great leadership and vision. Nelson Mandela and Gandhi are perhaps two obvious examples.

Let us not forget too that good, confident leadership is a powerful skill and is valuable wherever you are in the world. It is a fact that business is looking to invest in new territories and will be looking for an effective workforce that has good leaders in place.

Let me give you an example here of Steven. Steven had family problems and left home at a young age. This was followed by a period of not going to school and ultimately living on the streets. By the age of 12 he faced a very bleak future. Steven decided to join a uniformed youth group and he enrolled for the CVQO-led BTEC Level 1 in Teamwork, Personal Skills and Citizenship which he passed with flying colours.

This was the very first qualification he had ever obtained, in fact, it was the first time that anybody had ever said, “Well done”, to him and shown him some respect. His self-confidence grew, his whole personality changed because he had found a way to show off his skills. It could be seen that more traditional methods did not allow him to show his true worth. The course he undertook develops life skills to improve employability, encourages a sense of community, responsibility, problem-solving, teamwork and career support.

The great news is that as Steven went through his youth organisation, completing our qualifications, this led him to an offer of an apprenticeship with British Gas with a course in electronic engineering at college. None of this would have been possible without somebody changing his life. Another example is of an adult, Adrian, who had never achieved a high level qualification at school, he just had a handful of very modest certificates. He studied through CVQO and underwent a Graduateship in Leadership and Management with City and Guilds. This helped him to gain a place at University to study for a BSc in Professional Practice in Emergency Care. Soon after this course he told me that it had helped him on to a management role in the Ambulance Service and he became what is a called a Clinical Practice Tutor (what you and I might know as a paramedic). He uses his CVQO-led qualification to teach future clinicians. The key to this story is that Adrian succeeded and CVQO was able to offer him that life-long learning opportunity and his age was irrelevant. This is what is so wonderful.

I would like to tell you now about the Schools Partnership Project that we run. This is a relatively new project that is based in schools where we have, so far, enrolled over 850 disengaged learners between the ages of 12 and 15. These are young people who were truanting from school and their education was falling behind. They were not chosen by us but by the schools and by the community.

Of these pupils, over 750 achieved their BTEC Level 1 in Teamwork, Personal Skills and Citizenship. This is an amazing achievement rate of 88%. Let me be quite clear here that these young people probably would not have achieved any qualification in their lives had it not been for this course. Therefore, this means that 88% of them came back into education. Not only did they achieve an education but the schools reported a 75% increase in improvement of behaviour and one school, for example, reported a 45% decrease in exclusions throughout the school. So this project really does make a difference. These young people are taught self-respect, how to respect other people and how to survive. They are put in scenarios which will be a little bit different for them and they have to respond. It is challenging but also extremely rewarding.

CVQO works all over the world and I could list the countries but, suffice to say, that we work in the United Kingdom, through Europe, into Africa, into the Far East and the Caribbean. Over the past decade more countries and more partners are wishing to join up with us. Why? Because our courses can be mapped to suit their local needs. The BTEC, ILM and City and Guilds qualifications are internationally recognised and are probably the most valued in the world. CVQO can train people locally to deliver courses and all of our materials can be translated into other languages if so required. Most importantly, in territories where overseas inward trade investment is being looked for. These overseas investment businesses will value CVQO’s international qualifications and this will allow the local workforce’s skills to be properly recognised.

One aspect I am very proud of, out of the many things we do, is how well we are run as a charity. As a registered charity we are bound by very strict rules over how we manage our money and, therefore, it is incumbent upon us, as it is of course on anybody else, to ensure that every pound we spend goes to the benefit of the learners. This means keeping our costs low, working hard with our partners to raise funds and to deliver effective support for the young people. In fact, I am very proud that for every dollar we spend on education, over 98% of it goes on our charitable activities. Why is this important? Because every pound or dollar investment in education spent wisely is going to deliver significant returns in the long run. To be candid, and this is something I want to emphasise, I believe CVQO is very good value for money.

Let me tell you about a couple of other activities we have been involved in internationally. CVQO sponsored a project called “CVQO and Education – Caribbean Youth at Risk”. This project is all about how young people are at risk and struggling and very vulnerable to crime in certain Caribbean countries. CVQO’s courses have helped bring them back into meaningful employment. One very successful example of this is MILAT.

MILAT, the military-led training academy in Trinidad, hosted a 3 year full-time social intervention programme for at risk young men aged 16 to 20. These MILAT cadets were registered for the CVQO-led BTEC Level 2 in Public Services and some of them also for the ILM Level 2. This gave these young people the chance to earn a meaningful qualification they could take into the workplace and it is interesting to note that they are finding employment partly as a result of the CVQO qualification.

In addition, CVQO has been approached to begin the development of ILM qualifications for the MILAT staff and to work more closely with the government in Trinidad and Tobago on new educational programmes. So far, on a trial, over 30 members of the Trinidad and Tobago Cadet Force have completed their BTEC Level 2.

Whilst our qualifications are all about helping young people, striving for excellence must not be seen as a negative. Each year CVQO runs the Duke of Westminster Award with the aim of finding an outstanding young person who has achieved something special, perhaps a deeply personal achievement. It is a very tough competition and we look to find the best out of 20,000 possible candidates. Last year’s winner was Daniel who has an interesting story. At 3 years of age he saw his father being stabbed to death by his mother. He then spent the next 10 years in foster care before finding himself on the verge of a life of crime and prison. Luckily he made a life-changing decision and joined a youth organisation and, as a result, took a CVQO-led BTEC. He has now transformed his life, completed a second qualification with CVQO and was awarded the St John Ambulance First Aider of the Year Certificate. Amazing that from these roots such a flower has blossomed. A very impressive young man.

There is one persistent element that runs through all that I have said today. It is that by working together through vocational education there is an opportunity to build a brighter future for so many people.

I would like to leave you with the following points:-
• CVQO programmes are proven to work
• They are easy to run and administer
• They are cost-effective with very low financial investment
• Importantly, they also provide a lasting legacy of benefits
• They are a long-term solution but they give immediate results

Finally, I finish with this Chinese proverb:- “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

Thank you very much for this opportunity to share with you the wonderful things that CVQO does to help youth at risk and others to achieve their maximum.