About
Our Programmes
We offer residents and businesses across Oxfordshire a wide variety of support to ensure both groups understand the opportunities available to them.
Our support is constantly evolving to suit what our businesses need to help them achieve a successful talent pipeline.
Skills Bootcamps
Funded by the Department of Education, Skills Bootcamps are free, flexible courses of up to 16 weeks for adults aged 19 or over. They give people the opportunity to build up valuable sector-specific skills based on local employer demand and provide a direct path to a job on completion.
Based on local employer demand, Skills Bootcamps provide a direct path to employment upon completion, with a guaranteed job interview at the end of each course for unemployed individuals.
All courses are flexible and include a minimum of 60 hours of learning across a maximum 16-week period, providing learners with several positive outcomes no matter their circumstances.
Apprenticeships & Vocational Pathways
Oxfordshire traditionally has a tight labour market with generally low unemployment.
One of our main strategies is to support an increase in the number of apprenticeships and vocational pathways, particularly within small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), which make up 99% of the county’s employers.
Oxfordshire Careers Hub
Our aim is to help provide clear, diverse and inclusive career pathways for young people to ensure that they are aware of the Oxfordshire labour market and sectors.
Through our partnership with The Careers & Enterprise Company (CEC), we support Careers Leaders in Oxfordshire’s schools and colleges to create careers strategies which will enable their young people to better understand the modern workplace and develop the skills and attributes they need to compete in today’s labour market.
Community Employment Plans (CEPs) aim to enable better access to job and training opportunities for local people. Across Oxfordshire, there are multiple large-scale infrastructure projects being developed or planned. To maximise the benefits from the developments, we offer guidance and support to implement CEPs.
We convene the Training Provider Network, in order to partner with higher and further education providers, independent training providers and employer providers across the county to share good practice, identify and share opportunities and work together towards continual improvement for all learners in Oxfordshire. We are also supporting the delivery of the Provider Access Legislation (PAL) across our CEC networked schools and colleges.
One of our strategic priorities identified in our Local Skills Report and Plan is to raise the profile, value and status of higher technical qualifications through promoting Apprenticeships to Oxfordshire’s employers and residents.
Each year, we celebrate employers and organisations, training providers, career leaders and apprentices through the Oxfordshire Apprenticeship Awards.
The Social Contract is a £1.7million programme of activity funded by the government’s Contain Outbreak Management Fund via Oxfordshire County Council and led by OxLEP Skills. The aim is to address the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic related to the impacts of health and wellbeing through unemployment, barriers to employment, education and training for those most impacted i.e., young people (ages 16-24 years), minority ethnic communities, those furthest from the labour market and the Over 50’s.
Meet the team
Our team brings together a wealth of experience across a number of key areas, all with the aim of supporting Oxfordshire’s young people and business community.
