Two bits of news

Two small news items including A4e.

The first is a piece in the Sheffield Star about the city's most profitable companies. A4e has moved from 12th place to 4th, it's profits having increased from £5.6m to £9.9m.

The second is a report on the BBC's news website about the young unemployed. It cites A4e's Vox Centre in Brixton (which the piece calls its "flagship centre") which trains youngsters in vocational skills for "entry-level" jobs. Since opening last June they haven't had any success in getting these youngsters into work.

Yet another interview

I know it's tedious to keep reporting Emma Harrison's press interviews. They are simply PR exercises, with compliant journalists failing to do the research or ask the right questions. But there's another such interview in today's Yorkshire Post; and it helps us to see how the spin works.

The interviewer is Sarah Freeman. I have no idea what her area of expertise is, but all she has done is copy down some figures from the ONS (269,00 households where no one has ever worked - pause there for a moment. 25% of households in this country consist of one person. So this isn't quite the same as 269,000 "families" of mum, dad and half a dozen kids all sitting around doing nothing.) And right at the end of the article someone has stuck the latest unemployment figures. In between is the usual spiel from Mrs Harrison; her background, her zeal to get people back to work, the Family Champions scheme; and added to that, the Vox centres. To show that she's human she cites her 16-year-old dyslexic son. Now, a real journalist would, at some point, have brought some facts to the table. The FND results, for instance. Of course, I might be doing Ms Freeman a disservice, and it wasn't her idea to omit the hard questions. And it would be sexist to wonder why Harrison is so often interviewed by women. "Harrison is clearly on a mission," we're told. Oh yes, a PR mission.

Guardian article and Vox

I'd like to point you to an article in the Guardian's "Comment is free" section, by Arec Balrin. He sets out his experience, as a sufferer from autism, with A4e. As always with such articles, the comments which follow show the range of reactions, but it's well worth reading.

On the other hand, there's an article in the Sheffield Star about the opening of the new Vox centre which would have you believe that A4e invented the idea of special provision for difficult school children. "A4e chairman Emma Harrison says the centres have been so successful that local councils have started paying for children to attend because it is cheaper than trying to control them at school, find them when they are truanting or seeking other solutions," she says. The "other solutions" could be the Pupil Referral Units which have been operating up and down the country under the control of local authorities for years. They are staffed by experienced, specialist teachers and overseen by management committees which comprise councillors, local head teachers and representatives of the community. They are funded by the local council, and many of them get very good results. Harrison says Vox have got attendance up to "in some cases" 85%. That's normal for the PRUs. So why would councils want to abandon PRUs and pay to put kids into A4e provision? Only because it could work out cheaper. That's how creeping privatisation works.

Vox and meetings

If you don't read the Daily Express (and why would you?) you'll have missed Emma Harrison's Jobs Tips. Not to worry, you can read them on A4e's website. Your confidence in A4e's competence may be shaken, however, by the howler in the introduction - "ensuring your poised and ready for an interview". Anyone applying for a job would be well advised to do better than that on their CV.

A growing part of A4e's business are the Vox centres, which give skills training to children and young people who have been excluded from schools. Emma is opening the 10th such centre today, at Sheffield Wednesday football club. She seems to think that it's "a fascinating new model"; the private company stands the cost of setting up the institution and the local authority buys places in it. It is not new at all. Private companies running special schools, for instance, operate on exactly the same model. It doesn't look as if any of these centres have been inspected by Ofsted yet. Emma says she's not concerned about public sector cuts, and she may well be justified.

One company which has decided that the Work Programme is too big a risk is Sarina Russo, an Australian outfit. Despite being put on the framework they've announced that they are not going to bid for any of the contracts as prime contractor. They say that they support the payment model, but they only want to be sub-contractors. That's going to leave only a handful of companies, like A4e and Serco, which are willing to take the financial risk.

Ex-A4e employee Hayley Taylor who, in a few short months, rose to "international careers expert" has had a meeting with Chris Grayling. She says, "it was good to hear that the issues the unemployed face are being addressed, although it remains to be seen what the outcome will be." One wonders whether Grayling is meeting any of the unemployed.

Corporate Watch

The Corporate Watch website is always worth a look; but there are a couple of articles from April this year which are particularly relevant. One is titled "Political deployments of the unemployment ‘crisis’" and deals with the whole history of welfare to work. It looks at "propaganda as news" with a close look at recent television programmes and local press stories concerning A4e. Another article asks "Who benefits from the benefits system?" and contains more history and a long list of figures for "New Deal private sector providers and the amounts received from the DWP in the financial year 2008-9". (A4e is a long way in the lead with £84,433,506 for its 11 contracts.)

From welfare-to-work to education: A4e has opened its eighth Vox Centre in Brixton. These are privatised school exclusion units which offer skills training. They claim that 2009/2010 figures show that 75% of their alumni move into jobs or further education. There are no comparative figures for local authority units.