There’s been a wave of first dates in Liverpool in the last few weeks. Libraries and community centres across the borough of Halton have hosted a dozen meetings between nervous people who have never met before.

In each pair is one person who can’t read. This group includes young mums who, having seen their children go to school, want to do something different with their lives. There are people who have been in care and had a negative experience of education. And there are older residents who have just about managed to cope with limited literacy, but find themselves unable to get a job.

The second group is made up of people “who have got a bit of spare time on their hands”, explains Siobhan Saunders, the borough council’s divisional manager for employment, learning and skills. “They might be retired. They might be employed but want to put something back into the community. We’ve even got a retired, married couple who wanted to do something together.”

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Liverpool's 'Test and Learn' AEB pilot

These volunteers have come through a five-week training programme, and are now ready to help their new partner start learning to read.

It’s an unashamedly small-scale project, offering valuable one-to-one tuition. And it’s one which, under the restrictive funding rules and financial pressures of the national adult education budget (AEB), would be virtually impossible to fund.

But it is part of an innovative new £2.2 million programme being run by the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority. Called “Test and Learn”, it allows providers up to £50,000 to experiment with new and innovative approaches to delivering English for speakers of other languages (Esol), digital or literacy and numeracy skills.

These are curriculum areas which Steve Rotheram, metro mayor of the Liverpool City Region, describes as “known local market failures”.

City of Liverpool College, for instance, has introduced a staffed "talk café", supporting Esol learners with peer language practice opportunities. Riverside College focused on upskilling and reskilling employed learners through bite-sized learning in digital skills, while Hugh Baird College set up a workshop-style approach to allow more flexibility for hard-to-reach English and maths students.

No string attached

For providers, the only rule is that there are no rules. “The only restrictions that we put on the funding were that they have to properly evaluate their effectiveness,” says Rotheram. “Other than that, it was up to them.”

The project has been made possible by the devolution of the AEB to seven regions of England. Instead of being funnelled from central government, some £630 million was shared across regional combined authorities.

Of this, £51 million went to Liverpool. And the authority took the bold decision of handing over 4 per cent of this with no strings attached.

It was a gamble – but a gamble the authority deemed necessary to improve the quality of provision on offer in the region.

“What all of the pilots have in common is boldness and innovation,” Rotheram adds. “By their very nature, we know that not all of them will be successful. Like start-up companies many will fall by the wayside. But, with our partners, we will evaluate them rigorously and make sure that those things that work will be identified and brought into the mainstream.”

Making experimentation affordable

In Halton, the council has taken this approach to heart by deliberately using the funding to try out approaches it couldn’t otherwise afford to deploy.

“Lots of people come to us who can’t read, or have got very low levels of reading skills,” says Saunders. “Clearly trying to support those people to progress into employment is something that requires quite intensive support.

“If you’re going to use your mainstream adult education budget to pay for one tutor to support one learner or a couple of learners, with economies of scale, it is going to be a good use of money [for the learners] but it’s not going to give us the learner numbers that we need.”

The volunteers taking part in the first wave of the pilot have undergone five weeks of training. The organisers have already learned one valuable lesson: six or seven weeks would allow them to prepare the volunteers more effectively. At the end of this process, the individuals are then paired with an individual who is keen to learn to read.

So far, so good

“It’s like a dating game then, we match the volunteer to a suitable non-reader,” Saunders explains. “There’s a bit of hand holding at the start. Usually these meetings take place somewhere public, like in a library or community centre. It’s a safe environment for both the volunteer and the individual.”

And while there are only 12 learners signed up for the year-long programme so far, the early signs are promising. There have been no drop outs, either among the volunteers or learners, and a new cohort is due to start in February.

This is no mean feat, Saunders says. “There are still lots of ways that people who don’t read can get away with it. They might just say, ‘I’ve forgotten my glasses, or they’ll ask somebody else to read something out for them.

“The [first cohort of learners] are very brave in admitting they want help and they can’t read. On both sides, it’s just a lovely project.”

And Saunders is optimistic that the findings from this project could shape policy beyond the city of Liverpool.

“We hope we can get another year of funding. We hope we can put evidence to government that’s it’s a scheme that needs to be rolled out.”

This is the first in the #SkillsEvolution series of articles, exploring the impact that skills devolution is having across England.