A national skills strategy for the wider school workforce 2006-09 has been formulated;

The strategy is based around three objectives:

• to support schools as they develop new ways of training and deploying their support staff,
• to create a framework of standards and qualifications to enable schools to develop the potential of all support staff, and
• to extend training opportunities to meet the development needs of all support staff.

This provides a framework for local developments in the school workforce, for example, working with the Learning and Skills Council to develop new approaches to meet the needs of schools and support staff.

Also, developing Extended Schools provision within Birmingham has major implications for the wider workforce and for parent and adult learning.