Analysis of Pathways to Work performance (October 09 figures)

The DWP have released official statistics for Pathways to Work performance, available through their website and as attachments at the bottom of this article. These differ from monthly league tables by being more accurate and less up-to-date. Here are the headline figures:

Starts (to end of April 2009)
333,730 starts (of which 268,540 registered with a provider) to Provider-Led
Pathways to Work for 325,520 individuals, including:

• 139,290 starts for mandatory customers in Phase 1 districts
• 103,710 starts for mandatory customers in Phase 2 districts
• 47,550 starts for voluntary customers in Phase 1 districts
• 43,190 starts for voluntary customers in Phase 2 districts

25,870 job entries (of which 17,170 had registered with a provider) for 25,220
individuals, including:

• 8,730 job entries for mandatory customers in Phase 1 districts
• 4,310 job entries for mandatory customers in Phase 2 districts
• 8,410 job entries for voluntary customers in Phase 1 districts
• 4,420 job entries for voluntary customers in Phase 2 districts

Macaveat: The Mystery Cat

A longer time period for results has not removed the large warning label that came attached to the previous analysis. The job entry results date from January, when Employment and Support Allowance was still bedding in, and before the Pathways review team got to work. Any analysis of results also ignores local conditions, differences in contract targets, and misalignment of a customer's best interests and DWP performance criteria. Taken together, this makes finer grained analysis, e.g. comparison of individual providers, of limited use. I'm going to have a go anyway, but don't say you weren't warned, and feel free to add your own caveats.

Provider vs Jobcentre

Even though we're only looking at provider-led Pathways in this analysis, there are still two sets of results. One set of results covers all claimants who start Pathways to Work, including those who have not registered with a provider. The other set only covers claimants who have registered with a provider. So a claimant who undergoes their Jobcentre WFI but leaves before meeting a provider will count toward the first set but not the second.

The headline is that there is a startling discrepancy between the figures. One in three Pathways to Work customers who enters work, does so before they reach a provider. While part of this could be from the time lag - customers who have entered the Pathways process but were still waiting to see a provider at the time of measurement - surely the difference couldn't be so great? Suggestions welcome, but the rest of the analysis uses the provider figures in the meantime.

Overall performance

To relate job entries to starts on provision, we need to make sure they operate on the same timescales. Assuming (for no good reason) that it takes an average of two months from provision start for a customer to find a job, we should use starts up until November, given that we have job entries up until January:

• 171,450 total starts (98,270 mandatory, 73,180 voluntary)
• 17,170 job entries (4,660 mandatory, 12,510 voluntary)
• This gives a job entry rate of 10% (5% mandatory, 17% voluntary)

The mandatory customer job entry rate is so low that it's easy to see why the point of mandating customers has been questioned. As already mentioned though, the assumption of two months mean time to enter work makes this a somewhat questionable figure. Additionally, 13,040 / 143,070 = 9% of mandatory entrants get jobs when taken from the very start of the process, raising questions over a possible deterrent effect. The voluntary customer job entry rate is much more creditable, if still way below contractual job entry targets.

Provider comparison

With all the usual warnings, here's how providers are measuring up in performance, measured as job entries to January 2009 against starts to November 2008:

Provider	Starts	Job entries	JE%
--Total	218510	25870	12%
A4e	42760	5970	14%
Ingeus	42820	4640	11%
RBLI	5650	570	10%
RBLI AND A4e	7200	760	11%
Reed in Partnership	22520	1890	8%
Remploy	7580	730	10%
Seetec	9270	1020	11%
Shaw Trust	40090	5170	13%
TNG	4780	660	14%
TNG AND Intraining	3610	370	10%
Triage Central	5510	1170	21%
Working Links	19970	2210	11%
Working Links AND Intraining	6890	700	10%

It's worth noting that Reed's provisions are concentrated in London, which historically performs less well than other areas (see this analysis for details). There's not much more to say on this - there are too many factors at work to draw any meaningful conclusions.

Attachment	Size
Performance tables, with some data sifting already done	42 KB