Reflections from Zack Grimes of ZGMC and chair of the GMLPN Business Development Exchange
Connection over competition: why collaboration is the engine of Greater Manchester’s skills system
The post-16 education and skills sector has rarely faced a landscape this fast-moving or this competitive. Providers are constantly balancing shifting policy, evolving employer demands, funding pressures, and the relentless task of engaging and recruiting learners. In that environment, it is easy to default to a defensive posture and view everything through the narrow lens of competition.
Yet 15 years in education marketing and communications have taught me something different: the real competitive advantage rarely comes from working in isolation. It comes from collaboration.
lessons from the ground up
This isn’t a theoretical position for me; it was forged during my time at Mantra Learning, a proud founding member of GMLPN. At Mantra I saw first-hand that cross-provider collaboration was never just a buzzword — it was central to how we delivered training. Whether we were aligning logistics and automotive provision, matching local employer needs, or building pathways for young people, we consistently achieved more by working with fellow providers and partners than by fencing off our own corner of the market.
Within the Business Development Exchange, we are challenging the idea that providers must always operate as rivals. We treat the network as a collaborative ecosystem, where independent training providers, colleges, and sector leaders come together. By shifting the question from “how do we beat the competition?” to “how do we collectively meet the needs of our region?”, we open up entirely new ways to drive growth and deepen employer engagement.
From transactional to transformational networks
The way partnerships function across our sector has changed fundamentally. Networks were once largely transactional — places to swap business cards and cross-reference policy updates. Today, they have matured into genuine communities of practice.
In our professional exchanges, providers openly share best practice, debate market trends, and tackle shared pain points — from navigating a new Ofsted inspection framework to adapting marketing strategies for harder-to-reach learners. This matters because the challenges we face are now too complex for any single provider to solve alone. When we collaborate on business development and employer engagement, we aren’t simply helping individual providers fill cohorts; we are making sure Greater Manchester’s wider economy gets the skills it needs to thrive.
Navigating the unknown
hat spirit of sharing is needed now more than ever, because we are looking into a genuinely different future. Artificial intelligence is reshaping industries at speed and rewriting the very definition of “entry-level” work. The honest truth is that nobody has all the answers yet. No single provider or agency holds a flawless blueprint for what an AI-shaped workforce will look like in five years’ time.
Because we are all learning in real time, collaboration becomes our most powerful tool: by pooling what we know, we can collectively de-risk innovation, work out what actually works, and strengthen Greater Manchester’s future economy.
A cohesive system for Greater Manchester
My ambition is for this collaborative spirit to become embedded in how every provider operates — not an occasional nicety, but the default. The stakes could hardly be higher. The recent Milburn report on youth unemployment warns of a “generational fault line”, with over a million young people across the UK now detached from education, employment, or training. Its diagnosis is blunt: a system stuck in the past has failed them, and the only credible way to reverse the trend is a genuinely integrated response that bridges education, skills, and employers.
We need a high-quality, inclusive skills system across Greater Manchester — one where information flows freely and joint initiatives are the norm rather than the exception. Through ZGMC and as chair of the BD Exchange, I am determined to keep driving these conversations forward: helping members develop their communications, navigate the shift to AI, and work together to give our region’s young people the futures they deserve.
