We commit to playing our part in making our region the best area in the country for young people to grow up, and for children and adults at all ages and all levels of qualification to be supported to learn throughout their lifetimes. Through our research programmes and training functions, and our work on widening participation, we will contribute to addressing the education and skills gaps between Greater Manchester and the rest of the UK and between the most and least advantaged parts of Greater Manchester. We will engage with learners from underrepresented backgrounds through individual and shared access and outreach initiatives. We will build on collaboration with Further Education Colleges and businesses, including through a new Local Skills Improvement Plan, to identify labour market shortages and collectively plan how we will address them. We commit to work with local employers, large and small, to grow the number of Apprentices being trained in Greater Manchester.

We will support the levelling up of opportunities and life-chances between Greater Manchester and the rest of the UK – and between the most and least advantaged towns and districts of Greater Manchester – through our role as key employers and anchor institutions. Working together, we will play our part in reducing inequalities by taking forward relevant elements of the refreshed Greater Manchester Strategy, building on the conclusions of the Independent Inequalities Commission.

We will work with leading innovators from business, science, our own universities and FE colleges and local government to help drive growth and create jobs across Greater Manchester. This will include focusing on growth in digital technology and cyber security. We will further develop the UK’s first city-region wide innovation agency, Innovation GM - a £7bn blueprint focusing on innovation across the region and inclusive economic growth which could create 100,000 jobs, boost R&D investment and ‘level up’ the North, building on our R&D strengths in areas including advanced materials and manufacturing, health innovation, digital and creative, and net zero.

We will work together to support research and new businesses to drive growth in areas such as e-commerce, cyber security, data analytics, creative digital, smart cities and health tech, making Greater Manchester a top-5 European digital city-region. We will provide support for work in cyber security and AI through the Greater Manchester Cyber Foundry and the Greater Manchester AI Foundry. And through Health Innovation Manchester and other institutional initiatives we will improve local people’s health and wellbeing through new technology and devices, digital products and tools, improving prevention, and early detection and treatment of disease.

We will direct our research, innovation, courses and the management of our own estates to support our city region’s ambitious 2038 zero-carbon target. We make a collective commitment to be signatories to Greater Manchester’s 2038 zero carbon plan. We will harness our science and innovation base, study programmes and policy expertise to address the ambition. We will collaborate to ensure that our institutions fully embed the low carbon knowledge and training required for students to be work-ready for their future careers. We commit to working together to set baselines of current emissions and sharing individual formal reduction targets for our institutions in line with our target for zero carbon by 2038.

Greater Manchester is the UK’s most visited city-region outside of London in part because of the strength of our cultural facilities. Our universities contribute to this through our research, study programmes and our stewardship of important cultural institutions and partnerships, as well as our support for creative and cultural education. We will work to make our involvement in the city’s cultural institutions better known and used by a wider population, and grow the opportunities we have for people across the city region to visit us. We will continue to support programmes which use our creative and cultural power to drive economic growth – including through supporting students and graduates into start up enterprises, increasing knowledge exchange around our universities’ output in creative subjects, and supporting students across our city region at all ages to understand the benefits to their future careers from studying creative and cultural subjects.