1) A good business model for schools is that of a franchise.
2) The teacher of last resort is the Department of Education.
3) Schools should be given bonuses based on quality and improvement (results).
4) Results should be individually printed rather than displayed on wall charts (DPA).
5) No religious affliation; and religious education done by local priests.
Is there really any need for Religious Education in the school curriculum once a student reaches the last 2/3 years of school. Surely this subject could be added into the History subject and then schools could focus on providing a subject such as basic health and safety. This would give all students regardless of the profession they finally follow, a good stead into ‘real life’. It also would provide a path for those students to progress into the health and safety industry.
The way I see it, from previous experiance of attending a religious secondary school. People who are from a religious background are brought up with religion as a day to day occurrence in their life, so do they really need educating on this subject. Then you have those who are not interested in religion are very rarely going to take this into their life after school years.
Our skills base will be even lower in the future e.g. I have a nephew living in London aged 17 years and he has so far done qualifications in carpentry and joinery at College – it’s all he wants to do. Now he needs an apprenticeship and they are few and far between compared to 40 or even 20 years ago. He is willing to travel anywhere in the country and is an intelligent , diligent and enthusiastic worker and yet is getting depressed because of lack of opportunities. The system of the 60s and 70s may not have been perfect but at least it trained young people who wanted to learn practical skills. I am the lucky beneficiary of a world class UK education – degree, masters, diplomas and 2 teaching certs. etc etc. I really believe in the young people of today and see how their motivation becomes lacking after failure in any aspect of education and training. Therefore I say bring back apprenticeships and widen them out in all subjects as a recognisable qualification at alevel corresponding to NVQ levels, which employers have taken years to learn the levels and some are still not sure.
Having also taught NVQs and listened to some of the criticism of them, from well trained “old timers” I conclude that they are not as effective as the old systems of training especially in areas such as painting and decorating.
Please government remember the young people who are currently looking for apprenticeships and work as you extend the working life of the older generation – they are our future – not the elderly.
I represent one of the main engineering professional institutions.It’s regrettable that BIS’s template ‘response’ document doesn’t identify PROFESSIONAL BODIES as a constituency from which responses will be expected. We are crucially important stakeholders and should be recognised as such in all future govt consultations of this kind.
Note from BIS: the List of Organisations to be Consulted is not an exhaustive list of those that we’d like to hear from. We are keen to receive responses from all interested parties and individuals. Please do get in touch if you have views that you’d like to share with us.
Abolish Energy and Utility Skills we didn’t need them they only hamper the development of standards. It’s qualint to think the EU sector is as one – it’s not – they don’y and won’t work together. EUSkills has dreamed up several hapless iniatives to keep everyone busy. In the last srandards development they used a highly paid non-competent preson to deliver this and we ended up with a gobbledygook set of qualifications. Nice office in Solihull.
There is a crisis in training the next generation of upholsterers and soft furnishers, the type of training being funded as well as the loss of existing courses. Businesses want new staff with a certain level of practical skills, but some of them simply aren’t big enough to do the training themselves. From my position as Director of Training for the Association of Master Upholsterers & Soft Furnishers there are a lot of people wanting to join the industry.
Proskills, the skills council that looks after the furniture and furnishings sector, indentifies that the total size of the Furniture, Furnishings and Interiors Manufacturing sector in the UK is around 120,000 people in 12,200 companies. The industry consists mainly of micro companies, with around 80% of organisations employing less than 10 people. Only 5% of companies have over 50 employees, but between them they employ 47% of the workforce. These larger companies are well served with the modern apprenticeship scheme. But these figures do not include one-man-band businesses or those self employed, which form the major proportion of the upholstery and soft furnishings sector.
The most common skills gaps in the Furniture, Furnishings and Interiors Manufacturing industry are those relating to technical, practical or job-specific skills.
There are pronounced differences in the approach to training between large, small and micro companies. Larger companies are more likely to carry out training. However the financial cost of learning is the most common barrier to training, particularly the SMEs. A one-man operation does not have the time or resources to teach someone who is totally “green” without it affecting their own productivity, but given someone with good basic practical skills they can move them on and develop them into efficient productive employees with skills that will serve them for the rest of their lives.
So what’s the problem? It’s a Catch 22 situation: if courses don’t fit the very strict official requirements, they don’t get funding (one of the issues at Herefordshire College of Technology). But there’s just no funding available for the master craftsman who wants to pass on his skills on a one-to-one basis, despite the fact there are craftspeople out there who would be willing to do this; and plenty of people wanting to do the job! As the Heritage Crafts Association said in a recent press release: “Such craftspeople are not interested in NVQs, quangos, priority provision or endless paperwork – they just care about their skills and want to pass them on.”
For those who have found trainee positions within larger companies there are courses to attend on day release or in blocks in order to obtain qualifications in modern foam upholstery techniques, some of which might attract funding via schemes like the Modern Apprenticeship scheme, but traditional craft techniques are not supported. What is available varies around the country depending on regional priorities.
But there is virtually nowhere currently where young people can get funded pre-employment training to the level of skills that smaller businesses, not in a position to do their own training, require.
Today’s accredited courses tend to place the emphasis on acquiring skills in units – you don’t have to necessarily complete a full course to get a qualification – you get interim awards for each module as you go along. It’s meant to be an incentive to students but it actually misleads them into false expectations. They think they’ve got a qualification after a few weeks or months when actually all they may have learnt by that stage is the most basic of skills, which is no good to an employer. So when they go for a job saying ‘I’m qualified’ they’re just not to the level required.
The City & Guilds Technical Certificate in traditional craft skills are good practical skills based courses, but since they were dropped by the London Metropolitan University two years ago, there are few places running them. Herefordshire College of Technology is the latest to end their craft courses as they didn’t fit into any of the available funding “boxes”.
The AMUSF developed its own training qualifications around six years ago – which are now taught in a number of small, privately run training centres around the country (Hertfordshire, Cornwall, Wales, Cumbria, Leicestershire & Shropshire). It’s a good practical skills based course, which seeks to deliver what upholstery businesses want. But they are not accredited on the QCF – Qualification Credit Framework – and as such are not eligible for government funding. These courses are excellent for those already working in upholstery businesses. They also attract many students not employed in the industry who would like to be, but because of the lack of funding, they are inevitably highly motivated and usually older – 30 plus. Because of this, some upholsterers are reluctant to take on older graduates – they can see their motivation as a threat, where it should be an asset. These older more motivated students are often career-changers looking to start new businesses or mothers looking at their long-term future and wanting a career in something that they can fit around childcare. Many of my past students have gone on to work for existing upholsterers or have started their own businesses, some of which are also employing other graduates.
The AMUSF along with the Worshipful Company of Upholders and Proskills are talking to New Bucks University, about developing the AMUSF traditional upholstery qualifications into accredited ones, which might mean more colleges can take them up, but there is still no guarantee they will attract government funding. Hopefully, in the process of being re-worked to fit required standards they won’t be spoiled. These courses have been developed by the trade for the trade. A member of the AMUSF recently commented that he wanted someone who could stitch well and produce beautiful work that his customers wanted. As long as they could read the end of the tape measure, he would be happy.
Traditional upholstery is still a valid craft, which takes time to learn and master, but it is not a dying craft. Traditional upholstery produces furniture that will last at least a generation, unlike much of the modern foam upholstery that can have a life span of between 1 and 10 years depending in its quality, and that ends up in landfill.
The Association of Master Upholsterers & Soft Furnishers, along with other associations with traditional skills training interests, would like to draw to Government’s attention the current mis-match between what’s being provided and what’s needed in terms of accredited training courses and press for more training funding to be directed straight to employers to choose what’s most relevant for them.
WENDY SHORTER
DIRECTOR OF TRAINING FOR
THE ASSOCIATION OF MASTER UPHOLSTERERS & SOFT FURNISHERS
I am 46 years old and have spent my life working to live if I had been taught a skill at school I might have been able to live to work and enjoyed my life more feeling I was valued rather than reaching this point in my life wondering what I had spent my years doing. I am desperate to retrain to gain a better way of life and make a contribution back. If I could I would learn metal working skills. the kids now have little or no chance of developing anything much.
Have you contacted nextstep to see if you could do some training? Go to this website …. http://careersadvice.direct.gov.uk/ …. You will be able to get lots of advice on-line or you can ring for advice or set up an appointment with someone in your local area. If you are in work/volunteering at the moment there may be opportunities to get training through a Government scheme called Train to Gain …. You could ask about this … If you are not in work/volunteering there may be courses you could do too … Worth logging on to the website to find out more. Hope this helps.
I was very worried by the lack of attention paid to the urgent issue of transition to a low carbon/sustainable economy as this is an urgent issue which wasn’t reflected in the questions and the priorities they imply. Measuring success just by business output and GDP is crazy as it generally requires increasing consumption and we are already are consuming resources faster than we can replenish them. It also means the media focuses news stories solely on consumption, giving the impression that we need to buy more to make our country successful. We need new metrics of success such as a well-being index that give greater focus and air time to social and environmental indices if we want a truly sustainable economy.
In response to Q. 16 & 17 specifically, you would do well to do away with the Skills Funding Agency and their heavy handed approach to IAG. They have created a monster in ‘Next Step’. It is so user unfriendly, all in the interests of creating a universal service that is the same for everyone, they have created a bureacratic nightmare with reams of useless paper and people having to sign endless forms and most importantly individuals not getting what they want. They are not customers they are individuals and they all have different needs. Any IAG service needs to be flexible to move people from where they are now to where they want to be. Quality can be built in and market forces allow people to use the service they choose and the one that does the best for them. We recently lost our Next Step contract, as the Careers Services wanted to do more themselves, despite the loss of income all our advisers were relieved that they could now actually do their job and work with the individual instead of worrying about filling in boxes on the computer and getting 3 signatures for every contact they had. We would have no problem with an all age service, this would make sense, but please please please get rid of the bureacratic nightmare which is the SFA !
The Skills Strategy makes no mention of those furthest away from the labour market. We work with disadvantaged young adults aged 16-30, not currently economically active. We provide flexible opportunities in a holistic way for them to re-engage in learning and employment. Last year, 25% of our clients went onto jobs, education, work-based training or volunteering. The majority of this work relies on project-based funding and we have no idea if there will be any money for this in the future. We are currently applying to be part of partnerships to deliver the new DWP Work programme but as a ‘specialist provider’ this will probably result in us receiving relatively small amounts of funding and will nowhere near cover the true costs of delivering our much-needed services.
Q16 How can we improve the accessibility and quality of careers information, advice and guidance (IAG) servies for adults?
Presently, IAG is rarely available to people in the non-unionised workplace. However, In the North West region we have a Skills Funding Agency/European Social Fund initiative called Learning Advocates – http://www.learningadvocates.co.uk …. This initiative encourages non-unionised companies to nominate a member of staff to become the company “mini careers adviser”. After a short training course they go back into their workplace and encourage colleagues into learning. They have a particular focus on promoting basic skills training/Train to Gain/apprenticeships to their companies. This type of initiative is a very cost effective way of improving the accessibility of IAG for people in the workplace. The initiative complements the work of Unionlearn but operates in the non-unionised sector.
My comment is regarding the continued reduction in funding for the Arts and Humanities. While Science and Technology are valuable to the economy, so are the Arts and Humanities subjects. My experience of this is that we are rapidly becoming a second class country in terms of Literary scholarship, and considering we are (apparently) the home of English and the English language it is appalling that funding in these areas is so easily reduced, particularly considering David Willetts has a Degree in Classics, and that employers are complaining about UK graduates having a poor grasp of English.
The comments I wish to make concern the development of skills in the workplace, or “workforce development” as it has been known in recent years.
The Leitch report identified that a large proportion of the future workforce is already employed, so that improving the skills of people leaving schools, colleges and higher education will not in itself be enough to ensure the UK has the skilled workforce it needs to be globally competitive.
Leitch’s answer, or rather the way New Labour interpreted the report, was to bombard the workforce with qualifications without any clear idea of what exactly these were supposed to achieve, or how their effectiveness could be measured. This was an incredibly wasteful way of going about things.
Before any government intervenes in the arena of skills development it needs to take time to understand how skills development happens, where it’s not working very well and what, if anything, the government can do about it.
The first thing to understand is that giving people the skills they need to function in their job role is relatively straightforward. Demand is clear and articulate – it would a be a very stupid employer who buys a piece of equipment and then doesn’t show people how to use it – and is often underpinned by legislative and regulatory requirements. This training has got to happen, the employer goes to market to source it and the market, in the vast majority of cases, delivers it. The employer may grumble at the cost, but it is a simple business expense like any other.
There is rarely any need to intervene in this sort of training, still less fund it. Occasionally there may be issues of elasticity of supply (all the trainers are 58 and it takes 3 years to train a good trainer) but Sector Skills Councils should be keeping an eye on this.
In contrast to giving people the basic skills to do their job, developing people’s skills, which is what is needed if British industry is to prosper, is a lot more complex. Firstly demand is not nearly so immediate or articulate. Whether any skills development happens at all is down to the employer choosing to invest in it. And for this investment in skills development to be successful, and so repeated rather than being a one off it can be afforded, three key elements need to be in place:
1. The employer and learner need to know what this learning is for, what it’s designed to achieve – what is the question to which training is the answer?
2. The training itself needs to be good, with good teachers inspiring learners who have the ability and desire to learn
3. Both the employer and learner need to apply and sustain the learning back in the workplace, the employer through good performance management and the learner through critical self assessment and the taking on of feedback and support.
The problem too often is that there has been far too much focus on (2) above – the training, the qualifications, are they “fit for purpose” “demand led” etc etc. This perpetuates the attitude that developing people’s skills is the responsibility of the training supply side (training companies, HR departments etc) who themselves perpetuate this myth by marketing their products as “training solutions”.
In fact training is a very small part of any genuine skills development “solution”. Skills development in the workplace is ultimately the responsibility of the employer and the learner and it the ducking of these responsibilities (1) and (3) above that is at the root of the UK skills crisis. Previous government policy has actually made the situation worse, throwing money at basic training that employers will pay for anyway and assuming that simply making the supply side “demand led” would solve everything.
The UKCES does in fact have three priorities – reforming the skills landscape, increasing employer demand and increasing learner ambition. Regrettably far too much time and resource has been expended on the first of these without anyone seriously tackling the other two – the SSCs themselves have been particularly negligent in this respect, concentrating instead developing “sector specific solutions” to justify their existence.
So my advice would be to switch the emphasis away from this endless obsession with qualifications and training – broadly speaking if training and qualifications add any value people should be prepared to pay for them, just as they would an IT system or new premises. The emphasis instead needs to be on increasing employer demand and learner ambition which can be boiled down to two areas:
• Improve the way companies are run, by improving the leadership skills of the people running them. A well run company will know what skills development it needs, why it needs it and what it needs to do to sustain its benefits. All the funding in the world is no substitute for this critical awareness which need not be generated by sending people on expensive courses, but rather by devising a strategy that relies on more imaginative and effective interventions.
• Improve the literacy and numeracy levels of the workforce, transforming the lives of the people involved. No learner will benefit if they struggle to engage, lack confidence in their ability and feel that learning is “not for them”. We still have a massive issue of literacy and numeracy the surface of which has been barely scratched. Yet the value added by investing in this learning remains enormous, on all sorts of levels both inside and outside the workplace. Again, while SSCs have done their best to increase uptake of NVQs (which add very little value) they have barely paid any attention to literacy and numeracy at all (a glance at their web sites will show you how important they consider this issue)
In short, stand back and have a good think, start with a clean sheet of paper and be aware of the massed ranks of vested interests desperate to preserve as much of the current bloated structure as they can. If I can be of any further help do get in touch.
Yes to achieve a stratgey for sustainable growth we must have education and skills training but what is the use of this when the goverment wont allow you to train when you are unemployed by stopping your benefits surley by the goverment allowing people to train or to take up further education paying unemployment benefits would be extremely helpful in sustainable growth for the country while you have people with out the skills and the education needed to fill the skill voids stuck on unemployment benefits for years and years then sustainable growth will never fully be achieved .The potential is out there it just needs to be given the opertunity by the british goverment to prove that people are willing to learn and be trained to gain the skills to help put this country back on its feet not every person wants to live off benefits and these people need this goverment or any goverment to invest in them by allowing them to prove they want to learn want to work want to pay back to society paying their taxes and insurances and pensions from jobs gained from the goverment showing inisitive in stead of negativety I am one of these unemployed people that wants to learn new skills to be re educated and allowed to re -enter the job market on a even playing field with out the skilled and trained labour sustainable growth will stagnate till common sence prevails . A.W.Longmoor
Currently there is a national initiative in unionised workplaces called Unionlearn. There is no national initiative for non-unionised workplaces. I have been trained as a Learning Advocate in the North West region – http://www.learningadvocates.co.uk ….. I am now able to support my work colleagues into learning. I think it would be useful to have this initiative available nationally and for the government to support the continued work of Learning Advocates in our region.”
“Currently there is a national initiative in unionised workplaces called Unionlearn. There is no national initiative for non-unionised workplaces. I have been trained as a Learning Advocate in the North West region – http://www.learningadvocates.co.uk ….. I am now able to support my work colleagues into learning. I think it would be useful to have this initiative available nationally and for the government to support the continued work of Learning Advocates in our region.”
ESB’s response is to support the FAB response in full. We have been engaged in consultation discussions with FAB and agree with all points of their statement.
Currently there is a national initiative in unionised workplaces called Unionlearn. There is no national initiative for non-unionised workplaces. I have been trained as a Learning Advocate in the North West region – http://www.learningadvocates.co.uk ….. I am now able to support my work colleagues into learning. I think it would be useful to have this initiative available nationally and for the government to support the continued work of Learning Advocates in our region.
Currently there is a national initiative in unionised workplaces called Unionlearn. There is no national initiative for non-unionised workplaces. I have been trained as a Learning Advocate in the North West region – http://www.learningadvocates.co.uk ….. I am now able to support my work colleagues into learning. I think it would be useful to have this initiative available nationally and for the government to support the continued work of Learning Advocates in our region.
BIS Skills Consultation
Response from Martin Yarnit Associates
Reinvigorating Adult and Community Learning
Our response reflects our experience over the past year project managing the national support programme for community learning champions (CLCs) as a member of a consortium including NIACE, the WEA and unionlearn.
We have seen how CLCs have been invigorated and excited to make a contribution to their community in a way rarely seen in previous programmes. Most significantly, we have seen how effective they are in reaching out to people and groups who are totally new to informal and formal adult learning.
How has this come about? First, the Government’s support for informal adult learning and learning for its own sake has lifted the burden of targets and accreditation, releasing energy and freeing imaginations. Second, the permissive construction of the support programme has enabled us to fund organisations, especially in the community and voluntary sector that deal with the most socially excluded: recovering drug addicts and homeless people for example. The result is that we have been able to engage third sector organisations, directly or indirectly, that are close to disadvantaged communities but are often excluded from educational programmes because they are not traditional learning providers or cannot meet the technical criteria for taking part.
The benefits of this approach are manifold
• CLC projects are engaging with individuals and communities that have often been ignored or written off in the past, and opening up a wide variety of learning opportunities to a wide range of people
• CLCs in the process are discovering talents and depths of energy they never knew they had, becoming actively involved in their communities and in many cases moving on to new jobs
• both forms of engagement are helping many thousands of people to realise the benefits of learning to health, well-being and community cohesion.
Over 1200 individuals have signed up as CLCs and we expect that figure to grow to over 1500 before the end of the year. Each of these, on average, has engaged with and helped into learning 30 others from their community. Over all, that amounts to 46,500 people whose lives have been changed to a greater or lesser extend and one of the most cost effective approaches in service delivery.
You haven’t time to read histories and case studies now but if you need the evidence you can see it on our website http://www.communitylearningchampions.org.uk
In the light of this experience we would like to comment on the questions you pose.
How could we encourage the development of productive partnerships with third sector organisations?
• First of all, recognise the strength of these organisations in reaching out to individuals and communities who would never be noticed by many educational bodies. Carers, recovering drug and alcoholic addicts, ex-offenders, the homeless: often for the first time these are the kinds of people engaged in learning through learning champions
• Resist the temptation to tie third sector organisations in procedural knots for the sake of HM Treasury. Imposing targets for accreditation or minimum size contracts are the restrictions that will exclude many of the organisations that have been funded through the CLC national support programme with impressive results
• Recognise their expertise in reaching out to all sections of the community and managing volunteers, and their passion for improving the lives of the people they work with.
• Offer them the possibility of leading on the development of ACL, including CLC projects, in their area and fund their core costs
• Recognise the potential value of learning accounts, the central role third sector bodies could play in managing these, and the parallels between learning accounts and social care personal budgets, and extend the CLC approach into that field.
We welcome views on new ways that colleges could be used to support the community.
Many colleges have a commitment to ACL which they see as a central part of their mission. Traditionally, FE has been a major engine of social mobility and skills development for business and the community. At best, colleges relish the opportunity to collaborate with other agencies and interests in their community to achieve shared aims. The Neighbourhood Learning in Deprived Communities Fund has been a useful vehicle for engaging colleges in productive partnerships and it should be continued but with a more generous definition of learning outcomes to embrace engagement in informal adult learning and active engagement in community development.
How could adult and community learning be reinvigorated? We especially welcome ideas for how businesses and others could be encouraged to engage in supporting local community learning to help create local ownership and momentum.
• The Neighbourhood Learning in Deprived Communities Fund should be continued and amended as suggested above.
• It should be used in part to support the development of local learning partnerships involving the third sector, learning providers and local authorities.
• It should also be used to fund CLC projects that offer effective support for the training, development and progression of CLCs.
• Such partnerships should develop adult learning and work shadowing schemes with business using CLCs (or union learning representatives where union membership agreements have been signed) to promote and organise them.
University of Plymouth Response: Skills for Sustainable Growth
We welcome the principles for the department’s vision set out in ‘skills for sustainable growth,’ particularly with regard to the broad direction towards an increase in flexibility of the system, enabling organisations to adapt to both employer and individual needs.
More widely however, we feel that throughout the consultation document there is an inherent missed opportunity in terms of engagement with the higher education sector. Whilst we feel there is significant value in investment in the skills agenda through Further Education and Vocational Training, the higher education sector also provides significant input into building our national skills base.
For students at enterprise-led universities such as the University of Plymouth, whilst an academic qualification is the primary goal, entrepreneurship, innovation, employability and practical experience are embedded throughout our teaching and learning activities. At Plymouth we therefore aim to make a significant investment in developing readily employable graduates, who will be fit to take their place in a global knowledge-based economy. In developing a skills strategy, it is therefore important that the government focus not only on provision of skills at level 2 and 3, but on links and progression between Apprenticeships, Further Education and Higher Education.
In terms of ensuring better enterprise education throughout the skills system, it is vital that the sector is able to adapt quickly to rapidly changing needs; be that for employers or priorities set by government based on economic goals. This also requires clarity for the sector in terms of the articulation of those requirements. Government must be clear on its priorities, and employers must be required to articulate their needs. There should also be a step change in mindset away from the idea of a lifetime career, with many people now changing roles and sectors several times throughout their lifetime. Government policy must reflect this, and the education sector should aim to provide transferable skills alongside specialist knowledge. We also need to focus on future-proofed skills and keep in mind that we are also training people for jobs that have not yet been created.
We welcome the vision for lifelong learning accounts, particularly in consideration of points made above. Ideally, the proposal should be extended to one whereby all systems capturing learning and personal development planning are required to be interoperable, making use of new technologies such as e-portfolios.
Finally, facilitating university and college engagement with the wider community is vital in raising aspirations and building a successful knowledge-based economy. This applies both to learning and to links with business and enterprise, making use of expertise within education institutions to build capacity and capability in local business. The University of Plymouth has a number of case studies in this respect, including the Plymouth Graduate Internship Programme, which has enhanced capacity in local SMEs, and resulted in permanent employment for 70% of graduates involved.
The “Janet and John” edition:
1) A good business model for schools is that of a franchise.
2) The teacher of last resort is the Department of Education.
3) Schools should be given bonuses based on quality and improvement (results).
4) Results should be individually printed rather than displayed on wall charts (DPA).
5) No religious affliation; and religious education done by local priests.
Is there really any need for Religious Education in the school curriculum once a student reaches the last 2/3 years of school. Surely this subject could be added into the History subject and then schools could focus on providing a subject such as basic health and safety. This would give all students regardless of the profession they finally follow, a good stead into ‘real life’. It also would provide a path for those students to progress into the health and safety industry.
The way I see it, from previous experiance of attending a religious secondary school. People who are from a religious background are brought up with religion as a day to day occurrence in their life, so do they really need educating on this subject. Then you have those who are not interested in religion are very rarely going to take this into their life after school years.
Our skills base will be even lower in the future e.g. I have a nephew living in London aged 17 years and he has so far done qualifications in carpentry and joinery at College – it’s all he wants to do. Now he needs an apprenticeship and they are few and far between compared to 40 or even 20 years ago. He is willing to travel anywhere in the country and is an intelligent , diligent and enthusiastic worker and yet is getting depressed because of lack of opportunities. The system of the 60s and 70s may not have been perfect but at least it trained young people who wanted to learn practical skills. I am the lucky beneficiary of a world class UK education – degree, masters, diplomas and 2 teaching certs. etc etc. I really believe in the young people of today and see how their motivation becomes lacking after failure in any aspect of education and training. Therefore I say bring back apprenticeships and widen them out in all subjects as a recognisable qualification at alevel corresponding to NVQ levels, which employers have taken years to learn the levels and some are still not sure.
Having also taught NVQs and listened to some of the criticism of them, from well trained “old timers” I conclude that they are not as effective as the old systems of training especially in areas such as painting and decorating.
Please government remember the young people who are currently looking for apprenticeships and work as you extend the working life of the older generation – they are our future – not the elderly.
I represent one of the main engineering professional institutions.It’s regrettable that BIS’s template ‘response’ document doesn’t identify PROFESSIONAL BODIES as a constituency from which responses will be expected. We are crucially important stakeholders and should be recognised as such in all future govt consultations of this kind.
Note from BIS: the List of Organisations to be Consulted is not an exhaustive list of those that we’d like to hear from. We are keen to receive responses from all interested parties and individuals. Please do get in touch if you have views that you’d like to share with us.
Abolish Energy and Utility Skills we didn’t need them they only hamper the development of standards. It’s qualint to think the EU sector is as one – it’s not – they don’y and won’t work together. EUSkills has dreamed up several hapless iniatives to keep everyone busy. In the last srandards development they used a highly paid non-competent preson to deliver this and we ended up with a gobbledygook set of qualifications. Nice office in Solihull.
Is the intention to involve Jobcentreplus (JCP) in this policy?
It would be useful to have a snapshot of jobs on the JCP network to ascertain the number of SME’s/Regional and National employers and skills sectors.
Do apprenticeships suit SME’s?
UPHOLSTERY & SOFT FURNISHINGS TRAINING CRISIS
There is a crisis in training the next generation of upholsterers and soft furnishers, the type of training being funded as well as the loss of existing courses. Businesses want new staff with a certain level of practical skills, but some of them simply aren’t big enough to do the training themselves. From my position as Director of Training for the Association of Master Upholsterers & Soft Furnishers there are a lot of people wanting to join the industry.
Proskills, the skills council that looks after the furniture and furnishings sector, indentifies that the total size of the Furniture, Furnishings and Interiors Manufacturing sector in the UK is around 120,000 people in 12,200 companies. The industry consists mainly of micro companies, with around 80% of organisations employing less than 10 people. Only 5% of companies have over 50 employees, but between them they employ 47% of the workforce. These larger companies are well served with the modern apprenticeship scheme. But these figures do not include one-man-band businesses or those self employed, which form the major proportion of the upholstery and soft furnishings sector.
The most common skills gaps in the Furniture, Furnishings and Interiors Manufacturing industry are those relating to technical, practical or job-specific skills.
There are pronounced differences in the approach to training between large, small and micro companies. Larger companies are more likely to carry out training. However the financial cost of learning is the most common barrier to training, particularly the SMEs. A one-man operation does not have the time or resources to teach someone who is totally “green” without it affecting their own productivity, but given someone with good basic practical skills they can move them on and develop them into efficient productive employees with skills that will serve them for the rest of their lives.
So what’s the problem? It’s a Catch 22 situation: if courses don’t fit the very strict official requirements, they don’t get funding (one of the issues at Herefordshire College of Technology). But there’s just no funding available for the master craftsman who wants to pass on his skills on a one-to-one basis, despite the fact there are craftspeople out there who would be willing to do this; and plenty of people wanting to do the job! As the Heritage Crafts Association said in a recent press release: “Such craftspeople are not interested in NVQs, quangos, priority provision or endless paperwork – they just care about their skills and want to pass them on.”
For those who have found trainee positions within larger companies there are courses to attend on day release or in blocks in order to obtain qualifications in modern foam upholstery techniques, some of which might attract funding via schemes like the Modern Apprenticeship scheme, but traditional craft techniques are not supported. What is available varies around the country depending on regional priorities.
But there is virtually nowhere currently where young people can get funded pre-employment training to the level of skills that smaller businesses, not in a position to do their own training, require.
Today’s accredited courses tend to place the emphasis on acquiring skills in units – you don’t have to necessarily complete a full course to get a qualification – you get interim awards for each module as you go along. It’s meant to be an incentive to students but it actually misleads them into false expectations. They think they’ve got a qualification after a few weeks or months when actually all they may have learnt by that stage is the most basic of skills, which is no good to an employer. So when they go for a job saying ‘I’m qualified’ they’re just not to the level required.
The City & Guilds Technical Certificate in traditional craft skills are good practical skills based courses, but since they were dropped by the London Metropolitan University two years ago, there are few places running them. Herefordshire College of Technology is the latest to end their craft courses as they didn’t fit into any of the available funding “boxes”.
The AMUSF developed its own training qualifications around six years ago – which are now taught in a number of small, privately run training centres around the country (Hertfordshire, Cornwall, Wales, Cumbria, Leicestershire & Shropshire). It’s a good practical skills based course, which seeks to deliver what upholstery businesses want. But they are not accredited on the QCF – Qualification Credit Framework – and as such are not eligible for government funding. These courses are excellent for those already working in upholstery businesses. They also attract many students not employed in the industry who would like to be, but because of the lack of funding, they are inevitably highly motivated and usually older – 30 plus. Because of this, some upholsterers are reluctant to take on older graduates – they can see their motivation as a threat, where it should be an asset. These older more motivated students are often career-changers looking to start new businesses or mothers looking at their long-term future and wanting a career in something that they can fit around childcare. Many of my past students have gone on to work for existing upholsterers or have started their own businesses, some of which are also employing other graduates.
The AMUSF along with the Worshipful Company of Upholders and Proskills are talking to New Bucks University, about developing the AMUSF traditional upholstery qualifications into accredited ones, which might mean more colleges can take them up, but there is still no guarantee they will attract government funding. Hopefully, in the process of being re-worked to fit required standards they won’t be spoiled. These courses have been developed by the trade for the trade. A member of the AMUSF recently commented that he wanted someone who could stitch well and produce beautiful work that his customers wanted. As long as they could read the end of the tape measure, he would be happy.
Traditional upholstery is still a valid craft, which takes time to learn and master, but it is not a dying craft. Traditional upholstery produces furniture that will last at least a generation, unlike much of the modern foam upholstery that can have a life span of between 1 and 10 years depending in its quality, and that ends up in landfill.
The Association of Master Upholsterers & Soft Furnishers, along with other associations with traditional skills training interests, would like to draw to Government’s attention the current mis-match between what’s being provided and what’s needed in terms of accredited training courses and press for more training funding to be directed straight to employers to choose what’s most relevant for them.
WENDY SHORTER
DIRECTOR OF TRAINING FOR
THE ASSOCIATION OF MASTER UPHOLSTERERS & SOFT FURNISHERS
August 2010
I am 46 years old and have spent my life working to live if I had been taught a skill at school I might have been able to live to work and enjoyed my life more feeling I was valued rather than reaching this point in my life wondering what I had spent my years doing. I am desperate to retrain to gain a better way of life and make a contribution back. If I could I would learn metal working skills. the kids now have little or no chance of developing anything much.
Have you contacted nextstep to see if you could do some training? Go to this website …. http://careersadvice.direct.gov.uk/ …. You will be able to get lots of advice on-line or you can ring for advice or set up an appointment with someone in your local area. If you are in work/volunteering at the moment there may be opportunities to get training through a Government scheme called Train to Gain …. You could ask about this … If you are not in work/volunteering there may be courses you could do too … Worth logging on to the website to find out more. Hope this helps.
I was very worried by the lack of attention paid to the urgent issue of transition to a low carbon/sustainable economy as this is an urgent issue which wasn’t reflected in the questions and the priorities they imply. Measuring success just by business output and GDP is crazy as it generally requires increasing consumption and we are already are consuming resources faster than we can replenish them. It also means the media focuses news stories solely on consumption, giving the impression that we need to buy more to make our country successful. We need new metrics of success such as a well-being index that give greater focus and air time to social and environmental indices if we want a truly sustainable economy.
In response to Q. 16 & 17 specifically, you would do well to do away with the Skills Funding Agency and their heavy handed approach to IAG. They have created a monster in ‘Next Step’. It is so user unfriendly, all in the interests of creating a universal service that is the same for everyone, they have created a bureacratic nightmare with reams of useless paper and people having to sign endless forms and most importantly individuals not getting what they want. They are not customers they are individuals and they all have different needs. Any IAG service needs to be flexible to move people from where they are now to where they want to be. Quality can be built in and market forces allow people to use the service they choose and the one that does the best for them. We recently lost our Next Step contract, as the Careers Services wanted to do more themselves, despite the loss of income all our advisers were relieved that they could now actually do their job and work with the individual instead of worrying about filling in boxes on the computer and getting 3 signatures for every contact they had. We would have no problem with an all age service, this would make sense, but please please please get rid of the bureacratic nightmare which is the SFA !
The Skills Strategy makes no mention of those furthest away from the labour market. We work with disadvantaged young adults aged 16-30, not currently economically active. We provide flexible opportunities in a holistic way for them to re-engage in learning and employment. Last year, 25% of our clients went onto jobs, education, work-based training or volunteering. The majority of this work relies on project-based funding and we have no idea if there will be any money for this in the future. We are currently applying to be part of partnerships to deliver the new DWP Work programme but as a ‘specialist provider’ this will probably result in us receiving relatively small amounts of funding and will nowhere near cover the true costs of delivering our much-needed services.
Q16 How can we improve the accessibility and quality of careers information, advice and guidance (IAG) servies for adults?
Presently, IAG is rarely available to people in the non-unionised workplace. However, In the North West region we have a Skills Funding Agency/European Social Fund initiative called Learning Advocates – http://www.learningadvocates.co.uk …. This initiative encourages non-unionised companies to nominate a member of staff to become the company “mini careers adviser”. After a short training course they go back into their workplace and encourage colleagues into learning. They have a particular focus on promoting basic skills training/Train to Gain/apprenticeships to their companies. This type of initiative is a very cost effective way of improving the accessibility of IAG for people in the workplace. The initiative complements the work of Unionlearn but operates in the non-unionised sector.
My comment is regarding the continued reduction in funding for the Arts and Humanities. While Science and Technology are valuable to the economy, so are the Arts and Humanities subjects. My experience of this is that we are rapidly becoming a second class country in terms of Literary scholarship, and considering we are (apparently) the home of English and the English language it is appalling that funding in these areas is so easily reduced, particularly considering David Willetts has a Degree in Classics, and that employers are complaining about UK graduates having a poor grasp of English.
The comments I wish to make concern the development of skills in the workplace, or “workforce development” as it has been known in recent years.
The Leitch report identified that a large proportion of the future workforce is already employed, so that improving the skills of people leaving schools, colleges and higher education will not in itself be enough to ensure the UK has the skilled workforce it needs to be globally competitive.
Leitch’s answer, or rather the way New Labour interpreted the report, was to bombard the workforce with qualifications without any clear idea of what exactly these were supposed to achieve, or how their effectiveness could be measured. This was an incredibly wasteful way of going about things.
Before any government intervenes in the arena of skills development it needs to take time to understand how skills development happens, where it’s not working very well and what, if anything, the government can do about it.
The first thing to understand is that giving people the skills they need to function in their job role is relatively straightforward. Demand is clear and articulate – it would a be a very stupid employer who buys a piece of equipment and then doesn’t show people how to use it – and is often underpinned by legislative and regulatory requirements. This training has got to happen, the employer goes to market to source it and the market, in the vast majority of cases, delivers it. The employer may grumble at the cost, but it is a simple business expense like any other.
There is rarely any need to intervene in this sort of training, still less fund it. Occasionally there may be issues of elasticity of supply (all the trainers are 58 and it takes 3 years to train a good trainer) but Sector Skills Councils should be keeping an eye on this.
In contrast to giving people the basic skills to do their job, developing people’s skills, which is what is needed if British industry is to prosper, is a lot more complex. Firstly demand is not nearly so immediate or articulate. Whether any skills development happens at all is down to the employer choosing to invest in it. And for this investment in skills development to be successful, and so repeated rather than being a one off it can be afforded, three key elements need to be in place:
1. The employer and learner need to know what this learning is for, what it’s designed to achieve – what is the question to which training is the answer?
2. The training itself needs to be good, with good teachers inspiring learners who have the ability and desire to learn
3. Both the employer and learner need to apply and sustain the learning back in the workplace, the employer through good performance management and the learner through critical self assessment and the taking on of feedback and support.
The problem too often is that there has been far too much focus on (2) above – the training, the qualifications, are they “fit for purpose” “demand led” etc etc. This perpetuates the attitude that developing people’s skills is the responsibility of the training supply side (training companies, HR departments etc) who themselves perpetuate this myth by marketing their products as “training solutions”.
In fact training is a very small part of any genuine skills development “solution”. Skills development in the workplace is ultimately the responsibility of the employer and the learner and it the ducking of these responsibilities (1) and (3) above that is at the root of the UK skills crisis. Previous government policy has actually made the situation worse, throwing money at basic training that employers will pay for anyway and assuming that simply making the supply side “demand led” would solve everything.
The UKCES does in fact have three priorities – reforming the skills landscape, increasing employer demand and increasing learner ambition. Regrettably far too much time and resource has been expended on the first of these without anyone seriously tackling the other two – the SSCs themselves have been particularly negligent in this respect, concentrating instead developing “sector specific solutions” to justify their existence.
So my advice would be to switch the emphasis away from this endless obsession with qualifications and training – broadly speaking if training and qualifications add any value people should be prepared to pay for them, just as they would an IT system or new premises. The emphasis instead needs to be on increasing employer demand and learner ambition which can be boiled down to two areas:
• Improve the way companies are run, by improving the leadership skills of the people running them. A well run company will know what skills development it needs, why it needs it and what it needs to do to sustain its benefits. All the funding in the world is no substitute for this critical awareness which need not be generated by sending people on expensive courses, but rather by devising a strategy that relies on more imaginative and effective interventions.
• Improve the literacy and numeracy levels of the workforce, transforming the lives of the people involved. No learner will benefit if they struggle to engage, lack confidence in their ability and feel that learning is “not for them”. We still have a massive issue of literacy and numeracy the surface of which has been barely scratched. Yet the value added by investing in this learning remains enormous, on all sorts of levels both inside and outside the workplace. Again, while SSCs have done their best to increase uptake of NVQs (which add very little value) they have barely paid any attention to literacy and numeracy at all (a glance at their web sites will show you how important they consider this issue)
In short, stand back and have a good think, start with a clean sheet of paper and be aware of the massed ranks of vested interests desperate to preserve as much of the current bloated structure as they can. If I can be of any further help do get in touch.
Yes to achieve a stratgey for sustainable growth we must have education and skills training but what is the use of this when the goverment wont allow you to train when you are unemployed by stopping your benefits surley by the goverment allowing people to train or to take up further education paying unemployment benefits would be extremely helpful in sustainable growth for the country while you have people with out the skills and the education needed to fill the skill voids stuck on unemployment benefits for years and years then sustainable growth will never fully be achieved .The potential is out there it just needs to be given the opertunity by the british goverment to prove that people are willing to learn and be trained to gain the skills to help put this country back on its feet not every person wants to live off benefits and these people need this goverment or any goverment to invest in them by allowing them to prove they want to learn want to work want to pay back to society paying their taxes and insurances and pensions from jobs gained from the goverment showing inisitive in stead of negativety I am one of these unemployed people that wants to learn new skills to be re educated and allowed to re -enter the job market on a even playing field with out the skilled and trained labour sustainable growth will stagnate till common sence prevails . A.W.Longmoor
Currently there is a national initiative in unionised workplaces called Unionlearn. There is no national initiative for non-unionised workplaces. I have been trained as a Learning Advocate in the North West region – http://www.learningadvocates.co.uk ….. I am now able to support my work colleagues into learning. I think it would be useful to have this initiative available nationally and for the government to support the continued work of Learning Advocates in our region.”
“Currently there is a national initiative in unionised workplaces called Unionlearn. There is no national initiative for non-unionised workplaces. I have been trained as a Learning Advocate in the North West region – http://www.learningadvocates.co.uk ….. I am now able to support my work colleagues into learning. I think it would be useful to have this initiative available nationally and for the government to support the continued work of Learning Advocates in our region.”
ESB’s response is to support the FAB response in full. We have been engaged in consultation discussions with FAB and agree with all points of their statement.
Currently there is a national initiative in unionised workplaces called Unionlearn. There is no national initiative for non-unionised workplaces. I have been trained as a Learning Advocate in the North West region – http://www.learningadvocates.co.uk ….. I am now able to support my work colleagues into learning. I think it would be useful to have this initiative available nationally and for the government to support the continued work of Learning Advocates in our region.
Currently there is a national initiative in unionised workplaces called Unionlearn. There is no national initiative for non-unionised workplaces. I have been trained as a Learning Advocate in the North West region – http://www.learningadvocates.co.uk ….. I am now able to support my work colleagues into learning. I think it would be useful to have this initiative available nationally and for the government to support the continued work of Learning Advocates in our region.
BIS Skills Consultation
Response from Martin Yarnit Associates
Reinvigorating Adult and Community Learning
Our response reflects our experience over the past year project managing the national support programme for community learning champions (CLCs) as a member of a consortium including NIACE, the WEA and unionlearn.
We have seen how CLCs have been invigorated and excited to make a contribution to their community in a way rarely seen in previous programmes. Most significantly, we have seen how effective they are in reaching out to people and groups who are totally new to informal and formal adult learning.
How has this come about? First, the Government’s support for informal adult learning and learning for its own sake has lifted the burden of targets and accreditation, releasing energy and freeing imaginations. Second, the permissive construction of the support programme has enabled us to fund organisations, especially in the community and voluntary sector that deal with the most socially excluded: recovering drug addicts and homeless people for example. The result is that we have been able to engage third sector organisations, directly or indirectly, that are close to disadvantaged communities but are often excluded from educational programmes because they are not traditional learning providers or cannot meet the technical criteria for taking part.
The benefits of this approach are manifold
• CLC projects are engaging with individuals and communities that have often been ignored or written off in the past, and opening up a wide variety of learning opportunities to a wide range of people
• CLCs in the process are discovering talents and depths of energy they never knew they had, becoming actively involved in their communities and in many cases moving on to new jobs
• both forms of engagement are helping many thousands of people to realise the benefits of learning to health, well-being and community cohesion.
Over 1200 individuals have signed up as CLCs and we expect that figure to grow to over 1500 before the end of the year. Each of these, on average, has engaged with and helped into learning 30 others from their community. Over all, that amounts to 46,500 people whose lives have been changed to a greater or lesser extend and one of the most cost effective approaches in service delivery.
You haven’t time to read histories and case studies now but if you need the evidence you can see it on our website http://www.communitylearningchampions.org.uk
In the light of this experience we would like to comment on the questions you pose.
How could we encourage the development of productive partnerships with third sector organisations?
• First of all, recognise the strength of these organisations in reaching out to individuals and communities who would never be noticed by many educational bodies. Carers, recovering drug and alcoholic addicts, ex-offenders, the homeless: often for the first time these are the kinds of people engaged in learning through learning champions
• Resist the temptation to tie third sector organisations in procedural knots for the sake of HM Treasury. Imposing targets for accreditation or minimum size contracts are the restrictions that will exclude many of the organisations that have been funded through the CLC national support programme with impressive results
• Recognise their expertise in reaching out to all sections of the community and managing volunteers, and their passion for improving the lives of the people they work with.
• Offer them the possibility of leading on the development of ACL, including CLC projects, in their area and fund their core costs
• Recognise the potential value of learning accounts, the central role third sector bodies could play in managing these, and the parallels between learning accounts and social care personal budgets, and extend the CLC approach into that field.
We welcome views on new ways that colleges could be used to support the community.
Many colleges have a commitment to ACL which they see as a central part of their mission. Traditionally, FE has been a major engine of social mobility and skills development for business and the community. At best, colleges relish the opportunity to collaborate with other agencies and interests in their community to achieve shared aims. The Neighbourhood Learning in Deprived Communities Fund has been a useful vehicle for engaging colleges in productive partnerships and it should be continued but with a more generous definition of learning outcomes to embrace engagement in informal adult learning and active engagement in community development.
How could adult and community learning be reinvigorated? We especially welcome ideas for how businesses and others could be encouraged to engage in supporting local community learning to help create local ownership and momentum.
• The Neighbourhood Learning in Deprived Communities Fund should be continued and amended as suggested above.
• It should be used in part to support the development of local learning partnerships involving the third sector, learning providers and local authorities.
• It should also be used to fund CLC projects that offer effective support for the training, development and progression of CLCs.
• Such partnerships should develop adult learning and work shadowing schemes with business using CLCs (or union learning representatives where union membership agreements have been signed) to promote and organise them.
University of Plymouth Response: Skills for Sustainable Growth
We welcome the principles for the department’s vision set out in ‘skills for sustainable growth,’ particularly with regard to the broad direction towards an increase in flexibility of the system, enabling organisations to adapt to both employer and individual needs.
More widely however, we feel that throughout the consultation document there is an inherent missed opportunity in terms of engagement with the higher education sector. Whilst we feel there is significant value in investment in the skills agenda through Further Education and Vocational Training, the higher education sector also provides significant input into building our national skills base.
For students at enterprise-led universities such as the University of Plymouth, whilst an academic qualification is the primary goal, entrepreneurship, innovation, employability and practical experience are embedded throughout our teaching and learning activities. At Plymouth we therefore aim to make a significant investment in developing readily employable graduates, who will be fit to take their place in a global knowledge-based economy. In developing a skills strategy, it is therefore important that the government focus not only on provision of skills at level 2 and 3, but on links and progression between Apprenticeships, Further Education and Higher Education.
In terms of ensuring better enterprise education throughout the skills system, it is vital that the sector is able to adapt quickly to rapidly changing needs; be that for employers or priorities set by government based on economic goals. This also requires clarity for the sector in terms of the articulation of those requirements. Government must be clear on its priorities, and employers must be required to articulate their needs. There should also be a step change in mindset away from the idea of a lifetime career, with many people now changing roles and sectors several times throughout their lifetime. Government policy must reflect this, and the education sector should aim to provide transferable skills alongside specialist knowledge. We also need to focus on future-proofed skills and keep in mind that we are also training people for jobs that have not yet been created.
We welcome the vision for lifelong learning accounts, particularly in consideration of points made above. Ideally, the proposal should be extended to one whereby all systems capturing learning and personal development planning are required to be interoperable, making use of new technologies such as e-portfolios.
Finally, facilitating university and college engagement with the wider community is vital in raising aspirations and building a successful knowledge-based economy. This applies both to learning and to links with business and enterprise, making use of expertise within education institutions to build capacity and capability in local business. The University of Plymouth has a number of case studies in this respect, including the Plymouth Graduate Internship Programme, which has enhanced capacity in local SMEs, and resulted in permanent employment for 70% of graduates involved.
For more information please contact James Redfearn: james.redfearn@plymouth.ac.uk