Skills are vital to our economy. This was clear even before Lord Leitch published his report in 2006, demonstrating the need for urgent action if we are to retain our competitiveness and make progress in the future.
Meeting this challenge necessitates building a system able to respond to the needs of a dynamic economy. We want to build a system driven by the informed choices of learners and employers. This means giving providers the flexibility they need to meet the needs of different learners and different economic sectors.
But too often in the recent past, the strength of the economic case has been portrayed as the only case for skills, creating an implicit divide between learning that is useful and learning that is useless. We emphasise the economic and overlook the social and cultural benefits of learning at our peril.
For the opportunities offered by education and training to be fully realised then learning must be embedded in our way of life. Only by seeing learning as a single whole, not a series of separate compartments, can we ensure that it takes its place at heart of both business strategy and community life.
Delivering future priorities will also involve making difficult choices about the use of public funds. I believe that we can deliver more and save money. But we will only achieve cost effectiveness by challenging the orthodox assumptions about what skills are for, how they are funded and what role Government should play. I am determined to ensure our decisions are the result of proper consultation so that policy reflects real priorities. I therefore welcome responses to the questions in this paper.
By acknowledging the value of learning we can begin the task of re-evaluating our priorities, rediscovering craft, redefining community learning, rejuvenating apprenticeships, rebalancing the economy and building a big society.
Sir,
It would be prudent for the government to look at where the demand in the economy is likely to be.
In particular, the demographic of the engineers in the various disciplines. My experience can only be anecdotal, but it seems that there are a lot of engineers who are reaching the end of their careers.
The current system is not encouraging enough new graduates into the system and quite a number of those who do graduate are being lured into non-engineering jobs rather than face the 5 years it takes to become certified.
Engineering degrees are hard degrees. In Chemical Engineering for example, a student can expect to have 35 hours of lectures and lab sessions a week, plus assignments and research projects. It is easy to see why good calibre students may choose to follow a less demanding degree course.
There is also the issue of how young graduates in all disciplines are mentored when they enter the workplace. My thinking may well have been superceded by the latest management thinking, but it seems that mentoring programs in business are considered too expensive and that employers would rather headhunt prospective talent rather than develop their own.
I would also like to make a personal point. Having been made redundant at the age of 52, it appears that my age is acting against me when applying for jobs. I have a wealth of skills and experience in IT, but this doesn’t appear to matter as much as a few grey hairs.
There is a wealth of talent available from older and experienced managers who would welcome the opportunity to mentor and develop the younger generation, yet the system conspires against them.
Thank you for your time. I wish you the best of fortune in your consultation exercise and hope that it leads to a holistic approach in ensuring that Britain has the talent needed to be a major player in the global economy.
Regards,
Simon Holder.
I am the Operations Manager of Rolls-Royce North East Training Centre in Newcastle upon Tyne, funded through the Skills Funding Agency. I take unemployed school leavers, train them in engineering skills up to Advanced Apprentice level, finding them full time high quality apprenticeships in local manufacturing companies. This highly successful training model gets young people into work when there may not be a job for them at the start of their training and is also greatly valued by employers who see enormous value in this pre-employment training period. Unfortunately, this is classed as a Programme Led Apprenticeship (PLA) and will be abolished in April 2011. I strongly urge that apprenticeship programmes like mine, that result directly in employment for young people are somehow re-defined and allowed to continue. The argument for abolishing those PLAs, which are really just “bums on seats” programmes, may be valid but please be very careful when making blanket classifications which may well result in the very opposite outcome to that intended.
After a lifetime working in education I have moved into my family’s ironfoundry to work, amongst other things, on training. One of my priorities is to set up “apprenticeships” for 3 young people(we have a workforce of just under 30). The current financial situation means that that taking on “apprentices” at this stage is quite a financial commitment and, given the current trumpet-blowing about apprenticeships, I thought that it would be quite an easy task to find some source of funding to help us to train these young people. I t seems that I am wrong. I have spoken with various organisations who put the recruitment of apprentices high on their agenda and talk loudly about providing funding for their training. It would appear, on closer examination, that none of this funding is available for the companies who will provide 99% of the useful training and experience. Indeed all the funding will go to colleges and further education establishments who will provide spurious courses such as “Design for living”. Attending such courses, in reality, serves no practical purpose whatsoever. Conscientious students are bored and frustrated by the patronising content and less conscientious students simply waste their time. This is the reality of day release and it bears no resemblance to the rhetoric of John Hayes. These policies are “creating an implicit divide between learning that is useful and learning that is useless” and the funding is going to the “useless” learning, not the “useful”. There are no difficult choices about the use of public funds; put them where the “useful” learning is done. You will not achieve cost effectiveness by “challenging the orthodox” the orthodox has become such because it has worked in the past. But of course “challenging the orthodox” gives people like John Hayes a raison d’etre. Another question about use of public funds could be “How much money could be re-directed into skills training if all the ‘advisory’ bodies were dismantled and companies organised their own training schemes based on the required skills of that company?”
To go back to our case: as there appeared to be no funding available to subsidise our taking on of 3 “Apprentices” we decided to bite the bullet and fund it ourselves. I placed an advertisement in the local careers office for 3 16 year olds to commence an apprenticeship @ £100 per week. I was informed by the Careers service that I could not advertise the positions as “apprenticeships” because they were not attending an “accredited” course. I therefore had to advertise for “trainee foundryworkers” and offer minimum wage @£139 per week. There are no local foundry/patternmaking college courses.
Can anyone suggest a sensible way out of this Catch22 situation, which does not involve apprentices wasting time on “useless” learning. Have I missed something? I would be very grateful for constructive advice.
Many thanks. Steven Downs.
Particularly in areas of economic deprivation and low aspiration, communities and individuals benefit from long-term sustainable relationships with trusted providers who are able to deliver courses which engage interest, and also develop skills, knowledge and understanding – ideally in a way which would allow them to gather credits in a meaningful way towards a qualification.
The saying ” education is a wonderful thing” is an old one but true. It can transform your life in ways you could not imagine. One of those ways is self confidence and a confident person is a motivated person. I went to learn computer at the age of 63 and I have not regretted doing so. I just wish I would have tried it sooner. It has been my pleasure to be in the company of people that could not read or write and finished with a decree. Who knows what is locked in a mind that is thinking, I am not clever enough. these people must be sort after and catered for. Who really knows what golden nuggets are out there.
Sir
Go to Google and type “ons ecommerce”. You will see that the UK Government’s own most recent figures show that online trade just within the UK is worth over £220 Billion (i.e. larger than the UK oil and gas supply industry) and is growing at over 36% (i.e. four times the growth rate of China. Put simply, online trade is the single largest factor impacting business today. It is part of a revolution that will change the nature of our cities and how we as a nation do business.
INDEZ is one of the UK’s best known eCommerce supply businesses and our ability to deliver successful solutions to our clients is driven by the skills and competence of our staff.
The challenge that we face is that there is no competent eCommerce training and skills organisation anywhere in the UK. All new staff have to be trained DIY by ourselves. There is no serious accreditation scheme and our Universities do not teach the subject in a way that is relevant to what is required by industry.
We all know that there is a lot of belt tightening and that means that any money invested in skills training should be aimed at things that will have the largest impact in the shortest time on our economy. By that metric I would guess that eCommerce should be top of the skills requirements list.
Dr Peter Mowforth
CEO, INDEZ Ltd.
Skills training seems to have been judged and money allocated by completion of accredited qualifications. The voices above and others are saying that this is often not supplying the needs of the workplace. Workplace learning is not recognised and there is no funding for it.
How about judging courses on their results in getting people into jobs?
Some examples from the world of traditional crafts and trades. The NETS scheme at Hereford has been running 30 years and over 70% of blacksmiths trained are still working as blacksmiths after 5 years but it faces closure because it trains for work instead of tutoring for qualifications and does not give an NVQ.
The last master cooper in the country at Wadworths had 1000 people ask to be his apprentice, there is a job available at the end but no scheme to fund the training given, he is not an accredited training agency. Mike Turnock he last sieve and riddle maker in the country is currently self funding training a successor before he retires because there is no support for benchside learning, the same story at Wrights the last scissor making firm in Sheffield and Trevor Abblett one of the last pen knife makers will retire with the loss of a very viable business with no successor because there is no money available for him to pass on his skills.
Many of the comments above point to the fact that employers have the skills and want to do the training in house . We need to recognise the less formalised training that goes on in the workplace and judge it on results (jobs) instead of continual measuring and box ticking. You don’t fatten a pig by weighing it,
If the governments is wanting to people to go into further education, then why are the job centre plus trying to stop my friend from going to college they told him he can’t go, or if he does then they will stop his money where’s the justice in that?