When the Skills for Jobs white paper was published in 2021, one of its key themes was ‘putting employers at the heart’ of reforms to post-16 skills provision. Echoing the promise made by policymakers over the last decade of an ‘employer-led’ apprenticeship system, the Skills and Post-16 Education Act takes a number of important steps to ensure that the vital role businesses must play in the shaping of all skills training is recognised. For manufacturers across England, ensuring that these new measures lead to the supply of technical skills they need for the future is a critical priority.
The most significant development for employers from the Act will be the introduction and formalising of Local Skills Improvement Plans. Eight trailblazer pilots have already produced innovative, varied ways of bringing together employers and training providers to consider local skills gaps and how these might be addressed. Across all of these, the use of data has been crucial, helping to build a picture of employer demand for skills.
Employer engagement will be a central challenge for LSIPs to succeed; Make UK will be playing its part in making sure that the voice of manufacturers is heard as LSIPs get up and running.
Manufacturing employers are also keen for the government to demonstrate how its levelling up policy agenda will prioritise skills. Recent Make UK research shows that a quarter of firms believe that better support for skills training should be the main focus of levelling up. The successful rollout of LSIPs – alongside other measures from the Act – will be an important aspect of how the government is being seen to facilitate better training provision in local areas, especially as they interact with a greater number of mayoral combined authorities receiving devolved Adult Education Budget funding.
While LSIPs will be shaping local training provision and relationships between employers and providers, their ability to work effectively with national bodies will also be essential. The recently established Unit for Future Skills, sitting within the Department for Education but working across government, is intended to collect detailed data on skills needs and the wider labour market to inform skills policymaking. In order to have sufficient, granular detail from all areas of the country, it will be important for LSIPs to feed in their local data to the UFS, as well as LSIPs drawing on the data and analysis published centrally by the UFS to inform their strategies for improving local skills provision.
In addition to LSIPs, the key measures for employers from the Act concern the Lifetime Skills Guarantee. While the government has already introduced the free level 3 entitlement, work is just beginning in earnest on the shape of the Lifelong Loan Entitlement [LLE]. The policy reflects the increasing demand from manufacturers for access to flexible, modular training to upskill their workforce and, through providing support for provision between levels 4 and 6, should help to meet the growing demand from manufacturers for technical skills at these higher levels once introduced from 2025. The progress that has been made as part of this on the Emerging Skills Project focused on advanced manufacturing is also welcome, although the government should consider where it can support additional flexible provision for employers over the next three years.
The Skills and Post-16 Education Act is a promising step in the reform of technical and vocational education in England, but there is more work to be done to ensure that manufacturing employers really are at the heart of this provision over the coming years.
Key Points:
• The key measures from the Skills and Post-16 Education Act for manufacturers are the implementation of Local Skills Improvement Plans [LSIPs] and the Lifelong Loan Entitlement [LLE].
• LSIPs are a key opportunity to bring employers and training providers together to tackle local skills shortages.
• LSIPs must work with national bodies such as the Unit for Future Skills in order to be effective.
• LLE is focused on the technical skill levels manufacturers will most need over the coming years, but more support for flexible, modular training is needed before 2025.
This article originally appeared in The Leaders Council’s special report on ‘The Impact of the Skills & Post-16 Education Act on the Construction, Engineering & Manufacturing sectors’, published on July 4, 2022. Read the full special report here.
