It is no exaggeration to say that the future success of the UK construction industry is contingent on our ability as a nation to get post-16 education right. The industry is facing its most acute skills shortage ever. Over the past year, the vacancy rate in the sector has set new record highs on numerous occasions, and our industry’s training board estimates we now need 53,200 additional workers in the industry each and every year up to 2026.
As the UK economy emerged from the Covid-19 pandemic, it prompted a change in peoples’ perceptions of work and unsurprisingly their priorities in life. With that change, we have seen a significant number of highly skilled and experienced workers decide to take early retirement, squeezing our skills woes further. Where previously we may have relied upon workers from across the European Union to bolster our numbers, the UK’s new immigration regime requires construction companies to become licensed sponsors, and to pay fees that they have not been accustomed to. Early evidence is that very few in the sector have chosen to do this, so our only option is develop more homegrown talent.
Apprentices have always been an integral part of the story of construction. In many regards the archetypal apprentice conjures up visions of the tradesperson and their apprentice, both busy working away on site. Apprentices are so important in construction because of the technical nature of many of the roles that the sector requires. While general apprenticeship numbers have remained fairly stable in the sector over recent years, many more people are taking on higher level apprentices with fewer at the intermediate and advanced levels – which means a reduction in the number of tradespeople coming through the system and a year-on-year reduction in completion rates, meaning that we are not achieving the technical education levels we need.
There has been a general perception across all sectors that further education [FE] has been the poor relation in the educational family, with claims of underfunding, less political focus, an increasingly disjointed approach between colleges and employers and much less emphasis on technical education. In construction education at FE level, we are certainly getting something wrong. An in-depth analysis in 2020 showed that despite 100,000 students in construction-related FE at any time, three in five of them would not be in construction employment less than a year after completing their courses.
It is within that context that the Skills and Post-16 Education Act has become law. Responding to these challenges, the government has laid a framework to improve the delivery of technical skills, the linkage between local skills needs and skills supply and the FE educators to deliver it. For the first time in a long time, the government appears to be taking seriously the need to bolster our technical education, to make it more relevant to employment and to ensure that on a local basis, there is a connection between what the local employers require and what the local colleges and providers are teaching. If the Act’s aims are successful, we should also expect more people to be attracted to teaching in further education and more vigorous, employer-informed technical courses, with an increased focus at school-age on the options and opportunities for students in technical education.
The National Federation of Builders welcomes the Skills and Post-16 Education Act and its noble ambitions but as with all things, the proof will be in the results and for our sector, it cannot come a day too soon.
Key Points:
• The future of industry depends on us getting post-16 education right.
• Conditions post-Brexit and post-Covid mean we must develop more homegrown talent.
• Failings in further education are exacerbating the skills shortage.
• Education must finally deliver on local skills needs if the Act is to work properly.
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.
Photo by Callum Hill on Unsplash
