What is immediately striking about the Skills and Post-16 Education Act is that it is highly focused on colleges. Many courses which colleges offer are too academic, outdated and not practical enough, so young people aren’t getting the right training for the workplace of now and inevitably the future.
Furthermore, given the specialist industry we work in, colleges don’t really offer courses that suit our business, so we don’t have a stream of talent coming through. But this goes far beyond us; for many years industry has wanted one thing and education has done something different.
Solving the problem must start with education. We put far too much emphasis on academia in this country and are failing those young people who aren’t academic. These teenagers could enter the workplace or access technical training in readiness for work but don’t have the progression pathways there for them. Instead, we are seeing all young people pushed to go to university and enter approximately £60,000 of debt before they leave home and enter the workplace with this already against their name. The impact of this debt on the mental health of young people is also likely to be detrimental and at a time where we are talking more about this than ever before post-pandemic, we can address this effectively with a change of emphasis in the development pathways for these young people.
Since we are a specialised industry, current government apprenticeship schemes aren’t conducive to what we do either. We are specialist to the degree that we are being overlooked. There is no better place for people to learn skills than in industry, on the job, and we are willing to train people. However, the funding model is prohibitive, and we can’t take people on without the resources. Much funding is funnelled into education which isn’t delivering on the needs of employers. This needs to be addressed.
Local Skills Improvement Plans could be a resolution in waiting, but the question mark is over its enforcement. It is all well and good if the government wants industry to be working with colleges and we’re able to get industry representatives helping to design the courses of the future. But again, the very specialist nature of our industry raises the question: are we broad enough to be considered here, or will we simply be overlooked again because not many firms do the work that we do?
The Lifetime Skills Guarantee outlined in the Act is indicative of the government’s intent to give adults the chance to retrain and move into new industries to address skills shortages in key sectors. However, as previously highlighted, we are in a position where we are happy to train unskilled adults to work in our industry, but we need the funding to do it. Additional financial support would allow us to pay working age, unskilled adults a competitive salary while teaching them skills on the job.
I believe as a nation we’re missing a huge trick by not looking at asylum seekers moving into the UK. Ministers ought to consider providing working-age asylum seekers with emergency work permits and tax codes and getting them trained up and into the workplace to plug skills gaps. They can then make a better life for themselves while contributing to the needs of employers and the economy in their new home country.
Similarly, I feel the way that the Department for Work & Pensions approaches getting the unemployed into work is askew. DWP coaches seem intent on getting unemployed people off the system and into work as soon as practically possible, doing any job that they can do with their current skillset. Why not show the initiative to get these people into training and move them into more skilled industries in need of talent instead? We shoehorn people into minimum wage jobs in low-need sectors when we could offer better career progression and close skills gaps. This would benefit the jobseeker, fulfil the needs of employers, plug skills shortfalls, and stimulate the economy.
Key Points:
• Reforms are heavily focussed on colleges which isn’t conducive to a specialised industry like ours.
• Local Skills Improvement Plans seem positive but there are con cerns that we will be overlooked.
• More clarity is needed on how the accountability system will work to ensure Local Skills Improvement Plans are being implemented.
• Government could do more to get unemployed people into training and then into specialised industries.
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 ThisisEngineering RAEng on Unsplash
