Stoneleigh Timber Engineering Ltd is a small business manufacturing roof trusses and floor joists, along with other structural timber components, for the building industry. In the UK there are somewhere in the region of 300 similar companies.
For the production side of our business, we need people with the sort of woodworking skills that are commonly taught. However, on the technical design side, we need folk who can design a roof and then sell it. Doing that requires abilities ranging from IT to commercial competence, and knowledge of building production techniques through to a reasonable understanding of structures and social skills.
It is not reasonable, or realistic, for such speciality businesses like ours to expect the state to provide “Plug-N-Play” candidates for the limited number of jobs relative to the student population. Neither would our size allow for the provision of salaries to meet the expectations of candidates educated to a high standard. It is probable that there are many organisations in the UK that could say something similar.
In the spring of 2020, it was clear that Stoneleigh needed to increase staff numbers to cope with a staggering increase in post-Covid order levels, to make the business more robust and resilient and to allow for the growth planned. The question was “how do we do that?”, given very little monetary resource and a worrying background of potential economic collapse.
It must also be recognised that for young people from a certain sector of society, any kind of further education is going to be an unlikely choice, even if they are intelligent enough to achieve it. For example, here we have one young man who doesn’t have a single qualification to his name, but immediately I could see that he was much smarter than his credentials indicated. We put him forward as a candidate for Mensa [the high-IQ society]. He was just one percentage point short of achieving membership, so in the top third percentile for IQ. Clearly, he is an intelligent person who has a huge amount to offer. That’s just one of a number in this business [and there are only 13 of us] who has a capability that is valuable and useful but not supported by achievements.
Given the right encouragement, companies like Stoneleigh can pick up some of the folk that “fall between the cracks” and train them to fulfil their potential. However, small companies don’t have HR teams or the financial resources to cope with traditional apprenticeships and this means the funding model needs to change, provisions for which are notably absent from the Skills and Post-16 Education Act.
For Stoneleigh’s situation, the Kickstart scheme was an ideal model that solved all the problems. A six-month cost-free, “try before you buy” approach allowed all parties to assess the fit. The Kickstart candidates had a full education within a working environment. The government had a relatively cheap solution for taking each Kickstarter off the unemployed register. Everyone was a winner. Yet, they closed it.
With the faultless help and support of the Swindon & Wiltshire Growth Hub, Stoneleigh received funding for three Kickstarters. As of the end of May 2022, all have been taken on full time, boosting employee numbers by 30 per cent, bringing forward growth plans by five years. Extending the scheme for some years putting the emphasis for specific education on employers, is in everyone’s interest. The government should strongly consider reviving it.
Key Points:
• In a world of rapidly divergent technologies, it will become increase ingly difficult or even impossible, for the state to provide formal post-16 education to satisfy the needs of all employers.
• Post-16 education is for some students increasingly expensive, un attractive and/or unattainable; a state educational system doesn’t work for all and there is room for another method of “education” for the age group.
• The Kickstart scheme was an excellent way to encourage smaller businesses to supply industry specific tailored education at the point of need.
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
