Will a new skills agenda unveiled by the government make Britain more competitive? Business leaders and education experts are cautiously optimistic
British business faces a "perfect storm" of changes in the way the government supports skills and training. Ministers have already announced that some training quangos' days are numbered. Skills minister John Hayes has asked for the views of business on what a future strategy should look like and how further education and training should be funded, setting a deadline for responses of 14 October. And business secretary Vince Cable has announced there will be a £150m boost for apprenticeship schemes.
But in austerity Britain, where budgets are being slashed, will the changes equip business with the abilities needed to fuel economic expansion? In particular, will it be easier for small and medium-sized companies—the powerhouse of growth—to access the skills landscape that emerges from this perfect storm?
"The system today is complex beyond belief with duplicating functions tripping over each other trying to do the right thing," points out Terry Watts, chief executive of Proskills, the sector skills council for the process and manufacturing industry.
"Anyone who thinks that a small company sees its skills needs in terms of separate issues of apprenticeships, key skills, vocational qualifications, higher skills, leadership and management, and so on, hasn't been to or worked in a small company."
Certainly the previous system, with multiple agencies clashing over how to implement complex and obscure regulations, often frustrated rather than aided smaller firms. Olivia Chute, operations manager at PR company Chazbrooks Communications, recalls how the firm was turned down this year for matched funding for a Train to Gain leadership and management programme because the business had already trained another staff member under the programme two years earlier.
"We were told that we would only have been eligible for this stage two funding if the company contact name-the beneficiary of the first training-had left the company," says Chute. "Staff leaving should not be a good reason for the government to offer to fund companies to train new recruits. That didn't make any sense to us at all."
Hayes has indicated that Train to Gain is one of the schemes to be dismantled. The key question is... will its replacement serve business any better?
Mike Harris, head of education and skills policy at the IoD, believes the government should consider a radical approach. "The coalition should seriously reassess the scale of government involvement in the skills and training field," he argues. "This is about more than reducing the number of quangos—it is about leaving more resources in the hands of individuals and employers, and letting them get on with it." He suggests the consultation should examine the case for individual skills accounts—a move that could sweep away much of the undergrowth of bureaucracy that bedevils business training.
Not surprisingly, there is wide agreement among the business community that a new approach should be more focused on abilities needed for the future. "Business and employers must be engaged in the skills and training process," says Chris Bolton, director of external relations at international education company EDI.
Replacement of the Learning and Skills Council with two new bodies—the Skills Funding Agency and the Young People's Learning Agency—could encourage more grassroots involvement in training decisions, argue some business education specialists. "If the purpose of further education is to provide young people with skills relevant to employers and to their own working lives, then emphasising outcomes over processes seems intuitively right," says Robert Terry, founder of ASK Europe, a consultancy which specialises in management and leadership.
The new Qualifications and Credit Framework (QCF) also gives business more influence in the kind of courses on offer. "It will allow training providers and employers to work together on tailored training programmes to suit their needs," says Ian Harper, chief executive of vocational industrial training provider ATG.
Ray Barker, director of the British Educational Suppliers Association, adds: "The QCF sounds like a great idea as it recognises smaller steps of learning and enables learners to build up qualifications bit by bit. For once, it enables work-based training to be nationally recognised. It is supposed to be responsive to employer need so should deliver on real skills in individual sectors."
But Jane Scott Paul, chief executive of the Association of Accounting Technicians, one of the UK's largest training providers, is a critic of the QCF. She calls it a "classic example of how the system invests in the wrong areas".
She explains: "AAT alone has invested in excess of £900,000 in order to fit our qualifications with the QCF, but tangible benefits to learners are insignificant. This money could have been better spent on developing new qualifications and fine-tuning our current activity."
The flagship of the coalition's approach is investment in 50,000 new "high-quality" apprenticeship places, especially targeted at SMEs. The government has said it will work with sector skills councils to make sure the places are focused on what employers want. It also plans to focus more on work-based programmes. "Our experience shows that the placement of the right apprentice with the right company is vital to success," says Rod Harris, director at learning provider uke learning. "It is important to analyse employer needs to enable a direct match to the personality and ambitions of potential apprentices. If this is followed by high-quality training and support, aligned to the practical application of skills and knowledge in the workplace, everyone wins."
ATG's Harper says it is vital to raise the status of apprenticeships as a career choice. "I would like to see secondary schools compelled to offer genuinely impartial careers and training advice and guidance to young people. Too few children are made aware of vocational [training] as a competitive option to academia. There is a relentless drive towards degrees for all, but degree education cannot be a suitable route for half of all school leavers."
Research for City & Guilds, the vocational education body, suggests that six out of 10 employers reckon the key benefit people with vocational qualifications have over graduates is that they already have the skills to work in a business. But academia is waking up to the need to turn out more employable graduates. In July, Liverpool John Moores University completed the first year of a voluntary "world of work" certificate, open to all undergraduates.
Terry Dray, head of the Graduate Development Centre at the university, says the programme is designed to give students skills in three areas-self-awareness (such as emotional intelligence), organisational awareness and the ability "to make things happen". But only 3,600 of the university's 23,000 students signed up for the course.
The key question is whether the new training landscape will make Britain more competitive. In its Ambition 2020 report, the UK Commission for Employment and Skills argues that 10 million people need to improve abilities if Britain is to be in the top eight countries for skills, jobs and productivity by 2020. It warns that current policies suggest only half that number will raise levels.
But encouraging training in industry is a thankless task for governments, even with well-meaning policies. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions," warns the IoD's Harris. "In the skills field, successive governments have paved several motorways."
