The launch of our report, 'Making Skills Work: The Path to Solving the Productivity Crisis', which was produced in partnership with City & Guilds, took place on the fringes of the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool. All around the waters of the Albert Dock you could hear the sound of excited discussion and debate as thousands gathered at Labour’s first conference for many years as the party of government. Conceived under one government, finalised under another, the report is particularly timely; an opportunity, in what feels like an interregnum, to take stock of previous skills policies and to look forward to implementing future policies which learn from past mistakes. Can we make real progress in creating a joined-up, effective national skills strategy?
The venue for the launch was the slightly surreal surroundings of the Beatles Story Museum, so it makes sense to describe the four key themes of the report as “the Fab Four”. Although the HE funding crisis and FE pay crisis are the most immediate and pressing problems for the new government, the Fab Four will dominate the skills policy agenda for the foreseeable future.
Productivity. The report makes a number of recommendations for prioritising skills policies which directly contribute to the national challenge of reviving economic growth and productivity. This means focusing primarily on the needs of England’s working population and opening up access to reskilling and upskilling, particularly at higher levels. It also means developing a reformed Lifelong Learning Entitlement that works in conjunction with the flexible Growth and Skills Levy. It was good to hear the Skills Minister Jacqui Smith earlier in the day affirm in public that the LLE in some form “will have an important role” in government strategy.
Devolution. Ensuring alignment between national and regional skills strategies is another key element of our recommendations. With the Local Skills Improvement Plans having had little discernible impact, the creation of Skills England as a national coordinating hub allows Mayoral Combined Authorities and other devolved authorities to be “plugged in”. There’s an important balance to be achieved: regional skills strategies need to be tailored to meet local needs but can’t be allowed to become too fragmented and disjointed.
Higher Education. The decision to exclude universities and other HEIs from LSIPs was baffling, given the increasing number of universities playing an active role in place-based skills development, through Civic University agreements and other forms of collaboration. The report calls for a strong link between Skills England and HE regulatory bodies to ensure there is no unnecessary boundary between lower and higher skills delivery. Our forthcoming report in partnership with Newcastle University will set out in detail the energy and enthusiasm with which a Russell Group university has grasped a regional skills agenda and illustrates how much can be achieved by a collaborative approach.
Integration. Which naturally leads to the fourth focus of the report, which makes a number of recommendations on moving towards greater FE/HE integration by bringing separate regulatory and funding regimes closer together. The report doesn’t attempt to prescribe in any detail how this might be done; LEI member institutions are developing a range of structures and mechanisms to create sustainable collaborative FE/HE platforms, but there’s no doubt current policy and regulation presents many difficult hurdles. Look out for an LEI event on models of tertiary integration later this term.
Solving these four sets of challenges is going to require sustained effort over a long period of time. As the report makes clear, the constant chopping and changing of skills policy and regulation over decades has not helped us develop a strong or stable system. We need to move away from constant short-term initiatives and build a much more robust national skills infrastructure, where longer and shorter courses, flexible workplace and classroom options, on-line and in-person delivery, and some form of individual credit transfer and accumulation system, coexist within a coherent overall framework. This implies work that will need more than one parliament to complete and therefore as much cross-party consensus as possible.
“All you need is skills” to paraphrase the Beatles, but it will no doubt be a long and winding road to make skills available to all. This report sets out a route map for the journey ahead.
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