Skills: Getting on in business, getting on at work
An initial NIACE Response to the White Paper, Published 22 March 2005
On Tuesday 22nd March the government published "Skills: Getting on in business, getting on at work" (Cm 6483), a white paper rearticulating its skills strategy. (www.dfes.gov.uk/publications/skillsgettingon/).
A full NIACE response will be published shortly but in an initial comment, NIACE senior policy officer, Alastair Thomson, said:
"NIACE welcomes the re-affirmation of Government's awareness of the growing importance of adult learning as a driver of both economic prosperity and of social justice. There will, quite simply, not be enough young people entering the labour market to fill all the new and replacement jobs needed over the next decade so it is imperative for the UK to increase the employment rate. That will be achieved by concentrating on attracting women from minority ethnic communities, by older people delaying full retirement and by more people moving from benefits into work as well as from inward migration. This is a massive education and training challenge that extends beyond a narrow skills agenda - it also plays out in issues of culture change, quality of life, citizenship and social inclusion.
"Although much of the white paper is a progress report, its publication alongside the first four sector skills agreements indicates that some of the government’s expectations of employers may be bearing fruit. As members of the Skills Alliance, NIACE finds much to support - although there are disappointing omissions too.
"Firstly, the reaffirmation of the value of learning for personal development and the continuation of the funding safeguard (paras 231 and 232 of part two) sends an important positive signal. In addition the increasing recognition of the importance of information and guidance should be good news for adults as is the piloting of a level 3 entitlement; one-to-one skills coaching under the New Deal for Skills; the expansion of the adult learning grant; the development of Sector Skills Councils and support for the role of trade unions in lifelong learning. We also applaud the decision to issue a green paper on offender education later this year and the forthcoming paper on an ageing society.
"We believe that the strategy should be employment-led rather than employer-led and that it must engage with individual men and women as they use learning to transform their lives. We must never forget that people are not simply units of production and consumption.
"There are, however, some worrying flaws. It is disappointing that, although older learners are highlighted as pensioners, the Government has yet to grasp the scale of change needed if education and training is to deal with the consequences of an ageing adult population that will need to extend its engagement with the labour market to later in life. In addition, the strategy avoids mention of the education and training challenges of a workforce with increasing numbers of migrants in it. Furthermore there are no participation targets (either overall or at Level 3) and the opportunity to trial paid educational leave and workplace learning committees has been missed.
"We remain concerned whether the strategy will be properly resourced. Despite the welcome additional resources invested by Government, we remain concerned that we have yet to secure a large enough combination of public and private investment to bring the UK into line with other OECD countries despite some closing of the gap.
“We are hampered by the way the 2000 law was written in England and Wales which means that the needs of the 16 - 19 group must be met while everyone else has to wait to see what is left. This means that the more young people extend their education beyond 16, the tighter the squeeze on public resources for adult learning - unless spending is routed differently. This is a perverse consequence of parliamentary drafting as much as a deliberate choice from a government that has been sympathetic to the idea of lifelong learning.
"We want to see a levelling up not a levelling down and will continue to work with Government to realise the best possible deal for adult learners."
