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Adults Learning: Skills Special

The gap between skills and labour supply is one of the most pressing problems facing the UK economy. The Government will publish its long-awaited skills strategy White Paper on July 9, setting out its strategy for reaching and teaching adults with low skills. For the first time ever, Adults Learning - NIACE’s flagship journal - will publish a summer issue, a one-off skills special, offering the first concerted analysis of the strategy, with contributions from leading academics and stakeholders, including the TUC, the CBI and the LSC. This edition - which will be published on July 30 - will frame the agenda for debate about skills education in the coming months.

Readers can get the first reactions of key stakeholders, commentators, politicians and policy advisers, as they share their perceptions of the White Paper. These early reactions will help shape the consultative exercise, after which legislation is expected. By offering a uniquely broad perspective on how the skills strategy is seen at local, regional, sectoral and national levels, this issue of Adults Learning gives individual organisations a chance to frame and refine their own response to consultation and to understand the range of different agendas the strategy seeks to satisfy.

Adults Learning has invited a diverse array of writers, from across the spectrum of adult education and training, to offer their perspectives on the Government plans. Frances O’Grady, the recently appointed Deputy General Secretary of the TUC, and Pam Johnson, Head of Learning and Organising Services at UNISON, will give a trade union perspective, while Maniza Ntekim, Senior Policy Adviser at the CBI, will weigh up the Paper’s implications from an employer point of view.

This issue will feature an in-depth interview with Chris Humphries, Director General of City and Guilds, who has called for a demand-led system of vocational qualifications, one responsive both to change and to employers’ needs. Mr Humphries will offer his informed analysis of the Government’s strategy, while setting out what he believes still needs to be done.

We will have immediate reaction and comment from leading politicians from all the main parties, including Barry Sheerman MP, Labour Chairman of the Education and Skills Committee, Liberal Democrats Education Spokesman Phil Willis MP and Damian Green MP, the Conservatives’ Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Skills. In addition, Councillor Ian Mearns of Gateshead will offer a Local Government Association perspective, and David Sherlock, Chief Inspector of the Adult Learning Inspectorate will contribute his reaction.

Senior figures from the Learning and Skills Council will present their assessments, as will Chris Hughes, Chief Executive of the Learning and Skills Development Agency and Janice Shiner, Director General for Lifelong Learning at the Department for Education and Skills. Alan Tuckett, Director of NIACE will give his response. David Gibson, the Association of College’s Chief Executive and Ewart Keep, Deputy Director of SKOPE, the centre for Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance, jointly based at Warwick and Oxford universities will carefully analyse and reflect on the implications of the strategy. Tony Jowitt, Principal of Northern College, will also be writing for us.

Leading academics will offer their analyses of the key features of the strategy. These will include:

Alastair Thomson, Policy Officer for NIACE, will offer a detailed analysis of the strategy and summary of its main points. Other specially commissioned writers, including Professor John Field, of Stirling University, and John Graystone, Chief Executive of Fforwm, will reflect on the skills gap in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and consider the challenges facing the regional economies. In addition you will find all our regular features, including Agenda, Landmarks, Book Reviews, Q&A and Viewpoint, with Dr Ursula Howard, Director of the National Research and Development Centre for Adult Literacy and Numeracy, at the Institute of Education.