Major challenges facing the UK over the next decade include achieving Net-Zero and ensuring that construction, engineering, and manufacturing have captured the benefits of digitisation and new technology. Achieving Net-Zero in construction will require a seismic shift to more off-site manufacturing and digital methods.
New ‘green’ materials will need to be developed and major retrofit programmes will need to be carried out on existing buildings. This will require more integrated working between construction, engineering and manufacturing. However, the harmony is lacking, and supply cannot be guaranteed despite demand. The demand side is not being sufficiently coordinated and managed for people to feel confident enough to invest.
Against all of this, we have a severe skills shortage in these industries and in education provision. Pay is so far behind industry in colleges that the few who possess the knowledge are working on the ground, so there’s a shortage of quality tutors to upskill future generations for work in the digital and green economy. Learners aren’t being adequately exposed to new skills and when they progress into industry, they’re ill-equipped. For instance, a crane driver traditionally used to climb to the top of a crane and sit up there all day operating it. Today, they’re moving towards a world of robot-control with operators sit in a cabin on the ground and manoeuvring the crane. However, most trainees are still being taught the traditional ways. We haven’t yet grasped how new technology will impact traditional jobs nor do we consider the types of jobs likely to be needed in future. We need to overcome this inertia.
Meanwhile, support for teachers, tutors, and assessors to help them deliver the needs of industry is thin and lacking in real substance. Courses also remain too theory based. Even T-Levels seem academic and there is still not enough emphasis being placed on practical skills. Employer funding for skills has been steadily declining and funding for colleges that generally deliver much of the training for 16-to-19 year-olds has fallen in real terms. This does not bode well in times of inflation and limits any improvements that educational institutions can make.
Overall, I feel that this Act will do little to address the core problems facing our economy. It is focused primarily on young entrants to the workforce and does not adequately address the challenges of levelling up, social mobility, digitisation and Net-Zero.
Every year, the cohort of young people coming through contributes two per cent of the workforce, so it will take decades to plug the skills gap solely concentrating on them. More focus and investment needs to be placed on retraining the adult workforce to make rapid progress. The Lifetime Skills Entitlement could help, but from our experience not many people take up this type of loan scheme, certainly not to the required scale. We don’t have the courses available below Level 3, meaning that a limited section of the workforce can access quality training. Some 11.2 million [30 per cent] of jobs in the economy are at Level 2 and below with essential pathways at Entry Level and Level 1 needed for social mobility, as well as producing essential workers like care workers, HGV drivers, construction workers and more. The Act does nothing for these people.
The government talks about Local Skills Improvement Plans, but pilots show that what employers are asking for is the same as it has been for 20 years, yet education is not doing things that differently. There’s no concrete provision for dealing with this discord.
Unfortunately, there is no National Skills Strategy which covers – in a joined-up way -the skills development and upskilling of both new entrants and those 32 million people already in the workforce. There is no coherent approach to funding which clearly needs to be provided by both industry and the public purse on a local and national level. However, such a framework for training, assessment and accreditation/certification is urgently needed.
Key Points:
• The nation faces the challenge of achieving Net-Zero and ensuring that industry has captured the benefits of digitisation and new technology to up productivity and competitiveness.
• Skills shortfalls in further education colleges means there are limited numbers of people to teach the skills of the future and quality of training is therefore affected.
• The Post-16 Education & Skills Act means well but will do little to address the core of the problems facing our economy.
• A coherent and all-encompassing National Skills Strategy is needed.
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 Peter Beukema on Unsplash
