From education to employment

Crisis? What crisis? Is the Lack of Urgency in the Skills & Post 16 Education Bill A Missed Opportunity?

Photo via Li An-Lim

Whilst looking at the statement from the Education Secretary Gavin Williamson on the Skills and Post 16 Education Bill in the background in my kitchen the radio was playing ‘Reasons to be cheerful’ by Ian Dury and the Blockheads.

Looking at some of the emerging details of the Bill, I found myself reflecting on whether it contains reasons to be cheerful, 1,2,3.

So here we go:

1. The Lifetime Skills Guarantee 

The Government is recognising that millions of adults (11 million of them apparently) in England do not have equivalent qualifications to an A level and under this scheme they will be able to take on a level 3 qualification at no cost to them from a list of several hundred courses including those aligned to high growth and high value added areas such as digital.

This is a reason to be cheerful. Subject to lots of caveats.

2. The Lifelong Loan Entitlement 

The Government has stated that from 2025 individuals will be provided with the opportunity to have a loan (is that an oxymoron?) for the purposes of undertaking study. It’s claimed that this loan will be the equivalent to four years of post-18 study to be used flexibly across a lifetime. 

This is a reason to be cheerful. I think. Maybe. We’ll come back to this later.

3. Build Back Greener 

Oh hell yes. The necessity to create a smarter and more sustainable planet is clear.

It’s encouraging to see sustainability now appearing in nearly all policy announcements and the Green Jobs Taskforce announced by the Government has great potential to help to deliver ‘target zero’ in the future.

In case anyone is in any doubt about the criticality of this, as Professor Guy McPherson once said: “If you think that the economy is more important than the environment, try holding your breath while counting your money”. 

As a joint initiative between the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the Department for Education there is great potential for a joined up strategy here.

Reasons to be less cheerful, 1,2,3:

1. A lot can change in four years

The Lifetime Skills Guarantee and the Lifelong Loan Entitlement appear to commence in 2025. Why? Why not 2022? Or now? A lot can change in four years, including Governments.

So much will change between now and then it’s hard to see how this fits with any commitment to level up the UK economy in the short to medium term.

2. Where’s the urgency needed to meet the global challenges we face?

Building back greener is inherently a smart strategy but linking it to the overall target of net zero emissions by 2050 lacks the urgency needed to meet the global challenges we face. It’s hard not to feel that this is a missed opportunity. It’s hard to perform the mental gymnastics required to correlate the climate crisis with a target of 2050.

Where’s the crisis? The fire service don’t respond to your house fire by saying they’ll get around to your place sometime next year. The world is on fire now. The climate crisis requires immediate radical action and despite all the bad things it brings to mind, it could actually lead to one of the largest growth sectors for high value added opportunities the world has ever seen.

Those with the vision and leadership to develop the products, services and skills to address the climate crisis will create a world where there is more money to count and without the need to hold your breath when counting it.

3. Putting employers in the driving seat?

My contention is, why the driving seat? It makes sense to involve employers in the co-creation of curriculum but many of the critical skills most needed by employers (as a generalisation) are not specific to the products and services they deliver, such as creativity and leadership, whilst specific skills tend to be learned whilst undertaking the role.

The approach that appears to be advocated has two key unintended consequences:

  1. Firstly it fails to recognise that colleges have a wealth of internal expertise and research capabilities that could help to transform industry. It can’t do this as easily if the dominant influence is an employer seeking to reinforce its current way of working. Business perhaps needs to be on the curriculum bus, just not in the driving seat.
  2. Secondly employers in the driving seat usually means the usual suspects like corporate giants such as JCB and Jaguar Land Rover and not SMEs. The Government’s own analysis on business population estimates show that 99.9% of the business sectors are SMEs. Not massive companies like JCB. My contention is that unless it is mandated that SMEs are part of this, it may fail because it may not be as relevant as it could be to 99.9% of the business world in the UK.

It’s obvious that the post covid world will be very different and there are, at a high level, reasons to be cheerful within the details of the Skills and Post 16 Education Bill but it’s hard not to feel that it’s shaping up to be something of a missed opportunity.

It reminded me of a note I once had in a school report that said ‘Jamie has great potential but must try harder’.

The Skills and Post 16 Education Bill has great potential, but when it comes to the lack of urgency it conveys, it leaves a sense of crisis, what crisis?

The Bill has potential, but must try harder.

Jamie Smith, Executive Chairman, C-Learning


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