Background
The Leitch Report sets the context for skills development and a productivity challenge for the UK as a whole. In order to become a ‘world leader’ in skills there needs to be a greater emphasis on engaging with employers and creating a genuinely ‘demand-led’ system for the planning and delivery of skills.
Recognising these two objectives (employer engagement and skills demand), GCP is establishing an Employer Skills Forum. A key business need in Greater Cambridge for example, is to better match the range of training provision to employer workforce needs and this is a primary aim of the Employer Skills Forum project.
Challenges & Clarifications
Sector Skills Councils tend to focus on the 14 – 19 agenda yet the UK Commission for Employment & Skills (UKCES) suggests that 75% of our 2020 workforce is already in work. The majority of these people in work are over 19.
The distinction between skills shortages and skills gaps is important. Skills shortages refer to the need for new people with the right skills to join the workforce of a particular sector. Skills gaps are about existing people in the workforce not having the right skills to perform the job they are doing.
At the company level, the workforce needs to be ‘fit for purpose’, and this might include a range of unaccredited training workshops to upskill people, rather than embarking on a formal qualification.
Skills agencies and public sector organisations involved in collecting data on skills all focus on ‘funded learning’. Short courses and unfunded courses all go unreported so it is difficult to build up a picture of industry skills activity by looking at government agency statistics.
So this project is about:
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People in work rather than 14 – 19 agenda
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Skills gaps rather than shortages.
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Skills as well as Qualifications
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Funded as well as unfunded learning
Project Aims
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Set up a range of sub-regional sector skills focus groups comprising generic business representative organisations; sub-regional business groups and associations; FE & HE representatives.
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Disseminate information to the Forum on skills activity in key sectors focusing on full-cost and funded learning.
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Share information around seven key skills themes (qualifications; training provision; training demand; government intervention; employer sector based networks; employees training needs analyses; and entry level issues) analyse and disseminate across forum.
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Work with colleges, universities and private training providers in the sub-region to develop new ways of responding to employer needs.
Project Outcomes
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Better employer understanding of the skills economy and workforce development opportunities;
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Improved communications between employers and support agencies potentially leading to improved response times;
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Enhanced levels of analysis around skill issues especially relating to different sectors.
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Use project research to influence co-financers commissioning of sectoral skills interventions.