A question dogs adult learning. How do you persuade employees and employers that skills are a good investment? This question is particularly relevant in an economic climate where UK businesses threaten to slash training costs before anything else.
Employers and learning providers should think ahead. A recovery early next year would intensify competitive pressures. Higher productivity would be required. That’s why the Government’s decision to reform National Training Organisations could not be better timed.
Alongside the Learning and Skills Council we need a network of strategic bodies. Business-led regional development agencies and a re-invented Small Business Service are developing local and regional solutions on the supply side.
But this leaves a missing link on the demand side where strong industry leadership is required. Sectors need to play a much greater role in addressing the country’s skills gaps. Many regional initiatives and welfare-to-work programmes have already started to adopt a sector approach. And if in its second year the LSC is to successfully achieve “significant changes in the pattern of learning and skills provision”, it urgently needs competent organisations.
Adult skills minister John Healey has given some hints about how this should be done - and a prospectus setting out the process of selecting new Sector Skills Councils will be announced on October 16.
All 73 current NTOs will cease to operate after March 2002 and the Government hopes they will be replaced by a smaller number of larger and more effective organisations. Reform is badly needed. Some NTOs have earned an outstanding reputation by forging alliances between employers, employees and learning providers that have dramatically boosted the skills base of their industries. Others have shown courage by standing up to poorly performing firms in their sector.
But government research last year revealed serious flaws. Few NTOs had any reliable data on take-up of Modern Apprenticeship, national vocational qualifications or Investors in People, while more than a half of NTOs had never used the principal labour market intelligence sources. Seven out of 10 NTOs did not know how many micro-firms or small or medium-sized enterprises existed in their sectors and only 10 per of NTO board members work for firms which employ 20 people or fewer.
Although more than 60 per cent of NTO board members are employers, few firms saw any need for them to contribute financially. In fact, 57 per cent of businesses surveyed thought the Government should be the sole funder, with only one in six accepting that employers should mainly fund NTOs.
A significant number of current NTOs lack the strategic capacity to create lifelong learning through a skills revolution. Too many “employer-led” NTOs are not owned by industry. They are small outfits with invisible employer boards who lack clout and represent sectors that have little economic significance.
Plainly, the Government wants to build on the best of the NTOs. But it must also help directly. Ministers have suggested creating a development agency to support the new councils and have promised to treble funding to NTOs.
But that still leaves the hardest work for employers themselves. Each newly formed Sector Skills Council should demonstrate that it represents a coherent industry grouping that has real economic significance. They should command respect within their industry and demonstrate real leadership. Each must bring trade union and independent expertise on board. While the main thrust of Government policy is to encourage “high end” skills, the bodies must also understand that productivity gains require a boost to skills such as literacy and numeracy.
The Government should not give its seal of approval to the new bodies until they demonstrate these main qualities: strong support from leading employers and from a wide cross-section of small to medium-sized firms; the ability to lever-in employer funding and unrivalled expertise in understanding the labour market. They must develop strong and effective links with the whole supplier infrastructure of schools, apprenticeship training organisations, FE colleges and higher education. To date, these links have been extremely ad hoc.
With about 20 to 25 credible and more partnership-orientated Sector Skills Councils, the Government will be able to enter into a genuine public-private partnership with industry and unions about delivering the nation’s skills needs.
Paul Convery is a member of the LSC Adult Learning Committee
