The £3 billion National Skills Fund (NSF) must be accessible to all leaners at all levels, adult eduction leaders have said. 

Speaking in front of today’s House of Commons Education Select Committee, Holex’s director of policy and external relations Sue Pember, Workers’ Education Association’s chief executive Simon Parkinson and deputy vice chancellor of the Open University Professor Josie Fraser said the NSF should not be exclusively directed to high-level skills.

Professor Fraser told the committee that although it needed to meet skills needs, the NSF needed to be able to “change people’s lives”.

She said: “I think if we’re going to have a £3 billion investment in high-quality education and training it has got to upskill the UK workforce, strengthen the economy and boost productivity.

“Those are absolutely critical goals but it also has to work for people who want to change their lives, whether that’s progressing in work because their jobs are subject to automation challenge, or whether it’s progressing in changing your career because of the new economy.”

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The National Skills Fund is due to come into effect in 2021 and will provide £3 billion over five years towards retraining and upskilling of the adult workforce. 

Mr Parkinson said that if the focus was solely on higher-level skills, “a massive piece of the jigsaw” would be missing.

He said: “I think there’s a narrative here where we can reinforce that hole that’s been blown in the argument that somehow if you work in social care it’s a low skilled job. I think by acknowledging that working in social care and in other sectors you know you can access the National Skills Fund, or you can build a career you can build a range of skills. It’s got to address that narrative.”

Ms Pember said that 17 million people in England do not currently hold a level 2 qualification and called for one fund that “covers all client groups”. 

She said: “The National Skills Fund, the National Retraining Scheme and the AEB collectively need to work together. It needs to be one fund that covers all the client groups that we’ve got. 

“We need to break the cycle for the 17 million, many of them have already been made redundant, they need to change their lives, they need to get on a course that gives them the qualification to get a better job. And that’s what I think the National Skills Fund and the National Retraining Scheme should be there for.”