Skills
Power needs to shift away from national quangos towards city-regional partnerships, made accountable to a directly elected Metro Mayor, with the local knowledge and spending power to match provision to local demand.
FE colleges and other local providers could be financially rewarded for focussing on the basic workplace skills, such as IT-literacy and communication skills, identified by employers as being lacking. Their funding could be tied more closely to the employment outcomes achieved by their students.
Reactions
Phil Willis MP
John Philpott, CIPD
Cllr Warren Bradley, Leader of Liverpool Council
Alex Jones, The Work Foundation
Have Your Say
Comment on this manifesto
Why do so many people in cities lack the skills employers need?
Share with colleagues
Download this manifesto
Tell us what you think
3 Responses to “Skills”
Leave a Reply
Key Facts
£12 billion is spent on adult skills each year, of which around £4.5 billion is on FE, including work-based learning. The effectiveness of this spending is regularly questioned: Train to Gain received £1.47 billion by 2009, and its budget for 2009/10 is £925 million – yet its effectiveness has been questioned by the National Audit Office .
In 2008, 12.4% of the UK working-age population had no formal qualification – up to 22% in Liverpool, and 21% in Birmingham (ONS Annual Population Survey 2008). The CBI’s Education and Skills Survey 2009 found 40% of employers are concerned about employees’ poor basic literacy and numeracy skills. 57% are concerned about IT skills.
60.5% of employees state that it is job-related training that helps them carry out their current role. Only 14.1% said it was vocational / professional training.
Join us at party conferences to debate our policy recommendations. We’ll be part of the Urban Hub at Labour, Conservative and Lib Dem conferences, including a series of fringe discussion events on Tomorrow’s City Economies, sponsored by Openreach – further details at http://www.urban-hub.org
Comment by Centre for Cities, September 16, 2009 @ 12:38 pm
[...] as we set out in our Cities Manifesto, we need to devolve more power to our cities. If the skills system is going to meet the needs of [...]
Pingback by More power for cities over skills budgets, October 29, 2009 @ 8:20 am
Too little emphasis has been given to integrating the skills and employment agenda and their relation to economic performance. We’re glad to see Centre for Cities suggesting a greater focus on employability.
Comment by UKCES, UKCES November 2, 2009 @ 9:28 am