Skills in London BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN BUSINESS AND COLLEGES

Transcription

1 Skills in London BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN BUSINESS AND COLLEGES

2 Contents SECTION PAGE 1. Introduction 2. An employer-led skills system? 3. Colleges and business: a united front 4. What now?

3 Collab Group: London Capital Colleges brings together the chief executives and principals from the largest further education colleges in London, with geographical coverage across 22 of the 32 London boroughs and a combined student population of over 150,000. The group has been created to generate new ideas that will transform the London skills system by working collaboratively with industry and government. 3

4 1Introduction Our third dinner discussion brought Neil Carberry, formerly Managing Director of the CBI*, together with leaders from London s largest further education colleges. The group met to discuss how better collaboration between industry and colleges can be enabled. Central to the concerns of both business and colleges are having qualifications that give the people who will make up tomorrow s workforce progression and the ability to move between jobs. Partnership and reform, local solutions rather than top-down policy and presenting a united front to government all prompted impassioned debate. College leaders explained they felt excluded from discussions about training, apprenticeships and T-levels. Topics on the table generally pivoted around two central themes: the role employers should play in designing a skills system and how colleges and business can come together in a united front to influence policy. *At time of publication, Neil has taken up the position of Chief Executive at the Recruitment and Employment Confederation 4

5 2An employer-led skills system? The challenges for partnership The group discussed the need to create skills policy through partnership, but highlighted the challenges: lack of flexibility in the system and lack of ability for businesses and colleges to co-design top-quality provision and to collaborate on providing it. The stumbling block is that the system changes too often. Employers who are doing nothing in the skills arena defend themselves by saying, I went to talk to the college, we had a great conversation, everything was shaping up. Six months later it was all falling apart because everything had changed. Colleges have taken the biggest steps to look at the supply side and to understand what business needs and what policy demands Business is worried by a political framework that knows skills are important, knows things have to happen and levers have to be pulled, but is unclear which levers to pull and instead they are just pulled at random. Colleges voiced their belief that employers treat the skills agenda as a corporate social responsibility obligation, rather than as something that hits the bottom line and is of benefit. However this might be starting to change as more companies have begun to take seriously the impact they can have on social mobility and their local community. 5

6 2Colleges at a crossroads Colleges feel at a crossroads over whether their primary purpose of education policy is to widen participation to get young people into university, or to go back to technical and practical work around human skills, interpersonal skills, teamwork all the soft skills that education finds it difficult to measure but employers know they need. Government policy has been predicated on universities since Tony Blair, but business largely views this policy as a disaster. The aim should be routes to higher skills for the maximum number rather than university for all. CBI members want Level 4 and 5 technical skills: apprentices with a real deep technical understanding and the ability not just to carry out a process but to contribute to process design. While graduate skills shortages do exist, there are bigger technical skills shortages, particularly in the manufacturing sector. In manufacturing you will get 1,000 applications for an unskilled job for every one you get for a technician at a Level 4 or 5. Graduation as a market is failing a lot of people and I don t think that further education fails lots of people. The upshot is companies using graduates to fill Level 4/5 jobs, create massive under-employment. (The point was also raised as to whether there is anything wrong with Level 4 and 5 jobs being filled by people who have been trained to graduate level and then drop back, something particularly prevalent in London with its graduate surplus.) 6

7 2An employer-led skills system Colleges pointed out that while large employers have had a big say in the design of qualifications and apprenticeship standards, educationalists feel left out. Employers taking over has been to the detriment of education and to the detriment of what the majority of employers tell colleges they need. [We should not] think that any one employer can represent that sector, because that s what s led us in the wrong direction over qualifications and frameworks and things, and I think we have to be very careful on that. We are not very far away from an English skills system that could work. It set out three things needed to unlock real change: a reformed apprenticeship levy; a high quality college-based Level 3 that moves people into the Level 4 and 5 apprenticeships its members want; and a national retraining offer for individuals. Colleges can often articulate what employers want collectively in a way that individual employers who are leading that agenda fail to do. Employer leadership does make sense at higher-skill apprentice levels, but it should still be about partnership. Collaboration could help businesses understand opportunities they are currently ignoring. The kneejerk reaction, I don t want a 16-year-old with no skills coming into my business for six weeks can dissolve once the employer grasps that those six weeks can be split into two-week stints, for example. 7

8 2Local rather than central Participants favoured local solutions rather than centralised policy. Local discussion and sectoral discussion might be a bit messy maybe for a while might always be a little bit messy around the edges but the overall delivery of that system will be better than something that s specified from the top. In London, subregional partnerships (essentially partnerships with local authorities) work better than regionalised partnerships with the Mayor of London and Greater London Authority. The lack of a unified system presents a number of complications but colleges reaffirmed a desire to work the GLA to unite all parts of the skills system together. It is in London, where it is vital to base skills development on business priorities, that there is potential for partnership and long-term commitment from corporates to colleges. This could lead to investment in high-quality work to advance social mobility. 8

9 3Colleges and business: a united front Collab Group is working with the CBI to align its thinking with that of industry, the better to influence and cajole government on policy around T-Levels, the apprenticeship levy and more. This strong combined voice is particularly important in a climate of multiple skills strategies that are drawn up, debated but rarely implemented at local or national level. Unless industry and the education sector actually combine forces, the enemy now is government because they keep flipping round A skills strategy doesn t get traction [when] you spend all your time developing the strategy and then reviewing the strategy as opposed to actually delivering the strategy. Collab Group London will have a stronger voice as part of a united front with the CBI and London First: I think if you bring those three together you ve got something powerful which is a conversation with City Hall but actually also a conversation with central government. 9

10 3A revelation was the idea that much of the work colleges and business do together can be done without the permission of politicians. There s a large number of things we do that we don t need political consent to get on with where actually we have the power to do it ourselves, provided we re aligned with industry. I ve been with Collab Group two and a half years and I m already on my third Skills Minister and my third Secretary of State. The way forward should be colleges engaging on a sector basis, looking at the core sectors that are driving the London economy construction, financial services, creative industries and digital tech and finding out how to support their specific needs. For example, Collab Group colleges could support the financial services sector across London, given that they cover 22 of the 32 boroughs. Engaging across London rather than in borough silos would also open the opportunity for young people in Hackney, for example, to work in Central London, rather than be limited by the number of jobs available in their local area. Is that what FE s missing, that sort of differentiation between sectors? 10

11 4What now? The evening concluded with participants emphasising how partnership is crucial to changing cultural perceptions around technical education. There was a general acknowledgement that few politicians understand either the demand-side drivers for business decision-making and skills or the supply side. So combining the demand side with the supply side is persuasive. The question is how to do it. How do you actually align London First with the CBI with a core group of FE colleges that turn around and say, We can drive this in a different way? This is certainly a time of great change both for business and for colleges. There are considerable forces that threaten to reshape and disrupt the established order of our economy, politics and society. But in this time of uncertainty, there are huge opportunities for colleges and business to work together and collaborate to achieve the best outcomes for learners and communities. Our national skills crisis will only improve when we are able to speak with a collective voice. Collab Group London colleges reaffirmed their commitment to working collectively with business to provide provision that is aligned with the real skills needs of employers and the economy. By working in partnership, the opportunities to create a world-class skills system will soon be within our reach. 11

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