DEVOLUTION, SKILLS POLICY AND EMPLOYMENT choices, challenges and future directions. Ewart Keep SKOPE

Transcription

1 DEVOLUTION, SKILLS POLICY AND EMPLOYMENT choices, challenges and future directions Ewart Keep SKOPE

2 STRUCTURE OF WHAT FOLLOWS 1. Devolved skills policies and the labour market 2. Is further upskilling going to solve anything? 3. Problems of low waged, dead end jobs 4. Demand and utilisation big but not easy wins!

3 SKILLS AND EMPLOYMENT 4 UK nations, with full devolved responsibilities around skills, and education and training (E&T) Employment is not devolved (except in NI) UKCES as a UK-wide policy and research body covering skills AND employment

4 THINGS TO BEAR IN MIND The underlying social and economic conditions differed (and continue to differ) across the 4 UK nations (and within them). Wales = 70% English average GVA per head, almost no significant Welsh-owned and HQ d companies, no meaningful Welsh financial sector. Demand for skills very different from England (or parts thereof London and SE).

5 THINGS TO BEAR IN MIND - 2 In terms of s s to spend on E&T policies and institutions, the 4 nations started in a very different place. Per head of population: Scotland 1. Scotland England 2. England Wales 3. Wales Will cuts preserve this order?

6 THE RECESSION All four UK nations now face the need to change their E&T policies and programmes to meet the issues posed by the onset of deep recession and mass unemployment. In a sense, a common threat tends to produce broadly similar responses (though from different starting points).

7 AND CUTS All four countries are now facing the need to reduce spending scale unknown but likely to be large. Given legal entitlements to initial E&T for young people, post-19 and adult provision is liable to be very hard hit.

8 SOME EXAMPLES OF DIVERGENCE Institutional and regulatory frameworks Programmes and initiatives

9 INSTITUTIONAL AND REGULATORY SYSTEMS Wales quangocide and the need for the government to deal direct with stakeholders. Scotland powerful but shifting quangos (emergence of SDS alongside SFC) England permanent revolution! Large quangos with no autonomy.

10 PROGRAMMES AND INITIATIVES England raising the learning age. Scotland and Wales decline (strongly) to follow. England Train to Gain. Scotland and Wales decline to follow. England endorses Leitch targets. Scotland and Wales decline to follow.

11 FURTHER UPSKILLING TO WHAT END? Over-qualification in the UK: Southerland (2009) using WERS data finds about 50% of workers reporting having skills higher than those needed for current job. Skills Survey showed rises in over-qualification, from 29.3% in 1986 to 39.6% in 2006 Among European countries, only Spain, Portugal and Turkey have a higher proportion of jobs requiring no education beyond compulsory schooling

12 UKCES: Ambition 2020.the growth in our numbers of high skilled people significantly exceeds the growth in our number of high skilled jobs. The growth of high skilled jobs is also occurring at a slower rate than in other countries.

13 EMPLOYERS HAVE OTHER MODELS OF HOW TO COMPETE The skills profile, and hence the supply and cost of some skills, may never be ideal in the UK, but labour market flexibility will remain our real competitive advantage. CBI, 2009

14 MORE SKILLS = DOUBLEPLUS GOOD? England YES Wales Yes, but.. Scotland YES, but we have to tackle demand and utilisation

15 THE PERSISTENCE OF BAD JOBS Making work pay is hard when 22% of all UK jobs are low paid (EU definition) and 33% of all female jobs are low paid. Low paid occupations are not set to decline this side of 2020, and UKCES projections suggest they may actually grow.

16 IT S S ALL YOUR OWN FAULT! Department for Education and Skills, 2007: We need to change the culture in this country around skills, so that when someone complains that they are in a low- paid, dead-end end job, people ask them what they are doing to improve their skills.

17 MORE SKILLS WILL NOT TRAIN AWAY BAD JOBS Low pay has relatively little to do with the skills of those doing this work. If they all had a Level 4, they would NOT be earning the average graduate wage premium. Example of Germany, where workforce as skilled as ever (to higher average levels than in UK), but low pay has exploded over last decade to pass UK levels. In many cases, UK employers have designed skill out of their jobs.

18 DEMAND AND UTILISATION Scotland taking the lead in this area. Modest pilots at a time when the money may have run out. Can England/UK find the ideological space to follow?

19 FINAL THOUGHTS. If time, energy, s s (for training) and job opening are in short and finite supply who do you prioritise: 1. Young unemployed 2. Displaced adults recently redundant 3. Long-term adult unemployed 4. Disability claimants/economically inactive?