Filling the gap
Four new business-sponsored national skills academies are being launched to train thousands of young people to fill vital gaps in the labour market. The academies, which aim to be open by September 2006, should benefit the construction, financial services, food and drink manufacturing and engineering sectors through £40m of investment. Business backers, including Aviva-owned Norwich Union, Caterpillar, Kier Homes, Marks & Spencer and Northern Foods, are providing at least half of this investment. Meanwhile, following his Department for Education and Skills- commissioned study of the challenges and opportunities facing Further Education (FE) colleges, Sir Andrew Foster has proposed that failing institutions, which do not improve within a year, be taken over by private companies, charities or other colleges. He also called for colleges to specialise in key vocational subjects, to improve prospects for young people and adults in the workforce. Ruth Kelly, education and skills secretary said: “I agree that colleges need a clearer purpose, improved leadership and a sharper focus on the specific needs of learners and business”. Contact Phillip Treloar, DfES 020 7925 5102 http://www.dfes.gov.uk
Your money and your life
Barclays Bank has developed Money Skills and moneychoices, two free resource packages available for youth workers and advice agencies. The packages, developed with assistance from the Financial Services Authority, the Department for Education and Skills and the Department for Work and Pensions, are designed to help young people “better understand the role and importance of money in their lives, grow their basic financial skills and make the most of the financial support available to them”. The resources respond to the findings of a Barclays survey, which highlighted that nearly a third of young people do not know how to prepare and manage a weekly budget and just under half (47%) did not know how to apply for benefits. Contact Emma Keens, Barclays 020 7116 6145 http://www.barclays.co.uk
Encouraging enterprise
Cares, a Business in the Community initiative, persuaded 17 companies in the West Midlands to open their doors to 250 secondary school students during National Enterprise Week, a country-wide series of events to inspire people in their teens and twenties to be enterprising. Participating companies included HSBC, Jaguar, Novotel and National Grid. Contact Pamela Cole, Cares 020 7566 8704 http://www.bitc.org.uk
Skills shortage threatens prosperity
Britain may fall short of having a world-class workforce in 2020 if the government does not make its skills targets more ambitious, according to a hard-hitting interim report published alongside the Pre-Budget report in December. Skills in the UK: The Long-Term Challenge, authored by National Employment Panel chairman Lord (Sandy) Leitch, considers what Britain’s long-term ambition should be if the country wants to maximise prosperity and productivity and improve social justice. The report warns that 4m adults still have the literacy of an 11-year-old, while 12m people are not expected to achieve an 11-year-old’s numeracy if adequate investment is not forthcoming. Leitch says the government must invest in more immediate skills, tackle the stock of low-skilled adults without qualifications and increase the proportion of adults holding a degree. If current targets, which Leitch describes as ambitious, are hit, then by 2020 38% of people are expected to have degrees, compared with 27% now, while productivity is expected to grow by 0.2%, equating to an annual benefit of £3bn per year. Responding to the report, Nick Isles, director of advocacy at The Work Foundation called for more investment in skills. “A knowledge-driven services-oriented economy needs to invest far more in people than we are currently managing to do,” he said. “This means that employers, government and individuals need to come together and create a genuine tri-partite system that can lift the UK economy from a B to an A+”. Contact the Treasury 020 7270 4414 http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk
Editorial Comment
Support for schools is the biggest single strand of community activity for many companies. Ex-Zurich Financial Services boss, Sandy Leitch, sets out why education matters to business: that many functionally illiterate and innumerate citizens make unproductive workers and poor consumers. Yet despite pressure from successive governments – City Academies being only the latest attempt – many companies remain very wary of getting directly involved in delivery of secondary education. Local support is right and proper, as is intervention in the national public policy debate. But schools management is quite another thing. Better by far, we think, to focus on specific skills required by your sector for your current and potential employees, as the skills academies are doing. And don’t forget the poor relation of tertiary education, the FE sector. Geared to producing qualifications relevant to the world of work, further education colleges also meet the needs are many disadvantaged communities. Worth a closer look.
Corporate Citizenship Briefing, issue no: 85 – January, 2006