Skills boss urges businesses to engage with colleges

BRITAIN is barely keeping its head above the water in the international skills league, the head of the Skills Funding Agency told West Midlands business leaders.

Geoff Russell, speaking at a CBI-organised event at the headquarters of vocational educational specialists EDI plc in Coventry, warned that businesses had to step up and play their part in the battle to close the UK’s ever-widening skills gap – just as public finances were coming under increasing pressure.

He said: “Our international standing by 2020 will slip to 20th out of the 30 OECD countries in terms of low level skills, 21st in intermediate skills and 11th in high level skills. The hard truth is that we’re barely keeping our heads above the water – the competition is surging ahead of us. The consequences for this country could be pretty dire.”

Mr Russell said the government’s deficit reduction programme presented more challenges to those charges with improving the skills of the workforce. Public spending on skills was at an all-time high, he said, but the austerity measures would see this reduced by 25% over the next three years.

Spelling out a more pragmatic and flexible skills regime, he pledged to ensure that his agency would cut bureaucracy and ensure that the skills training he funded was focussed on what was right for business.

He said: “We’ve had an over-centralised planning system that often produced people with skills that employers didn’t need and learners didn’t want. We can’t afford to do that any more.”

“What this means is that we’re in this together. Between the Skills Development Agency and the Young People’s Learning Agency, we’re still putting a considerable amount of money into skills – around £8bilion.”

But because of the cuts, he said, “You as employers will either have to spend more or spend your skills budget in better ways.”

He promised a more pragmatic approach from the agency, with more focus on solid outcomes such as measurable employment growth – and more leeway for local FE colleges to respond to the needs of employers.

And he promised to ‘get out of the way’ ad let colleges and businesses to work more closely together – but he warned that businesses needed to be much more explicit about what skills they needed to see developed. Colleges would be rewarded for better business engagement, he said, and there would be penalties for institutions that remained aloof.

“I want to get out of the business of being the monkey in the middle,” he said. “It’s time for businesses to really engage in conversations with training organisations and colleges about how to meet their needs.”