Extracts
Details of UK Commission for Employment and Skills
3.4 …It will not have significant executive or operational functions, but will be primarily advisory, shaping strategy to achieve our world class ambitions, challenging all parties to raise their game on skills, and helping to shift the national culture. Sir Michael Rake has been appointed as Chair. He will work with the four nations to recruit the members of the UK Commission and help make the UK Commission fully operational in 2008.
3.5 …the main functions of the Commission will be to
- advise Ministers on the strategy, targets and policies needed to increase employment and skills rates;
- assess progress towards our world class ambition in England;
- monitor the contribution that each part of the employment and skills system makes to sustained employment and career progression, challenging performance and recommending improvements in policy and delivery;
- ensure that employment and skills services in England are integrated, and are meeting the needs of individuals and employers, and advise Government on whether further institutional change is required
- promote employer investment in people and the better use of their skills at all levels including employability skills and workforce development; and
- have responsibility for the performance of SSCs, advising Ministers on re-licensing.
3.6 It will commission research, request evidence, identify emerging issues and promote new approaches that may influence the UK Government’s aspiration of an 80 per cent employment rate and our world class skills ambition.
3.7 …we envisage that the UK Commission will report formally twice a year to the highest levels of Government. We also expect the UK Commission will publish an annual report on the state of the UK employment and skills system, at all levels from basic literacy and numeracy skills to the highest level skills delivered in higher education.
3.8 …The Sector Skills Development Agency (SSDA) and National Employment Panel (NEP) will cease to exist once the UK Commission is fully operational.
Sector Skills Councils – a clean sweep
There is clearly disappointment at the less than revolutionary impact of the Sector Skills Councils (SSC), whose performance has been patchy to say the least, and difficult to distinguish from their various predecessors. Strikingly, they are going to have to re-apply for their own jobs with an organisation with a remit wider than simply creating some SSCs as quickly as possible.
3.10 We envisage Sector Skills Agreements (SSAs) and Sector Qualification Strategies (SQS) being central to the delivery of this new SSC remit. As we reshape this SSC remit, we will consider how, as Lord Leitch recommended, SSCs might adopt targets for increasing employer investment in skills in their sector.
3.11 Some SSCs have achieved substantial impact in a short time, and are well regarded by employers in their sector. In other cases, SSC capacity and performance is not yet at the standard required for them to deliver the remit we envisage. Action is in hand to drive up performance. SSCs will themselves, acting individually and collectively, have many of the answers as to how to improve capacity and capability. But the UK Commission will performance manage SSCs overall, and will advise the relevant Secretaries of State and Devolved Administrations in licensing them.
3.12 Our aim is to re-license all SSCs by the end of 2009. In the light of advice from the UK Commission, Ministers of the UK Government and the Devolved Administrations will decide on the criteria for re-licensing and the method of assessment. The new licences will be awarded by Ministers, and will set out clear performance standards and requirements that Councils must meet. The re-licensing process will provide an opportunity for employers in each sector to confirm whether the footprint of each SSC is still right. We are not looking either to reduce or increase the number of SSCs unless there is an objective reason for changing the current footprints.
Employers and qualifications
While the expansion of Train to Gain to cover the whole of FE college training funding has been put on hold, the involvement of SSCs in vocational qualifications is growing. SSCs are already writing the specifications for 14–19 Diplomas, as well as their wonderfully Stalinist-sounding Sector Qualification Strategies. [If ‘This is not about manpower planning’ as 3.30 says – it will need to be carefully differentiated, or this is spin.]
Now SSCs are to receive a direct grant from the cost of NVQs, as well taking on QCA’s work with approving qualifications. Seasoned observers will note the juxtaposition of ‘the potential to simplify radically the qualifications structures within sectors’ with ‘light-touch, streamlined methods for approving vocational qualifications’, long-held aspirations which tend to pull in opposite directions. They will also be able to direct funding to qualifications for priority support ‘each year’– not necessarily a recipe for stability. It is reassuring to see a continuing role for awarding bodies, which will as usual have to make the system work against the background of aspiration and radicalism.
3.16 A key principle in both the Leitch Report and DIUS’s agenda is that vocational qualifications should reflect the skill needs of employers as determined by SSCs. [1] This reform process is already underway. A pilot group of 6 SSCs has published Sector Qualification Strategies which set out the key qualifications that each sector needs. They are updating the relevant National Occupational Standards (NOS) to ensure they reflect the realities of today’s employers.
3.17 The first reformed qualifications will be submitted for accreditation in January 2008. All remaining sectors, including cross-sectoral disciplines like management and leadership, will have reformed qualifications by 2010. To give SSCs a reliable source of income for their work on qualifications we propose, subject to discussion with Devolved Administrations, to replace the current statutory levy on National Vocational Qualifications with a direct grant to SSCs from Autumn 2008.
Sector Skills Councils and vocational qualifications
3.18 We agree with Lord Leitch’s recommendations that qualifications will be more likely to deliver the skills employers need if SSCs, on behalf of employers, decide which vocational qualifications should be recognised within the new QCF in England. SSCs will approve qualifications if they fit the requirements of their SQS, meet the standards set by their NOS, and are needed by their sectors. This has the potential to simplify radically the qualifications structures within sectors.
3.19 SSCs will have to develop rapidly their capacity to carry out this role well. They will need to demonstrate that their SQS and NOS reliably express employers’ needs, with the flexibility to recognise differences between employers. They will need to develop light-touch, streamlined methods for approving vocational qualifications in their sector, and for working with other SSCs in approving cross-sectoral qualifications. Where new units or qualifications are developed to meet gaps and future priorities, strong collaborative partnerships will be needed between SSCs and bodies designing units and qualifications to bring them rapidly to market.
3.20 These changes will allow the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) to focus its regulatory activity at the level of the overall system and the awarding organisation, rather than the individual qualification. They will intervene only if there is cause for concern, to sustain high standards and protect the interests of learners.
3.23 …For England, starting in autumn 2007 for implementation from August 2008, the LSC will work with selected SSCs to trial the process whereby SSCs will advise each year on which qualifications should have priority to support the skill needs of their sectors, with a presumption that funding will be allocated accordingly to those qualifications.
3.26 …Awarding bodies, including employers and providers recognised to award qualifications, will: develop vocational qualifications and units reflecting SQS and NOS; put those qualifications to SSCs for approval so that they can be placed onto the QCF…
Levy again, anyone?
The levy is to be explored once again by a consultation: whether it could ‘demonstrably drive up skill levels’ may be hard to prove. While a tax on ‘free-riding' non-training employers seems inherently fair, the benefits must be larger than the costs of administration and collection.
The issue of the number of 'minimal trainers’ who will gain exemptions and even subsidies, including large and powerful companies who will be as 'well'-advised in this as in tax or employment matters, has to be addressed. Some sensible and independent research into how the levy worked in the late 1960s, lately in construction and media production and in the rest of Europe is badly needed. It will take more than public embarrassment or even legislation to change current practice by employers where it is economically rational.
3.27 …As we reform and empower SSCs, we will consider whether it would be beneficial to introduce new enabling legislation to streamline the current levy arrangements. That would make it easier for them, working with employers, to introduce levy schemes where they could demonstrably drive up skill levels. It is vital that we avoid introducing anti-competitive measures. So a number of key safeguards would need to be in place. SSCs would, as a minimum, need to demonstrate that levy schemes would help improve skills and productivity in their sector; be endorsed by a regulatory impact assessment; and carry the support of the majority of employers in the relevant sector. We will consult on this issue, and will work with the Devolved Administrations to consider how schemes might apply across the UK.
The regions get a look-in
In fact, the net body count on this announcement is not neutral, as the formation of Employment and Skills Boards at a local level is looked on sympathetically, although these won’t be licensed by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (or paid for?)
3.29 In the English regions, Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) work with a range of partners to develop regional economic strategies, which provide a framework for action within the region, including on skills, to support economic development. As Lord Leitch noted, below national level in England there are numerous bodies involved in delivering employment and skills services to individuals and employers. To integrate these services better, he recommended that the UK Commission should support a new network of local employer-led Employment and Skills Boards (ESBs).
3.30 We need to simplify this landscape where we can, and make it easier for employers to engage with and influence. Some local partners in the major cities have already started forming ESBs following their announcement in the Local Government White Paper.[2] We welcome that as a locally-led initiative. We agree that it can be valuable, especially in the major cities, to bring the partners together in a locality to ensure good integration of employment and training services, and to support economic development within the framework of the regional economic strategy, particularly in ways that help workless individuals and communities gain access to good local jobs. That can be especially powerful where major, long term regeneration projects create opportunities to train local people with the skills and qualifications that will equip them for the jobs that will result – the Olympics being the most obvious example. This is not about manpower planning. It is about building partnerships to realise the mutual gain that comes from helping employers recruit the people they need, helping individuals gain good jobs, and helping the civic community achieve a better quality of life.
3.31 There is more than one way to tackle the challenge of joining up employment and skills at the local level. Different arrangements, including the leadership of ESBs, will suit different areas, and it will be up to local partners to determine how joining up is best achieved in their area. We do not intend to prescribe one standard model for an ESB. While we do not think it would be right to give the UK Commission a role in licensing such local Boards, as Lord Leitch suggested, we will ask it to promote local employer participation and to help share best practice as it develops. It will remain a matter for local partners to judge whether they wish to set up such a Board.
Employers investing in National Skills Academies
The Mao-style continuous revolution that has made FE such an exciting workplace since the mid-1980s continues. First efforts are to continue to develop employer-funded colleges as ‘National Skills Academies’. Of particular interest is the mention of HE in this context, and also the presumption that these bodies will not simply be cut loose if they founder, the fate of their predecessors in the hospitality sector.
3.34 Investing in National Skills Academies (NSA) offers employers an opportunity to directly influence the content and delivery of skills training for their sector, through further and higher education.
3.35 We aim to have 12 NSAs in place by 2008. Longer term, our aspiration is to have at least one NSA for each major sector of the economy as resources allow. We are making good progress. In addition to the pathfinder Fashion Retail Academy, NSAs in construction, manufacturing, financial services, and food and drink manufacture have been approved, and are in various stages of roll out. A further four, in nuclear, chemical processing, hospitality, and creative and cultural skills are expected to complete their business planning for approval by the autumn of 2007.
Goodbye CoVEs
CoVEs have been a success, so they are to be phased out as they don’t quite reflect today’s objectives: they don’t include the private sector or sufficiently reflect the ‘needs of employers’.
Instead, FE will be measured by a new balanced-scorecard system of performance indicators – the Framework for Excellence – including ‘employer responsiveness’. I hope that this will be measured by a more sophisticated measure than the telephone poller who occasionally rings up our office to ask why we aren’t using the local college. (And if you are currently a CoVE, make the most of it, as that status will disappear in 2010.)
3.37 The Centres of Vocational Excellence (CoVE) programme has successfully enabled colleges and training providers to develop, and gain recognition for, excellence in defined vocational areas. Since the programme was launched in 2001 some 400 CoVEs have been designated.
[3.36]…Drawing on the CoVE experience we will introduce a new standard for employer responsiveness and vocational excellence which will be open to colleges and training providers, both publicly and privately funded. Over time we expect that it will be owned and assessed by an independent organisation. The criteria for the new standard have been tested with over 70 providers, and will be more stretching than those for current CoVE status. To secure the new standard, providers will have to show that they can achieve excellence in the delivery of high quality, responsive provision that meets the needs of employers, and that they have the systems in place to consistently deliver excellence in the future.
3.39 Existing CoVEs will be phased out, so that no CoVEs will remain badged with the current status as of summer 2010. We will roll out the new higher standard immediately, with a full launch in spring 2008…
3.45 The FE system reform programme includes the development of a balanced scorecard of performance indicators, known as the Framework for Excellence, which will provide a comprehensive performance management information system for the FE system. It will give learners and employers clear information about provider performance, and will support providers’ own improvement programmes. …
- References to SSCs include the 4 Sector Skills Bodies which the Sector Skills Development Agency has determined should produce Qualification Strategies relating to cross-sectoral disciplines.
- Strong and Prosperous Communities – The Local Government White Paper DCLG, 2006
In further instalments we will look at the implications of World Class Skills for higher education in hospitality, and at an analysis which questions the strength of research underpinning the Leitch strategy.
