Dear Green Edge
An email from Skills England as a follow-up to a roundtable event we attended in September 2024.
A slightly lazy post from us this week, as we originally uploaded it to Substack last week as a companion to our Insights and Elephants article. However, we think it’s important so we hope you don’t mind us emailing it to you this time round.
As a reminder, the email that follows was circulated to the attendees of one (or more) of Skills England’s seven roundtables held recently to ‘…bring together employers, training providers, and industry governing bodies to share insights, discuss potential outcomes, and develop a collective strategy to influence the Skills England review process’. The Green Edge was an attendee of one of those roundtables.
From: ENGLAND, Skills <Skills.ENGLAND@education.gov.uk>
Sent: 25 October 2024 09:55
Subject: Skills England roundtable events-thank you and next steps
Good morning,
Firstly, a big thank you for attending our Skills England Roundtable event. We hope you found the discussion useful and interesting. It provided us with some excellent insight and was a great starting point for Skills England engagement activity.
We would also like to thank those of you who offered to be involved in future work, have sent in reports and findings for us to use, or have offered to have follow-up chats on specific points raised in the discussions (we will be in touch soon).
We have reviewed all the key points and ideas raised across the seven roundtables we have run, and key themes include but are not limited to the following:
Greater flexibility and agility is needed in the skills system: the skills requirements for many of the industrial strategy/growth sectors change constantly – stakeholders were keen to see changes to the skills system to enable qualifications and training to be updated regularly; for more flexible training to be available (e.g. modular, short courses) so they can upskill existing workforce as well as attract new talent and greater collaboration between industry and educational institutions in needed to ensure the curriculum is aligned with real-time sector needs.
Skills needs are different in different parts of the country and the system needs to reflect that: the skills system needs to ensure that the right skills are provided in all parts of the country to support specific regional and local need, whilst retaining a focus on cross-cutting skills that are required everywhere. Skills England must adopt a flexible approach that recognises the unique needs of different regions; local partnerships with authorities, employers, and providers will be critical to addressing region-specific challenges
Co-creation not co-delivery: stakeholders want to be part of the creation and development of the solution; not just asked to deliver the ‘answer’ which has been developed by Skills England/Government. They urged Skills England to adopt a social partnership model and to make the most of existing, effective networks and representative groups
Demand is just as important as supply: creating a desire from young people and existing workers to want to gain in-demand skills is just as important as making sure the system can deliver them- many sectors struggle to attract young people into entry level roles. Good quality careers advice is key here and needs to engage young people at an earlier age – employers need to be involved to really sell their sectors and roles, and it needs to be clear to people what roles are available in their areas and what skills are needed
Shortage of skilled FE Teachers is a significant issue: across the majority of sectors, a shortage of the right teachers with the right skills is a barrier to delivering growth sector skills. This issue is particularly acute in construction, the green industry and advanced manufacturing and engineering, where industry salaries outcompete teaching roles. Need better collaboration between education and industry
Cross-cutting skills are as important as sector specific skills: there are a set of cross-cutting skills which are needed for all jobs – regardless of sector – e.g. communication, leadership and management, resilience, core maths, English and digital. The skills system must deliver these
The importance of cross-sector collaboration: a number of sectors’ skills needs are closely interconnected and they will need to work together to develop a coordinated to make sure people have the right skills and are able to move between sectors easily– for example construction, engineering and digital all need ‘green’ skills.
Up to date data is key: real-time, granular labour market intelligence is essential for effective planning and intervention. The current use of LSIP (Local Skills Improvement Plans) data is a good start, but Skills England must expand its use of real-time data from industry platforms and global benchmarks to remain responsive to evolving skills needs.
The importance and value of a diverse workforce: a diverse workforce will be central to developing the right skills in growth sectors, as well as driving innovation - underrepresentation of women and ethnic minorities, especially in STEM fields and technical trades, presents both a challenge. Skills England needs to lead initiatives that promote inclusive recruitment and retention practices.
Essential that the skills system supports SMEs: SMEs employ the largest number of people across the country but really struggle to engage with the system; they need to be better supported
Making the system work across the UK: having different systems across the four nations is a real challenge for employers; we need to make it easier to work across borders
Building the right skills pre-16: the curriculum pre-16 needs to make sure that students have the right ‘foundation’ skills to be able to go on and learn the skills needed to support key growth areas.
This has given us some valuable insight into some of the areas we need to prioritise and explore to address the skills needs in our labour market, both now and in the future.
Looking ahead, we will soon be starting our next round of stakeholder engagement, throughout November, so will be in touch soon, and will continue to seek your input as Skills England grows and develops.
Kind regards