Looking for Clues in '22
Will the new year bring more clarity on building the skills we'll need for net zero?
The Green Edge wishes you a happy and successful 2022!
As we shake off the yuletime inertia and crank up into the new year, we’re looking into the calendar and to events and publications that we hope will inform and support the remit of this newsletter1. One such calendar of interest to us is the set of recommended milestones found at the end of the Report to Government, Industry and the Skills Sector, published by the Green Jobs Taskforce (GJTF) in July 2021. Launched in November 2020, the important role of the taskforce was acknowledged in the government’s Net Zero Strategy, which described it as:
…provid[ing] an independent assessment of the potential skills and labour market impacts of the net zero transition, including how we can ensure green jobs are open to all and support workers to transition to the green economy.
The GJTF milestone in which The Green Edge is particularly interested is the anticipated output of another government-appointed body, the Skills and Productivity Board (SPB). Launched around the same time as the GJTF, the SPB has come under some criticism and is yet to publish. When it does so, however, we would hope to find valuable detail around the skills related to two of the key questions the SPB seeks to answer:
Q1: Which areas of the economy face the most significant skills mismatches or present growing areas of skills need?
Q2: Can the board identify the changing skills needs of several priority areas within the economy over the next 5-10 years?
Secretary of State for Education, SPB’s remit for 2020 to 2021, 11 Nov 2020
Of particular interest to us is the extent to which the SPB might use the US Occupational Information Network (O*NET) datasets in its output. As stated in its April 2021 minutes, the board agreed to “discuss detailed methodological points…including approach for mapping occupations to skills, using O*NET, for both question 1 and question 2”. Subsequent board minutes do not record whether a decision was actually made to use O*NET, but if it was, we feel the detail contained in O*NET related to job content, skills and other attributes for each occupation could be very useful in describing the detailed skills required for the green economy.
That said, O*NET needs to be used with care, as we know from our own experience. While it is good at taxonomising tasks and activities, skills and abilities, required knowledge and many other factors, O*NET’s green elements tend to have been bolted on in more recent years. It had a separate green activities / green occupations dataset at one stage, although this is no longer included in more recent versions of the downloadable data. It also uses the US standard occupational classification (SOC), which gives the researcher the additional – sometimes tricky – task of converting from the US SOC to its UK equivalent.
Nonetheless, we look forward to seeing whether – and how – the SPB uses O*NET to give insight into the green skills we will need for the green economy and net zero. If used, we feel it should provide valuable structure and detail for supporting the development of green education going forward.
Going back to the GJTF report, the taskforce anticipated the SPB’s first net zero report in July 2022. However, we note from the SPB’s own minutes that it will be circulating an internal report (presumably within DfE) this month (January 2022), with a wider report (whether this will be public or not is not clear) being published in Spring. Further, “…a technical annex covering the analysis for Question 1 and 2…would be covered in the Spring reports”. We look forward to seeing this report and its annex. Perhaps some readers of this newsletter might be in a position to drop us a clue in the comments about what we might see there?
Finally, two other short-term GJTF milestones we’re interested in, both recommended for January 2022: firstly, any progress reports on sharing best practice across the green economy (GJTF recommendation 6); and secondly, any progress on the launch of a centralised Green Careers Launchpad and green careers marketing campaign (GJTF recommendation 9). We’re not seeing much on either of these yet – can anyone tell us otherwise?
Thank you for subscribing to The Green Edge. We are now busy setting up interviews and conversations for our weekly newsletters through the rest of the Winter and into Spring. If you would like to talk to us about your work, research, knowledge or experience in skills for the green economy, please feel free to drop us a line at greenedge@bluemirrorinsights.com. Also, if you feel you’d like to sponsor us and become part of the Green Edge Advisory Group, please contact us at the same address.
The Green Edge’s mission is to focus on the details of green skills, their development, application and relevance.