Preaching to the choir

All singing from the same hymn sheet when measuring local skills development efforts? Not yet.

“If you can not measure it, you can not improve it”.

Lord Kelvin

Here’s something that occurs to us on a fairly regular basis. Is there a good case to be made for a set of robust local measures to help improve and steer the development of an effective skills system right across the UK? Without it, all the investment that’s either being made or talked about in developing skills might be wasted. And, given the large number of local authorities already walking down the path of good work, wouldn’t it make good sense to put a bit of a sprint on and build some kind of common skills index they can all measure themselves by and check out where the front runners might – perhaps with a little incentive from HM Gov – be able to help out the laggards?

We think we’re probably safe in saying that an effective skills system is vital to managing progress and making improvements across the labour market, whether local or national. And, as we’ve said several times, when we look at, say, Skills Development Scotland, we see real signs of a proper systems approach to skills development being taken.

But in terms of measuring how well the whole thing’s doing, wherever we look in the UK it seems to be a bit of a dog’s breakfast. In England, of course, we have DfE’s Unit for Future Skills pitching in with its local skills dashboard trying to knit together data from the LEPs, the LSIPs and the MCAs, and this is perhaps aided by DfE’s attempts to shoehorn the LSIPs into some kind of post-event template that they should have arguably had at the start, by throwing some AI at it. Plenty of other analyses around, though, like Gatsby’s LSIP learnings paper from late last year, the Institute for Government’s look at Levelling up and skills policy back in 2022, and a submission from the Centre of Progressive Policy to Gordon Brown’s Commission on the UK’s Future (also from 2022) on how to create good jobs in England’s towns. Plus we have the various LSIP deep dives, together with all the good stuff we regularly see from the commercial providers like Lightcast and Data City.

But it’s all a bit piecemeal, isn’t it. And the question we’re asking is this: with more and more ‘places’ (in the widest sense of the word) across the UK showing interest in this thing called ’good work’, what’s the best way of combining all the undoubtedly good stuff that’s been slaved over, published and, in many cases, filed away to read on a wet Bank Holiday, into some kind of living, breathing, adaptive and adoptable system of measurement? In effect, a hymn sheet that everyone can sing from.

Hang on a second though. Before we start thinking about how to measure it, what is it exactly that we mean by a ‘skills system’? Well, we might look at it this way:

“A system is never the sum of its parts, it’s the product of their interaction”.

Russell Ackoff, Operations Research and Systems Thinking pioneer

Right-o. So, by that token, Cedefop’s European Skills Index breaks the products of a skills system down like this:

Image: Cedefop

There are three main pillars here (we always have to have pillars, don’t we). First, there’s skills development, which is the effectiveness of a country to develop the skills of its population – from primary school to lifelong learning – to meet the needs of its labour market and society. Then, we have skills activation, which focuses on the transition from education to work and assesses how well the education and training systems translate into actual labour market outcomes. And finally we have skills matching, which looks at how well the skills of the workforce align with the needs of the labour market, including the degree to which individuals' skills are utilised appropriately in their jobs and how well the supply of skills matches the demand from employers.

All good logic, really, and all measurable. By the way, we might ask at this stage how well the UK is doing in Cedefop’s eyes? The answer is a resounding ‘meh’ – although Cedefop is keen to make a Brexit disclaimer and point out that data on the UK was collected, processed and published before its withdrawal from the EU, and any data or information pertaining to the UK will be gradually phased out from Cedefop’s website. Pity, that – Europe used to track it for us, guess we don’t have that anymore.

European Skills Index 2024 (UK shown in red). Source: Cedefop

So, if there was to be an aforementioned hymn sheet that everyone – local authorities, combined authorities, city regions, perhaps even central government itself if it can wrench its eyes away from Westminster and Whitehall politics – could sing from, what might we expect to find there? Well, some kind of phoenix risen from the ashes of the European Skills Index and applied over here might not be a bad idea. Another good starting point might be the Institute for the Future of Work’s (IFOW) Good Work Monitor, derived from the helpful Good Work Charter with the usual ten bits to count on our fingers:

The Good Work Charter. Source: IFOW

The Good Work Monitor gives us lots of ways of looking at the problem, and measuring it, including a rather neat set of candlesticks showing regional inequalities that contains the – some might think rather obvious – statement that it matters exactly where you live within a region. Think York and Yorkshire, and Middlesbrough and the North East for the two different ends of the scale. Anyway, here’s an example of the type of thing we can find there (pointers to the East Midlands towns made by us):

Working Age Economic Activity within Regions (%). Source: IFOW

So, some kind of combination of the thinking behind IFOW’s good work monitor and Cedefop’s skills index, to bring employment and skills into the same utterance of breath, rather than education and skills as we commented on in last week’s post? Perhaps. There may well be other charters to look at¹; but we do note here that the Good Work Charter is being included in some shape or form into the approaches to employment and skills development of quite a few places already, including Greater Manchester, the Midlands, West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, West of England, London and, indeed, Scotland. It’s also being promoted by the Local Government Association through the Good Work Project.

So, in terms of hymn sheets, it’s not quite preaching to the choir yet. But - mixed metaphors aside - you never know.

1. The reader may like to take a peek at IGN’s Index of Fair Employment Charters for a snapshot of some of the other candidates.