Adults will find it easier to acquire new skills or retrain under proposals announced in the Queen’s Speech last week.
A Skills and Post-16 Education Bill will overhaul the student loans system, allowing every adult access to a student loan for higher-level education and training at university or further education college, useable at any point in their lives. Four years’ worth of loans will be available for level 4-6 qualifications.
In addition employers will get a statutory role in planning publicly-funded training programmes with education providers, through a “Skills Accelerator” initiative. The Secretary of State for Education will be given more powers to intervene in colleges which are deemed to fail to meet local needs.
The plans are intended to help fill skills gaps in sectors including manufacturing, digital, and clean energy as well as construction, government guidance said.
CBI Chief UK Policy Director Matthew Fell said: “The strong focus on skills will support high quality local jobs” but added that businesses felt that the Queen’s Speech had missed an opportunity to introduce “legislation to speed up the race to zero”.
In a separate development, Make UK called for a rethink of the Apprenticeship Levy, with a “targeted sectoral approach to support high value, high growth manufacturing jobs”.
In spite of the pandemic, 47% of manufacturers still recruited an engineering or manufacturing apprentice in the last 12 months, with 57% saying they plan to do so in the next year. But according to the latest figures, £1,039m of levy funds expired unused in the nine months from May 2020, Make UK said, adding that it was “vital” for this money to be unlocked “to train apprentices of all ages in the essential skills needed by industry”.
An average four-year engineering apprenticeship costs a business £40,000, but just £27,000 of that is claimable from levy funds. This leaves businesses struggling to pay to train an apprentice, so the money is being left unspent.
Make UK, backed by the National Manufacturing Skills Taskforce, called for a series of interventions, beginning by releasing up to 20% of levy funds immediately to help support wage costs, with a further £500 from made available to fund catch-up learning or pre-apprenticeship training.
To increase recruitment in the next 12-18 months, there should be a temporary extension to the lifetime of levy funds from 24 to 36 months; 20% of levy funds should be allowed to be spent on capital costs. Finally, the organisations called for a full-scale review of the levy including its core principles and application by the end of 2022.