21 February 2007

OK so it wasn’t a full House of Commons debate but last week’s 3 hour Adjournment debate on skills was perhaps the next best thing. It was also, as many participants noted, an indication of just how high up the policy agenda skills, in the widest sense, has now risen. This was the redoubtable Chairman of the Education Select Committee, Barry Sheerman, making just that point; “in two years we have seen some amazing changes in terms of the level of interest and together have managed to raise skills up the political agenda.” No wonder many people are seeing the possible move of Gordon Brown to Number 10 as confirmation that skills have finally arrived on the political scene.

But should we greet this surge of political interest in skills with enthusiasm or not? After all we’ve a had a decade of ‘education, education, education’ and that has been a mixed blessing. Two thoughts spring to mind.

First, why does it all seem so depressing? The immediate feeling on reading the series of Reports that came out just before Christmas and which included Leitch was to reach for the pills. There was Stern arguing that if we didn’t do something soon about carbon emissions then the planet would be in danger, Eddington saying something equally dire about traffic congestion and Leitch pointing to the fact that if we didn’t raise our game on skills then we would fall even further behind as an economic power. They may well all be right, but in so doing they have provided Government with a stick to beat us even harder; what we need are carrots and uplifting visions, inspiration as well as perspiration.

In introducing this particular debate the Minister reached briefly for the stick. “The evidence shows that Britain took 100 years to double its gross domestic product after the industrial revolution, that America took 50 years while China has only taken 10 years” before thankfully turning to the carrot, “We need to treat the challenge as an opportunity rather than a threat, the future is not one of doom and gloom.” Thank Goodness for that! He went on to confirm that the Government was willing to share its burden of the costs of upskilling but within stated priorities, that he wanted to move “quickly” on the proposal for a Commission for Employment and Skills, that “a set of proposals are forthcoming on how to move over time towards a more clearly defined system of self regulation” for colleges, that he supported the recent changes at the LSC and that you shouldn’t believe all you read about Train to Gain. “56% of employers engaged have been from the hard to reach category” so put that in your pipe all you doubters still quoting deadweight issues from the initial pilots!

In fact it wasn’t deadweight that was raised in this debate but another issue that tends to haunt contract funding namely ‘top slicing.’ “I am picking up the idea” queried one member “that in some areas Train to Gain money is not getting to the training but that providers are putting it out to other people and taking a 20 – 30% slice off the top. Will the Minister stop that?” The Minister confirmed he had his beady eye on this area but given the Government’s commitment to the Train to Gain funding vehicle this is an issue that may yet resurface.

The other thought apart from the need for some uplifting vision, is just how far skills has replaced lifelong learning as the clarion cry for adult learning. Remember David Blunkett’s powerful introduction to The 1998 Learning Age Green Paper; “The fostering of an enquiring mind and the love of learning are essential to our future success..." Have we, in that famous phrase, moved from something that was romantic but wrong to something that is revolting but right? The Opposition Spokesman on Skills, John Hayes, called on the Minister to ‘wage a war on the decline in adult learning. Citing evidence from NIACE he claimed that ‘participation in adult and community learning was down by 10% from last year and by 6.5% in work based learning.”

The decline or otherwise of adult and community learning has become quite a hot political issue and interestingly has been taken up by the Conservatives as one of the key principles in their emerging Skills Vision. Under the theme of a Virtuous Circle of Learning, this Vision calls for a new valuing of adult learning “as a bridge back into learning and work.” Interestingly, because this sounds like a new form of Conservative language, John Hayes has argued that “the cycle of deprivation can be broken if more adults in poorer households can be persuaded back into education but we are unlikely to achieve this if we see the virtues of adult learning in solely utilitarian terms.”

Other principles being sketched out under the Conservative Virtual Circle include a return to a traditional emphasis on basic skills in schools, using amongst other things synthetic phonics and setting; greater freedom “from stifling bureaucracy” for colleges, a theme that echoes the previous Conservative Government’s “release” from Local Authorities in 1992 and one that we will hear more about this year; empowering employers with a concomitant small bonfire this time of other bodies; a focused all age careers service and a slightly quirky view of beefed up vocational qualifications but backed up by some formal teaching and testing.

The Conservatives have been broadly supportive of Leitch while arguing that he hasn’t done enough for ‘intermediate skills.’ In this particular debate John Hayes cited what he called “three big omissions in the Leitch Report.” Firstly, a schizophrenic attitude to colleges, trusting them to award Foundation Degrees on the one hand yet ‘giving the LSC draconian powers to sack FE professionals’ on the other hand. Secondly, a failure to take a big stick to “the bureaucracy, regulation and micro management of the skills agenda” and thirdly that Pledge.

The Skills Pledge, which was first mooted in Leitch as a way of ensuring that all employers committed themselves to basic levels of training for their employees, was formally endorsed by both the Chancellor and the Education Secretary last week. In signing the Pledge, employers would commit themselves to an action plan for getting their staff up to Level 2. Details will be hammered out in the coming months and the formal launch will take place in the summer.

Digby Jones has been given a key role in getting employers to sign up but John Hayes remained unimpressed; “it’s pretty weak to send Digby Jones around the country like some mad advocate of temperance expecting people to sign the pledge.” He’s been called many things but a ‘mad advocate of temperance?’

© Edexcel Policy Watch 2007. Steve Besley is General Manger of Education Policy at Edexcel. Policy watch is a service intended to help busy people understand developments in the world of education. Visit Edexcel at www.edexcel.org.uk