23 February 2007

The Government is due to respond to Leitch formally in the summer but for the moment ‘Mission Leitch’ as the Education Secretary christened it is beginning to take shape.

A wave of seminars, policy events and discussions has been held up and down the country since the Leitch Report was released including of course the current National Skills Road Show. Out of these, three developmental phases seem to be emerging which encapsulate Mission Leitch. Each is challenging, driven somewhat by a sense of fear about other countries catching up fast, but none of course Mission Impossible. They represent the short, medium and long term. The underlying message, however, remains the same – we must raise our game on skills.

Phase 1: Recognising the problem

Phase 1 is recognition of the problem. Arguably this is less of a challenge, after all the Government, in particular the Treasury, and a host of other bodies has been saying the same thing for some time. Global competition, the Tiger economies, disaffected youth, an underperforming tail, poor basic skill levels, gaps at Level 3/4; a skills problem with many dimensions but one broadly understood in many education circles. As Alan Johnson said at the Road Show, “I don’t think there has ever been a time when there’s been so much consensus between employers and Government and providers about the problem.”

For those less familiar with the skills problem, Mike Campbell’s presentation to the Centre for Public Policy Seminar just before Christmas, was a useful summary. An Adviser to the Leitch Team, he cited four features: “despite substantial progress in developing skills over the past ten years, Britain’s relative position has stayed much as it was;” “our educational attainment ranks 15th out of 30 OECD countries for older workers and 22nd for younger workers;” ‘a global playing field that is changing fast;’ and an ageing workforce, with older workers “the ones we are least likely to train.” Few people disagree with this. Some, such as Will Hutton of the Work Foundation, have slightly different takes. He sees the economic challenge closer to home, pointing to Germany where “productivity throughout the republic is now very high” and Holland and Denmark “two countries already with successful learner accounts.” In addition, while Leitch focused on what’s called the ‘stock’ of skills, Hutton is more concerned with the ‘flow’ but overall, the skills problem is well documented and broadly recognised.

Phase 2: Getting a bit more complicated

Phase 2 is about solutions and this is where it starts to get a bit more complicated. Leitch came out with the headlines; demand led, employer driven, level focused and qualification captured. The outline strategy has therefore been sketched out but of course people are now turning to the detail and that’s where things start to get a bit fuzzier. Some of the potential ‘solutions’ are still under discussion notably through the Lyons Local Government Inquiry and the Treasury sub national review which according to the Deputy Director General at the DTI “will have a potentially significant bearing on the detail of how Leitch is implemented.” Other ‘solutions’ are being lined up, for instance the Commission for Employment and Skills is due to be formally confirmed shortly, higher level pathfinders are under way, Train to Gain is under way, adult Learner Accounts will be piloted from this September and consultation is out on creating a demand system but as Mike Campbell argued “none of this will happen by itself, we need vision, ambition and action.”

The problem with this solutions phase is that there are just so many bits to it, each important in their own way. As David Way, National Director of Skills at the LSC put it, “the capacity of the whole system will be tested as never before.”

The ‘bits’ include the following. First of all, the giving of licence to employer views. At the Centre for Public Policy Seminar, Peter Huntingdon, Chief Executive of GO Skills argued that there were three main incentives to get employers to invest more in their workforce; a voluntary membership scheme in which the benefits are so good that it’s a “no brainer,” verifiable skills passports and Train to Gain. How strong the employer voice should be, however, is less of a ‘brainer’ to some. Will Hutton, a supporter of strengthened SSCs, argued that “there is a danger in too much of skills and learning policy becoming employer led.” He is concerned that many of the foreign companies buying up British businesses have little interest in matters like regeneration or skills.

Then there is the whole infrastructure bit. Many people have noted that Leitch had little to say on the role of the regions yet as the Deputy DG at the DTI said “regions matter because the skills picture is not uniform across the country and different sectors are more or less active in different places.” He went on to argue that RDAs ‘can help deliver the demand led approach to publicly funded support for skills that Leitch calls for.’ Other bits include the City Region model though there seem to be different visions for this. And even more bits include the LSC, according to David Way, already up and at it, “our latest streamlining strengthens our engagement locally and regionally,” FE, which is developing its focus and Jobcentre Plus, Local Authorities, Trades Unions and many others working together in what the Chancellor called ‘a new model of partnership.’

A couple of other ‘bits’ still to be pulled according to participants at some of these events are HE, “HE is not sufficiently involved in the debate” as one put it, and adult careers guidance. In Alan Johnson’s words, “there have been various stabs at this (careers guidance) over the years but it’s not worked well…there’s lots of different sources of help out there but it’s a bit disparate and not joined up.”

Phase 3: A bit more difficult

Phase 3 takes us into the future and a much more difficult area, that of convincing employers and individuals about the value of learning or in Ministerial language, ‘developing a lifelong passion for learning.’ Highlighting the benefits may be simpler but changing attitudes to learning becomes the third great phase of Mission Leitch. “What we still have not developed properly in this country” the Policy Seminar reported “is a self learning culture which can now be seen to be working so well in Asian economies. How can we better incentivise people to learn in Britain?”

“We’ve got to make it something of a national mission” said the Chancellor on mission control again.

© 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