2.6 Three quarters of all employers with more than 25 staff believe that the need for skills amongst staff is rising, largely because of changes in technological processes and work organisation. Unskilled and unqualified workers are far more likely to experience high rates and long periods of unemployment. The Engineering Employers' Federation already anticipates that, by the end of the first decade of the next century, engineering will require a far greater proportion of graduates and qualified technicians, with about 50% of all new entrants to the industry by then having received higher education.
2.7 If people and organisations are to influence economic and industrial change as well as respond to it, they need a range of skills, capacities and outlooks which will enable them to exercise choices for themselves. Lifelong learning can help people to seize new opportunities, engage critically with change and shape their worlds by asserting some ownership and direction over their own lives, in work and beyond, through both individual and collective activity.
2.8 For those people stuck in low-skilled, poorly-paid and demeaning jobs, or haunted by the sheer lack of employment, or struggling to get a small new enterprise off the ground, a simple emphasis on the need for more skills may have a decidedly hollow ring. They need good jobs and business success as well. All the evidence suggests that work opportunities and business expansion for those without skills are fast diminishing, and something has to be done to enable them to break out of the vicious circle of low-pay, poor working conditions and lack of prospects. We know, too, that the enterprise of small companies can be greatly assisted by the application of properly focused learning.
2.9 This calls not only for a revolution in skills at all levels, and for radically new policy initiatives and practices, but also for far greater provision for those traditionally excluded from opportunities to acquire new and broader skills and develop different perspectives. If people are not to be locked into particular jobs with limited life chances, risking being marooned by change or denied scope for improvement, they need the generic, core and transferable skills which will strengthen their position in the marketplace. The aim should be to make people less vulnerable, at the same time as enhancing the capacities and competitiveness of businesses and other organisations. In this way we can develop the kinds of responsiveness and flexibility in employment from which the many and not just the few can benefit.
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