A skills based economic recovery

It’s all about skills — but what does that actually mean?

Education, defined by the World Economic Forum as ‘the stock of skills, competencies and other productivity enhancing characteristics’, is accepted as key to economic growth as it increases the average output of each individual worker as they can carry out tasks quicker supported by innovation and the creation of new products which are promulgated by educational institutions.

Unlike other languages, English speakers use ‘skills’ to describe vocational, academic and ‘soft’ skills (such as communication, collaboration, resilience (or all three). This imprecision makes it harder to analyse at a more granular level what skills contribute to growth and how, as qualitative data from employers and individuals lacks the inherent specificity of countries such as Germany where capabilities (such as communication) are described with a different word (Fähigkeit) than learned abilities (Fertigkeit).

The Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC) provides a comparison of the proficiency of adults in literacy, numeracy and solving problems in technology rich environments. The results for England and NI in 2013 highlighted the high activation rates of highly skilled adults, as high skilled adults were more likely to be employed and have higher wages, resulting in higher productivity, as well as more positive social outcomes such as trust in others, participation in volunteering and good health. It highlighted a shrinking talent pool, as older people approaching retirement are more skilled than younger people, and that low skills in younger people is more closely correlated with socio-economic background. Large proportions of adults in England and NI have poor numeracy skills, and low skilled adults had more limited opportunities to learn and were less likely to participate in training. England and NI had high rates of self reported over-qualification but low rates of over and under skilling.

We need to fix system failures rather than do more of the same

From my experience as a teacher and a policy maker, I believe we can understand an individual’s skills are the product of three factors; 1) their capacity and incentive to learn; 2) the volume of opportunities available to them through formal and work based learning; 3) and the quality and relevance of this training. The UK skills system has system failures across these three factors.

1. It does not address disparities in incentives or capacity to learn; for example availability of jobs in UK regions which incentivise investment in time and money from an individual to train; for example for providing flexible learning for adults with childcare and caring responsibilities.
2. It limits opportunities for formal training in vocational areas and does not provide certification for on the job and real life training.
3. It relies on manufacturing market forces to drive improvement in education when ‘customers of training’ or learners are unlikely to self select high quality training (as more influenced by their peers and their communities than limited data on training outcomes) resulting in education continuing to be a status signal rather than a pipeline for future skills.

I believe that all training has an inherent flaw in being backward facing — too dependent on our existing canons of knowledge and built around the power of a teacher as older and more experienced than the learner.

Modern UK skills policy has persistently failed to support different types of skills evenly. Post war skills led to increased investment in academic tertiary education and the expansion of universities. Despite attempts to improve vocational education, the UK lacked a vision for vocational education leading to lower perceptions of vocational training and consistent under investment and weaker vocational infrastructure. As collective action and trade union activity decreased, in work training particularly for lower skilled employees decreased to minimum levels. Uneven literacy and numeracy attainment in schools created a cadre of adults without basic literacy and numeracy skills. Persistent weakness in science, technology, engineering and maths, entrenched a cycle of weaker maths teaching and lower participation in intermediary and tertiary STEM. A flexible labour market and freedom of movement in the EU enabled UK businesses to address skills gaps and shortages through migration. Skills policy has swung like a pendulum with new qualifications, funding systems and requirements for providers, with 28 major pieces of legislation and no organisation surviving longer than a decade since the 1980s as highlighted by the Institute for Government.

Let me know your thoughts on the UK skills system.

What do you think of my framework — that skills = capacity/incentives to learn + volume of opportunities * the quality and relevance of training?

What do you think sits behind UK skills weaknesses identified by PIAAC?

Given the policy churn in skills policy, should we focus on making the current system deliver or attempt system reform?