With limited public money to spend, you need to establish your real priorities, especially when it comes to adult skills and learning, and allocate funds accordingly.
Following the random shift of most of the ‘skills brief’ to DWP, there is an inherent tension, given the very limited adult skills budget, in choosing where to invest resources.
The Industrial Strategy implies that the focus should be on the eight high-growth, high-tech sectors, plus social care and construction. As Skills England’s forecasts make clear, in many instances this means expanding skills supply at level 4 and above, and boosting relatively expensive higher-level upskilling and reskilling among the adult workforce.
DWP will, by contrast, probably be keen to see as much of the money as possible go to helping unemployed and economically inactive adults and those young people that are NEET get back into the lower tiers of the labour market. This implies that spending is needed on lower skill levels and short courses.
Skills England is now a tiny cog in a ministry of welfare support, and it is left to Baroness Smith to try and mediate between these competing demands.
Indeed, despite its home in DWP, this executive agency will be constantly pulled in the direction of the productivity agenda and the industrial strategy.
Moreover, the Prime Minister has announced a new target of two thirds of young people under 25 participating in higher level learning at Level 4 and above in academic education or technical education and apprenticeships.
This is about growth through productivity, not growth through labour market participation.
As an aside, we should remember that a previous Prime Minister way back in March 2013 called for parity of esteem between higher education and apprenticeships, although the definition of apprenticeships was Level 2 and higher rather than Level 4 and higher.
Policy makers must also at last stop assuming that institutional reconfiguration will address, never mind solve, any substantive problems.
We have tried multiple models of policy formation, funding and delivery in Whitehall over the last half century and none of them have resolved the fundamental challenges we face with demand for, provision of, or investment in skills. To put it another way, if random changes to institutional structures, funding mechanisms and qualifications actually delivered improvement, England would by now possess the most successful VET system in the world.
Deckchair re-arrangement and playing ‘pass the parcel’ with Skills England may give the appearance of decisive action by national policy makers but delivers nothing much of value.
Ask 1: Apprenticeships need a period of stability
The Budget should usher in a period of much-needed stability for apprenticeships.
Policy makers must decide what apprenticeships are, what they are not, and who they are for and then stick with that definition and model of eligibility no matter how hard some employers and training providers grumble.
The government should stop making random changes to delivery models in a futile quest to achieve a perfect state of employer satisfaction.
For example, Junior/Foundation Apprenticeships were ‘in’, then they were ‘out’ and now it seems that they might be ‘in’ again.
A 12-month minimum for apprenticeships was ‘out’ before the Richard Review was implemented, then ‘in’, and now ‘out’ again as the minimum drops (supposedly to please employers) to eight months.
For publicly funded provision, DWP must sort out what is best for the learner and for training quality and then stick with it.
And DWP must think through the possible consequences (intended and otherwise) of the incentive structures the revised levy arrangements will set up for providers and employers.
As apprenticeship and adult policy now largely rests with DWP who have little or no experience in these areas there is room for confusion and naive assumptions, particularly by policy makers who have not lived through the saga of the levy’s endless unintended consequences to date.
Ask 2: Skills policies beyond the levy
The Budget should announce skills policies beyond the transition from the Apprenticeship Levy to the Growth and Skills Levy.
It should announce state support for the training of trainers which could help employers enhance the volume and quality of workplace learning. External providers, on their own, cannot and will not supply the workforce we will need in the future.
By itself, the Growth and Skills Levy will do little to solve the problems we face. DWP needs to consider how to increase employer spending on skills outside of the Growth and Skills Levy.
Ask 3: Allow Skills England to Co-ordinate Skills Policy
The government must stop trying to design and manage skills policies in silos, both within DfE, but also between DfE and DSIT, DCMS, DWP, DBT and other departments that sponsor training for their sector (e.g. Defence and agriculture).
Skills England is supposed to be tasked with resolving this issue, but unless there is serious ministerial buy-in across Whitehall (and beyond) nothing will change.
Professor Ewart Keep holds the chair in Education, Training and Skills at the Department of Education, Oxford University
Our regular guest policy views are written by senior leaders and thinkers. They aim to stimulate discussion, identify issues and contribute to debate on post-16 education, skills and employment policy. The opinions expressed are the authors' own and do not necessarily express the views of the Campaign for Learning.