Imagine a government-funded training programme for unemployed adults where one of the biggest concerns was “long waiting lists”.
Where employers rang up to enquire who was about to finish their programme, and most trainees got jobs on completion of their training using their new skills.
Where the underlying philosophy was to give people a leg up in the labour market, rather than just enough to get them back into any job.
The programme was called the Training Opportunities Scheme – or TOPS for short - and it ran here in the UK some 50 years ago.
TOPS in the 1970s
It was a Tory Government which launched TOPS in August 1972. A long time ago perhaps, but the ambition looks pretty familiar. It was “to enable the adult population to change their occupations quickly in the face of increasing industrial change”.
TOPS provided courses of between 26 and 52 weeks in a wide range of skills, offered through the national chain of Government Training Centres (later re-named Skillcentres), colleges, private training providers and employer establishments.
At its core initially were the traditional trades – bricklaying, carpentry, engineering and so on – with an increasing range including office and other service sector skills as the programme expanded.
Trainees were paid an allowance – quite a generous allowance in fact. The figure in 1977 was £22.55 a week (for trainees aged 20 or over), which equates to £180 or so today, comfortably in excess of the current rate of Jobseekers Allowance.
This was a premium programme treated as such on all sides.
There was realism about what could be done in the time available. Indeed, the aim was not to turn out people who were fully trained. The Government’s 1978 review of the programme described a successful trainee as “a fledgling with an excellent grounding, who will require experience and properly planned improvement on the job”.
That same review quoted the results of a survey of employers. “A very high percentage” said that TOPS programmes were “a suitable source for skilled jobs” and that most former TOPS trainees were more highly motivated than recruits from the general labour market.
It worked for the trainees too. With the programmes in North London, more than 90% got a job afterwards, and more than 80% got a job using their new skills. That’s good going.
TOPS gave people a life-changing step up.
That’s exactly what we mean when we talk about a “just transition” in the face of a fast-changing technology.
TOPS treated people with respect, gave them real skills and real hope - and they queued for places. It also helped employers to meet their skills needs.
Training and retraining schemes today
With gently rising unemployment but fast-rising inactivity amongst older adults of working age, the pressure is again on to get people off welfare and into work, any work. The shorter the period on Universal Credit, the lower the welfare bill.
And where the Government supports training and re-training for people out of work, it looks to 13 to 16 weeks on Skills Bootcamps, far less than 26 to 52 weeks allowed on TOPS.
That’s too limiting. It misses an opportunity to make a really big change for individuals – and to help businesses address their skills problems.
TOPS for the 2020s
Re-worked for the 2020s, an updated TOPS programme focused at Levels 2-5 would align with the new occupational standards, it would last much longer than Skills Bootcamps (26-52 weeks rather than 13-16), and trainees would get paid a proper training allowance (with their other benefit entitlements protected), as they were back in the 1970s.
It would be good to have an employer option too, offering some a subsidy to re-train their people.
As always there would need to be safeguards against abuse, by individuals taking too many bites of the cherry, and by employers looking for a handout to do what they would have done anyway.
But what a difference we could make by running a longer-duration programme alongside Skills Bootcamps, offering hope to the many people who see the road running out for their current job, and to employers who struggle to find the people they need without recruiting abroad.
Iain MacKinnon is Managing Director of the The MacKinnon Partnership