Introduction

The importance of training in a recession

The grim end-of-year news of the FTSE 100 closing 31% down, its worst 12-month period since the index was created in 1984, makes any discussion as to whether we are technically in a recession academic. We are not alone in this record slump: in Paris shares showed an annual fall of 42% while in Germany they crashed 40%, the second worst annual performance in the Dax index 30-year history.

What is clear and agreed by both employers and workers alike is that to survive the economic downturn we will need to concentrate on training and developing new skills as never before. We have only to think back to May last year with the disastrous opening of Terminal 5 at Heathrow for a graphic illustration of the consequences of failing to train effectively. In November the House of Commons Transport Select Committee found that the “inadequate” training programme was one of the main reasons why the opening of the terminal became a national embarrassment. Against this gloomy background we shall be taking a closer look at the implications for the Skills Gap, the future for apprenticeships and graduate recruitment, as well as round up the highs and lows in Education during 2008.    

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Skills Gap

Somewhat reassuringly a survey of 2000 adults by the Learning and Skills Council found that while over 57% of workers were concerned about their jobs as a result of the economic downturn, 51% said they would focus on training to improve their career prospects and job security. According to the survey reported in People Management magazine the top three skills employees wanted to learn or refresh were: communication, IT and literacy 32%, problem solving 26% and self management 22%.

Last October Chris Humphries, the new Chief Executive of the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, recognising the current skills system “as notoriously complex”, published his proposals for simplification. The proposals identify the six underlying causes for employer dissatisfaction with the current system and offer a 10 point plan to address them. Humphries, describing the proposals as long overdue, admitted that at this stage they were “more about hiding the wiring than rewiring the circuit board”. But he added: “In a year’s time I see the skills system offering a much simpler way of finding what employers need.”

In December the commission was also given the responsibility of developing the Investors in People (IIP) standard. Welcoming the additional responsibility Sir Mike Rake, Chairman of the Commission, said: “It provides a real opportunity to further develop its contribution to organisational success and extend its use across a wider range of private, public and voluntary employers”. Skills training was given a further boost in December with new measures outlined in the Children, Skills and Learning Bill and announced in the Queen’s speech. The measures will give employees the right to ask for time off for training. Although not mandatory, they will work rather like requests for flexible working. The initiative has been led by Skills Secretary John Denham who said: “Businesses that invest in skills and training are far more likely to succeed and weather the downturn. Research last year showed firms that don’t train are two and half times more likely to fail than those that do.” While Brendan Barber for the TUC said: "The Bill would help millions of workers access the skills they need to fulfil their potential and will also promote a wider dialogue on training in our workplaces.” The new right is expected to be introduced in 2010 and to make it more palatable for employers, funding for Train to Gain will increase from £520 million to over £1 billion by 2010-11.

Also in December the recently formed Consultative Committee for Professional Management Organisations (CCPMO) joined the skills debate by publishing a report calling on the Government to set up a new council for professional high level qualifications. The CCPMO is an informal partnership of eight high-profile institutes (including CIPD and the Institute of Marketing) representing business and management professions. Analysis for the report was undertaken by the research team based at the London School of Economics and included Jonathon Chapman, Dr Gavan Conlon and Patrice Muller. Charles Tilley, chairman of the CCPMO and chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, said that a professional skills council was needed to streamline relationships between the 25 sector skills councils (SSCs) and the professional institutes.

   

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Schools

Apprenticeships and Graduate Recruitment

Despite the economic downturn leading retailers have committed to expanding their apprenticeship schemes. Sainsbury’s has pledged to have 465 apprentices (one in each store by 2010, a quadrupling of the present level), Tesco will enrol 800 new apprentices next year (double the previous number) while Superdrug and Phones4u are both planning to increase their programmes to 1000.

Graduates today facing the recession are a world away from their parents’ generation according to Lucy Phillips writing about graduate recruitment in People Management magazine. She believes important lessons can be learnt from previous recessions in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s when graduate recruitment was an obvious target for cutbacks. Quoting figures from the Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR), she points out that in 1968 there were only 250,000 young people between the ages of 17-20 going to university compared with 2.3 million today. At that time most of these graduates were men and were largely science and engineering students, but all this was to change with the introduction of the equality legislation in the seventies. Recruitment techniques now are also far more sophisticated than they were 40 years ago when the notorious “milkround” was all that was on offer. Then as now graduate interest is likely to be greatest in the public sector, particularly teaching, as we reported in the October update. The Teachers Development Agency (TDA) has introduced a highly imaginative scheme to tempt casualties in the financial service sector into a new career in maths teaching.    

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Education

2008 was always going to be an eventful year in Education. On 11th December 2007 Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, unveiled his ambitious 10-year plan for education in the UK, the 168-page Children’s Plan for England. The Children’s Plan was designed to develop and extend the policies implemented by the 2004 Education Act Every Child Matters which set up a national framework for children’s services. The intention was to improve inter agency co-operation and to promote joined-up thinking on education, culture, health social care and justice. It followed the outcry after the death of Victoria Climbié and the subsequent publication of the report of the Laming Enquiry and had forewords by Tony Blair and Paul Boateng.

Tragically in August last year the death of

Baby P

showed us that we had learned little about tackling the serious problems of social deprivation and child abuse. Whether or not Ms Shoesmith, the head of Haringey Social Services, should have been sacked without compensation is discussed elsewhere in this Update, but clearly will do little to encourage social workers of the right calibre to enter the profession. The BBC, however, considers the winner of the education story for 2008 to be the “Sats fiasco”. In May the House of Commons Schools Select Committee published a critical report raising concerns about the implications of “teaching to the test”. This was ignored by Ministers until it became apparent that ETS Europe, the American contractor responsible for marking the tests, had made a real mess of it. Training sessions for markers were totally inadequate, examination scripts went missing and thousands of pupils had their results delayed, causing total confusion with teachers, parents and pupils alike. As a result the ETS Europe contract was terminated and in October the Government announced that the Sats for 14 year olds were to be scrapped. Whether or not government embarrassment about the situation had anything to do with Lord Adonis’s move from Education to Transport (apparently he has cherished a long-term interest in the subject) remains a moot point. At the time of the re-shuffle last October the Telegraph took a more cynical view and reported that it had more to do with his relationship with Ed Balls. Certainly he was one of the longest-serving and influential of schools ministers of recent times, exceeded only by Sir Cyril Taylor, advisor to Kenneth Baker among others in the 1980s. The fact that Andrew Adonis has made an enormous contribution in the field of education is beyond doubt and he will be missed; as will Steve Sinnott the General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, whose unexpected death after the union conference in April shocked all who knew him.

2008 will also be significant as the year the school leaving age was increased for the first time in 30 years, when the Education and Skills bill became law in November. Now all young people will be required to stay in education or work-based learning until their 18th birthday. In reality it means they are more likely to be engaged in further education or apprenticeships and the effects will not be felt for another five years as it applies only to young people who turn 11 in 2009. However, according to an article published in the Guardian the first week in January, as the jobless figures continue to rise the Government is considering raising the school-leaving age to 18 immediately, as a way of combating the huge rise in unemployment particularly amongst young people.

The New Year began with more depressing news about indiscipline in schools in a Panorama report Kids Behaving Badly. This highlighted in particular the shocking recent government figures showing that in 2006-7 there were 3,500 exclusions from schools in England and Wales for sexual misconduct. Of these, 280 were from primary schools and in 20 cases the child responsible was only five years old. Offences ranged from minor bad language to serious sexual assault and even rape. As part of its research into sexual bullying Panorama commissioned research from the children’s charity Young Voice and results of their survey can be found on their website.

Michele Elliott from Kidscape, the first UK charity established specifically to prevent bullying and child sexual abuse, says there has been a dramatic rise in the problem and commented that “sexual bullying has almost become a way of asserting your power over others and for that reason it is disturbing”. It is certainly likely the problem is aggravated by technological advance and the opportunities provided for cyber bullying with the increased use of mobile phones, the internet, Facebook and other networking products. Our own view is that it is not entirely coincidental that the breakdown of discipline coincides with the demographic changes that have occurred in teaching over the last 10 years as teachers become younger. We discussed this phenomenon in detail in last October’s Training Update.

To summarise, the

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