Unleashing talent: How do we plug the skills gap?

Unleashing talent: How do we plug the skills gap?

Panel:

Simon Hughes, deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats and MP for Southwark and Bermondsey

Tom Wilson, TUC member and director of its Unionlearn programme

Kate Shoesmith, head of policy and corporate affairs at City & Guilds

Stephen Uden, head of skills and economic affairs at Microsoft

David Goodhart, director Demos (chairman)

The discussion focused around how to provide more people with vocational skills that would help them find employment.

Simon Hughes MP suggested a combination of introducing primary schools children to a range of career options, face-to-face careers advice, encouraging ex-pupils to return to their old schools and talk to students about the paths they followed and their experiences and universities and colleges visiting schools to present the education options available to them.

Tom Wilson raised his concerns about modern apprenticeships being too short and not providing apprentices with enough of the skills needed to find employment. He also commented that something needed to be done to bring non-qualified people into employment.

Kate Shoesmith said that young people are making choices before the 14-16 age group therefore need the right information advice and guidance and she was concerned about how careers guidance will be offered to young people as the budget for the all age careers service, of which she was a supporter, has been hugely reduced. She further added that she feels there needs to be good partnerships between local schools and FE providers. She concluded by saying that the EMA was a good thing as it increased participation and attainment and should not have been scrapped.

Stephen Uden opened his speech by commenting that it was ‘crazy’ that there is such high youth unemployment at the same time as there are a lack of skilled workers for many industries. He talked about apprenticeships saying to keep the apprenticeship brand strong and not damage it by calling other programmes, however valuable in themselves, apprenticeships. He concluded by saying that at Microsoft they think that a third of all jobs in the sector could be done through apprenticeships and that there needs to be a ‘quality standard for apprenticeships’.