Introducing Britain's skills crisis
Peter Hoskin 9:23am
Did you know: Britain trails well behind other countries such as the US, Germany and
Poland when it comes to educating its workforce? Did you know: the number of young people not in employment, education or training has risen by around 40 per cent over the last decade? Did you know
... oh, you get the idea. All the statistics, and more, are in the booklet on Britain's Skills Crisis that is included in this week's Spectator. For CoffeeHousers who don't buy the magazine
(although you should, etc – purchasing options here), you can read the supplement for free via this
snazzy, page-turning whatsit. We'll also put one or two of its articles up on
Coffee House in due course.
The proposition behind the supplement is straightforward enough: that Britain has a shortage of well-trained workers. From there, we investigate how it might be fixed. There's an article by David Willetts on the government's thinking in this area. The pop impressario – and train enthusiast – Pete Waterman rails against the rise of meaningless qualifications. Reihan Salam says we ought to heed the ideas of Matthew B. Crawford, and become a nation of tinkerers again. Toby Young argues that young people should learn Latin if they want to get ahead in a ferocious labour market. And there are artices by Ross Clark, Fraser and yours truly.
To save this post from being an extended plug, however, I thought I'd reprint part of a Q&A we did with Mark Lovell. Mark is in charge of A4e, one of the private welfare companies that operates
alongside the government to help unemployed people back into work. Here's what he had to say when we asked whether, from his frontline vantage point, there are still jobs in the economy:
Worth remembering, and not least because the most common complaint against the IDS reforms is that there aren't enough jobs to sustain them. The question that policy makers should dwell on, as recovery beckons, is not so much, "where are the jobs going to come from?" But, "where are the people going to come from to fill the jobs?" And that's why fixing Britain's skills crisis is imperative for the coalition."That’s the most common question we get asked by people who participate in our services. Or the most common statement they make to us is: 'there are no jobs round here'. They’re wrong. We have never been in an economy where there aren’t suitable jobs for the people who walk through our doors.The Office for National Statistics says that there are around 500,000 vacancies in the economy today. That’s basically the number of jobs that are being advertised in Job Centres. I view that as about a third of the actual total vacancies. So, a third are in the Job Centres, a third are in either newspapers or online adverts, and the final third will be word-of-mouth.
During a recession you tend to find that employers often do more by word-of-mouth recruitment. The role of brokers who put people in touch with these opportunities is even more important during the recessionary cycle."
Previous
PayDirt
February 3rd, 2011 9:36am Report this commentEither the UK's education system becomes a school of hard knocks (or kocks for that matter) or immigration is curbed, neither of which will happen any time soon.
Bonzodog
February 3rd, 2011 9:54am Report this commentHa skills crisis indeed. I am a highly skilled, graduate (hard science) computer systems engineer who is being quietly shafted by off-shoring and the pernicious inter-company transfers.
When the motivation to become highly skilled disappears through such measures I can understand why there is a feeling of "why bovva"
Rhoda Klapp
February 3rd, 2011 10:03am Report this commentSo, bearing in mind the recent experience of Schloss Klapp's own house NEET, I went to A4E's site. And found the same thing as he (the NEET) found at the jobcentre. They won't get involved if you haven't got the right qualifications. That is, to have been signed on for long enough, or to be foreign, or suffer some disability or disadvantage. Note, not to have been unemployed for a length of time, but to have been signed on, in receipt of benefits. (Sidebar, the jobcentre don't answer their 0800 number phone, and if you actually go there they say they can't talk to you if you didn't phone first. They can thus delay you getting on the list). As I've mentioned before, once you are on the list you will not get any help until you have been on it long enough to threaten the target of six months. At that point they will hand you to A4E or some similar outfit to give you useless training designed solely to start the clock again. They don't have to get you a job, they just have to get you off that list.
It looks like nobody much is training 18-year-olds any more, they can get graduates for the same money, or of course immigrants. And from an employer's POV, as soon as you've given them a marketable skill they may leave.
Publius
February 3rd, 2011 10:26am Report this commentEvery day I see graduates who cannot spell, cannot write and cannot think. I see people burdened with qualifications and certificates who are hopelessly unskilled even within the increasingly narrow range of what they claim to be skilled in.
Dear God, it's not rocket science we're talking about. We talking about the basics that even thick people used to know 20 years or more ago.
No one nowadays is allowed to do a job without some idiot certificate or qualification, usually requiring huge expenditure to obtain.
This supposed progress means that the days when the lift boy could make it to chairman are over.
Neil Turner
February 3rd, 2011 10:33am Report this commentI took my daughter to the UK National graduate engineering recruitment fair at the NEC last summer. I was shocked at the lack of businesses represented. I was also very surprised at the lack of graduates who turned up - I reckon there were no more than 200 people present
I wonder how our UK Fair would compare with, say, China's or India's ?
doppelganger
February 3rd, 2011 10:43am Report this commentHalf a million odd job vacancies versus the millions that are unemployed and the even more millions who are economically inactive. Add that too an education system which is not fit for purpose and the supply side effects of immigration.
Don Birnam
February 3rd, 2011 10:47am Report this commentIntroducing? This was "Breaking News" twenty, thirty, forty years ago!
If you were unfortunate enough to be a recent graduate would you actually have a job now? Would have been forced to work for nothing as an "intern" - the latest scam. How would you have survived?
Journalists & opinion columnists are a dime a dozen now. If you were replaced by one of the many thousands of keen young hopefuls queueing up to take your job then what could you do that people would part with their cash for?
Matthew Crawford's thought provoking book, "The Case For Working With Your Hands... or Why Office Work is Bad For You" should be required reading for all politicians and 5th/6th formers.
Nicholas
February 3rd, 2011 11:03am Report this commentYes, per Bonzodog, important to draw a distinction between genuine skills crisis and the folly of re-organisation, constant change for change sake, undervalued/abandoned experience and the self-inflicted corporate suicide of rampant ageism. It's a curious thing but so often these imperatives result in good people going and absolute idiots being promoted to preside over the next wave of change.
michael
February 3rd, 2011 11:18am Report this commentWith a massacred manufacturing base the job/skill relationship is bound to be chicken and egg.
A starting point is learning to learn. P's and Q's. Yes Latin does this and works.
Annie
February 3rd, 2011 11:28am Report this commentWe only have to look at the influx of Polish plumbers and electricians to see something is very amiss with vocational training in our country.
As for engineering and other craft apprenticeships I am in danger of boring the entire world with my despair at how generations of these skills have been lost.
If you watched the BBC2 programme last night Who Gets the Best Jobs yes it's the 5% (or whatever) who go to public school. As for the " ridiculous intern" system - this should be stopped completely. They are ripping young graduates off. These roles are mainly taken by the top layer as they are the only ones who can afford not to be paid. However one bright young Physics grad used his student loan to finance himself as he underwent through three journalism "intern" experiences without any job offers. All he had was a few by lines and so dejected has gone travelling. I think he should go back to physics.
As for the top fashion PR company that had 30 "interns" the MD said they gave them proper jobs. Hmm I see and they don't pay them a penny. If they're good enough to work for these organisations they are good enough to be paid.
Tarka the Rotter
February 3rd, 2011 11:29am Report this comment@Nicholas - quite agree. Constant change aka 'revolution' is a key Maoist principle - what it does is constantly de-profesionalises the professions and calls skills, knowledge and expertise into question. It then allows the government to be the arbitor of what is and what is not a qualification and increases dependency upon the state. People who are forever getting up to speed with the latest central-state diktat have no time to think about what is really going on in the world outside and therefore the threat of rebellion or discontent is diminished. Neat eh? Oh, and to get the public onboard with governmental regulation, you need to either demonise a profession or engineer a few scandals which cause national uproar and the demand 'to do something.'
Annie
February 3rd, 2011 11:32am Report this commentCan I also add that we need grammar schools more than ever before. Yes it's competitive but the whole world is damn well competitive and if they streamed the other children into top class specialist schools for technology and commerce or the arts etc most would feel that they are following their inclinations and not just being dumped as failures.
But then what do I know? I'm just a working class ex grammar school girl who did well from the system.
Fatbloke on tour
February 3rd, 2011 11:38am Report this commentPH
Apologies for being slow to get back to you after you offered your back catalogue on the mental LibDem proposal to raise personal allowances to £10K.
I don't blike the idea as it is all a bit fantasy politics about it, it will cost a lot, it won't help the really poor and at a time of reduced resources we should be targetting benefits.
Interesting, the law of unintended consequences strikes again as race to £10K will cut the numbers of people receiving child benefit.
There is an echo in this policy with the situation you describe for NEETS.
TB / GB = Have helped those in the middle and the ones just below them, those with parents in the 50 - 80 income bands / ablity ranges but the situation below this seems to have been very poor.
So the disturbed, the bewildered, the difficult, the marginal and the ones with mental parents all seem to be getting ignored at school.
A case of crowd control but no education.
Do you have any figures / infamous Speccy graphs to show how this has developed over the past 30 years?
Ben G
February 3rd, 2011 11:42am Report this commentAs an employer who often takes on interns, I am increasingly aware of a lack of a general ability to think cohesively or write good prose. These are the basic skills that many employer look for first.
Partly, I think, it is due to bad teaching. But it is also a mindset brought on by Google-isation - the temptation to always seek answers on the web, to never remember anything (like historical facts), and to never, ever, read a book.
I call them the cut & paste generation.
doppelganger
February 3rd, 2011 12:10pm Report this commentBen G
Cohesive or coherent?
HJ
February 3rd, 2011 12:17pm Report this commentThis skills crisis.
Can someone please explain why engineering graduates suffer some of the highest rates (around 13%) of graduate unemployment?
Arthur
February 3rd, 2011 12:20pm Report this commentOne could easily imagine the following: a cut in legal immigration, leading to a skills shortage; management of the welfare system to encourage people to work, rather than to take money from the State; the consequent creation of a market for training of people in the relevant skills, with a concurrent rise in employment as instructors are hired and training colleges founded; the end of the skills shortage.
The only bit I can't imagine is any of our political parties putting up with the short-term flak from the poor dears who are 'forced' to work or train.
TrevorsDen
February 3rd, 2011 12:34pm Report this commentGutman totally exposed.
All he wants to do is increase benefits. People in work? Sod them and the mass of tax they pay.
No, keep people on benefits - offer no incentive to work, just offer incentives to vote Labour.
Far from increasing child benefits, well know Labour MP Frank Field .... 'recommends a change away from boosting the incomes of poor families. Instead, his inquiry proposes improving public services and breaking the cycle to "prevent poor children from becoming poor adults"'
Field adds ... '"We imperil the country's future if we forget that it is the aspirations and actions of parents which are critical to how well their children prosper,"'
Aspirations like being able to keep more of their taxed income perhaps?
Of all the nut job Gutman posts this one exposes his brainless ignorant and bigoted and suicidal policy views.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/child-benefit-should-be-frozen-says-frank-field-2149755.html
Norman Dee
February 3rd, 2011 1:14pm Report this commentSocialist equality is at the root of this, along with unsustainable and unnatural massive increases in population. Everyone must go to University therefore everyone must reach a minimum standard of education, thats not possible without enormous cost and changes to the entire education system, so the cheap answer is to reduce the educational standard required. Doesn't matter that we end up with a universally qualified generation that can't count or read, the "Tractor Production Statistics" look good on paper.Then lets completely skew all the possible figures by importing several million people who on the whole will not make a significant contribution, but will take up a lot of the jobs that our "degree qualified" people would have had.
Why do youth unemployment figures keep growing ? because we keep producing unemployable youths, and adding to that number all the immigrant youths.
Stand by for strong reaction from the red flag brigade.
In2minds
February 3rd, 2011 1:36pm Report this comment@ Rhoda Klapp - February 3rd, 2011 10:03am -
Education - in a recent post on the CH Wall you wrote - "mould bowl ox all the time". What does this mean? I need to know in case I'm asked at a job interview.
Fatbloke on tour
February 3rd, 2011 1:50pm Report this commentFailed Blogger @ 12.34
Hiding behind FF, you realy are a typical standard bearer for the Tory party / SpeccyLand right wing mentalists.
Consequently stick to the subject or away oot and play tig wi' the buses ya trumpet.
2trueblue
February 3rd, 2011 1:56pm Report this commentThere is a skills crisis, accept it. We have a young population who want it NOW. They want to be famous, they want to work in the media, and they do not want to have to get their hands dirty and they certainly do not want to be told how to do anything.
We have an educational system that fosters all of the above by not correcting things in the name of progress,or interrupting the flow, must not force them to learn by rote, must be computer literate at the expense of learning to write legibly, and wild targets that have to be met. The result? Nobody wants to start at the bottom.
Olaf Rye
February 3rd, 2011 2:06pm Report this commentNo one in the political establishment really wants a well educated and skilled workforce. If such a thing existed, they would immediately dismiss the fatuous propaganda and refuse to cast a ballot in favour of these scoundrels that squander other people's money to buy the votes of the feckless, lazy, stupid and parasitical in society. You know who I mean: the core of Labour's supporters that believe that they are entitled to other people's money because they believe themselves to be victims. Even in good times, most of these tossers could not find work, so what hope is there for them in a recession ?
ollie
February 3rd, 2011 2:14pm Report this commentThe greatest betrayal the ruling class can inflict on the populace is the deliberate and systematic destruction of educational rigour in exchange for the comfort blanket of social engineering.
The Tories started it with the introduction of the worthless GCSE, Labour have finished the project off by killing the A level, and now the degree.
"Shock!! Horror!! Britain has a lack of skilled scientists, engineers, etc, but has a 100,000 strong army of unemployed media studies graduates!!"
PayDirt
February 3rd, 2011 2:20pm Report this commentGapper in todays FT: “Educate or import the new entrepreneurs?” Blogs there discuss the fact that our highly educated and motivated graduates have been wasting away banking instead of science/engineering. Banks being a zero sum game where bankers bonuses are based on ability to borrow short and lend long. Until we get to grips with giving the next generation motivation to generate real wealth we’ll continue to decline.
Johnnydub
February 3rd, 2011 2:25pm Report this commentWhat part of cause and effect is misunderstood?
If you incentivise the underclass to have multiple kids in order to boost thier income, why is it a surprise that these kids at the end of their education are unemployable... You know what's missing....
Love and investment of time from the parents...
The UK had 5 million economically inactive people when Labour took power in 1997, in 2010 there were still 5 million economically inactive, plus two million immigrants in new jobs. How many of those 5 million are just unemployable?
Fatbloke on tour
February 3rd, 2011 2:38pm Report this commentHJ @ 12.17
I hope you are not an engineer, because your analysis of manufacturing output 70 - 2010 would shame a 4yr old.
To answer your specific question, the fag end of any engineering class do not have the social skills needed to get a job plus a lot of the old boys network is still intact.
Their a huge level of snobbery over qualifications, universities, summer jobs and background.
Also you have twats like JD who are always on about how they cannot fill their vacancies for engineers without explaining that they are looking for experienced guys with a track record and they don't like graduates unless they are perfect up to and including DoE awards and charity work.
Nicodemus
February 3rd, 2011 3:10pm Report this commentOn average only 20% of vacancies are ever advertised. The rest are through networking, word-of-mouth, introductions and referrals. Advertising for staff is expensive, time consuming and a last resort. If you have the right person for a job a direct approach is cheaper, quicker and far more efficient. Unintended consequences of workplace targets, natch.
ben
February 3rd, 2011 3:11pm Report this commenta liberal labour market and economy doesnt particularly encourage the growth of manufacturing skills, that and theres no demand for them in the British economy. Regardless, in ICT terms we are far and away superior to the Germans, additionally, theres plenty of evidence that says the skills the British employers WANT are the ones provided by the education system. the only way you could change it is through selection, which is about as popular as nuclear war; particularly when your own kids are told they arent academic enough...
HJ
February 3rd, 2011 3:50pm Report this commentFatbloke:
"HJ @ 12.17
I hope you are not an engineer, because your analysis of manufacturing output 70 - 2010 would shame a 4yr old."
You mean my analysis of the following official figures from www.statistics.gov.uk?
CKYY IOP: D: Manufacturing: CVMSA
Seasonally adjusted
Constant 2006 prices
2006 = 100
1974 85.8
1975 79.9
1976 81.4
1977 82.9
1978 83.4
1979 83.2
1980 76.0
1981 71.3
1982 71.3
1983 72.8
1984 75.5
1985 77.6
1986 78.6
1987 82.4
1988 88.4
1989 91.9
1990 91.8
1991 87.2
1992 87.2
1993 88.4
1994 92.6
1995 94.0
1996 94.7
1997 96.4
1998 97.1
1999 98.1
2000 100.3
2001 98.9
2002 96.8
2003 96.5
2004 98.6
2005 98.5
2006 100.0
2007 100.5
2008 97.6
2009 87.2
I interpret it as showing that manufacturing output grew substantially between 1979 and 1997 and fell substantially between 1997 and 2009.
But then, I am numerate and you're not, so I can hardly wait for your analysis.
TomTom
February 3rd, 2011 4:15pm Report this commentThis has been the case since the 1870s and was exacerbated during two World Wars when piece rates destroyed skilled trades. British employers conspired with unskilled trades unions to demolish the pay scales of skilled workers.
It is the repeated cry in this country and has been since at least 1970 with gimmick after gimmick. Time to forget about it and recognise Britain is a low-wage, low-skill economy which advertises its low pay in business magazines in Germany to attract jobs too expensive to do in Germany.
Now it has to compete with Poland and Romania it has little future. Panasonic moved to Czacho and Sony to Poland, Philips to Romania. Even though Wales is one of the poorest parts of Europe
Willetts is playing games just as his predecessors did. Noone in his right mind would expect skills among the British workforce, people are too focused on becoming Celebrities or winning the Lottery. There is no culture for skills only for fast easy money and shortchanging customers and clients
TrevorsDen
February 3rd, 2011 6:33pm Report this commentFor posterity I note how sneering Gutman is about one of the most respected people in parliament.
And again we note how he just wants more on benefits not less and just wants more tax on those who work and no incentive into work.
Gutman can't be Gordon Brown can he? His grasp of figures seems as bad.
Edward McLaughlin
February 3rd, 2011 8:01pm Report this commentCome on Peter, keep up with the political professionals.
There is no need to educate our own people when cheaper, more market friendly youngsters are available in so many outlets and in a range of vibrant colours which makes the pallid waxen indigenes look sooaah yesterday.
Fatbloke on tour
February 3rd, 2011 11:46pm Report this commentHJ @ 3.50
My little homage to the AWB ...
I take it you don't understand the figures you have just published?
Maggie did not inherit a recession.
Maggie did not inherit slumping manufacturing output.
Look at the quarterly figures, manufacturing output fell of a cliff between Q1 and Q2 of 1980.
Maggie was to blame, she caused it.
Maggie got into power in May 79.
Maggie put up VAT by 88%,.
Was 8% she raised it to 15%.
Maggie put up interest rates and destroyed large swathes of the private sector manufacturing industry in the UK.
Maggie generated a bubble in the value of Sterling.
It took Maggie till 1988 to recover the output she had destroyed 79-81.
She destroyed UK owned firms and replaced them with foreign owned screwdriver plants.
Sha**er was even more shameless building an economic policy on the back of slave wages - $5 per / DM8 hour including empolyer NIC's - even the guard dogs were better paid.
And look what it got him?
TB / GB had manufacturing output above Sha**er's "peak", ooh, er Edwina, every year until the Credit Crunch.
Every year from 1997 till 2008.
Every year manufacturing was producing more than the Tories ever could.
It took the worst global banking crisis to break their record and even that figure is higher than the Tories managed in 11 of their years in power.
You have to ask, are you a Labour plant?
Are you old enough to do "O" levels?
Your analysis is tripe from start to finish.
It really is incredible how bad it is.
Please stop you are embarrassing all the right wing, GIB'by mentalists, dog boilers who post on here.
You are making Trevor look good.
newontheblock
February 4th, 2011 3:48pm Report this commentI challenged Sir James Dyson's letter to The Times on skills and the 'Sputnik Moment' vision, by writing directly to him. No response. I wrote to The Times challenging that groan and moan about skills shortages and the 'Sputnik moment'. All we get as the solution is the problem. New ideas, new thinking, 'out with the old and in with the new' is soooo OUT. We have an intellectual stalemate, not a vison, not a solution, no dynamism. Vanilla is the flavour of the 'intellectuals', the know it alls and the clever advisors.
HJ
February 4th, 2011 5:17pm Report this commentFatbloke:
"Your analysis is tripe from start to finish.
It really is incredible how bad it is."
I leave readers to make up their own minds about who is talking tripe here.
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