Mind the Skills Gap: Securing the future of the next generation

Sadly, that investment is lacking in the college sector. Post-16 education funding is way behind what is needed to boost economic growth. That’s why I am joining further education college leaders up and down the country and lobbying the government in support of the Mind the Skills Gap campaign. With the upcoming Spring Budget on March 15th, 2023, I and many of my colleagues have written to the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt to call for an increase in funding for technical and vocational education. The Mind the Skills Gap campaign aims to highlight the important role that colleges and other further education providers play in giving people the skills to secure specialised jobs. Led by the Future Skills Coalition and supported by the Association of Colleges, Association of Employment and Learning Providers, and City & Guilds, the campaign has three themes: • The right to lifelong learning.• Fair, accessible and effective funding.• A national strategy to support local, inclusive growth. Further education colleges have a vital role in our local communities transforming lives through learning and contributing to social mobility. The Sheffield College educates and trains around 14,000 adults and young people a year and the majority of our students and apprentices stay on and work in the city and region contributing their skills to the local economy. We work with more than 2,000 employers who are supporting our apprenticeship programmes or providing experience of work, industry placements or other work-related activity to our students. Colleges are pivotal to the Government’s plans to grow the economy. However, college finances nationally remain below what they were in 2010 according to a recently published report by economics think tank the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Funding cuts mean spending per student in 2024/25 will still be around 5% below 2010/11 levels. For adult students, it is 22% below 2009/10 levels. At the same time, job vacancies are at near record levels of over 1 million according to a Statista report published in February 2023. There is an urgent need for long-term sustainable funding for education and skills given 12 years of declining financial support for adults and young people. Proper funding is essential if we are to secure the future of the next generation of technicians and skilled employees. In terms of how the current situation could be improved, I want to see a simplification of the funding rules and the opportunity to secure longer term multi-year funding agreements. This would provide colleges with more freedom to plan ahead and deliver sustainably. For example, at The Sheffield College, we tend to receive all of our core funding in March or April each year which enables us to provide course delivery five or six months later in September. We have numerous organisations and contracts to work with and each has their own requirements and conditions. With multi-year funding, we can invest sustainably in our workforce and estate to ensure that we are providing world class education and training rather than planning from year to year. Ensuring that education and skills programmes are well funded will also enable college leaders to build a sustainable workforce of highly skilled dual professionals: industry experts who also spend some of their time teaching. Increasingly, we are welcoming industry experts to work with our students and apprentices to share their knowledge and skills built over years. But we are also asking these expert technicians to be expert teachers and lecturers so that our students get the best experience possible. Teachers in FE are paid significantly less than their counterparts in schools. Likewise, our expert colleagues are paid significantly less as teachers than they are as skilled technicians. We are struggling to recruit in areas such as engineering where employer skills are in high demand. For example, an electrical engineering technician is likely to earn significantly more if they stay in the industry. If they become a dual professional and work in the industry as well as teach at a college, they are likely to earn less. Significant skills shortages have been exacerbated by Brexit and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Businesses are struggling to fill important posts, which is reducing their ability to grow and hampering the health of the economy. A joint report from the Open University and British Chambers of Commerce, published in 2022, identified the skills crisis facing employers. Almost three-quarters (72%) of organisations say the impact of skills shortages is causing increased workload on other staff while 78% are seeing reduced output, profitability or growth. More than two-thirds (68%) of SMEs are currently facing skills shortages, rising to 86% in large organisations, while 28% of businesses saying they have had to turn down work or are not able to bid for work due to their staff shortage. Investing in skills gives instant and long-term returns through higher productivity and helping employers find and develop productive workers. But we need to see greater incentives for employers including a simplification of funding for them and a review of the use of unspent Apprenticeship Levy funding. Ultimately, we need to be able to address the fundamental skills shortages that we know about now and the ones that we anticipate in future; all of which requires proper investment.