In case you haven’t noticed, the UK is going through a skills crisis. Someone, somewhere in the UK decided the Chinese had arrived and called for a need to identify and tackle skills gaps and shortages, everywhere!
Besides stealing some of the thunder from Paris, Britney, Amy Winehouse and chums, its rhetoric is staring to get out of hand.
Yes, apprenticeship skills are lacking. You need only call your local plumber, roofer, or sparky in the Yellow Pages for a first hand experience. The dialling code for Poland is +48.
And since Lord Leitch's review on skills a little over a year ago, many sectors have jumped on the skills bandwagon, including IT, Retail, nuclear and manufacturing.
Today its the turn of models to highlight a skills shortage in the UK fashion industry by, wait for it, posing outside the Houses of Parliament.
Skillfast-UK is the sector skills council for fashion & textiles says many fashion graduates lack the technical know-how to turn their ideas into workable designs.
It wants fashion colleges and universities to put more focus on pattern-cutting, garment construction and other practical skills.
Linda Florence, chief executive of Skillfast-UK, said: "Our fashion schools are recognised throughout the world as nurturing great creative talent, but to make it to the top in this competitive business you need the skills to turn a great idea into a practical garment that can be produced and sold."
Next week might see managers of the Barclays Premiership and Fabio Capello staging a game of keepie uppie outside Parliament in protest over the lack of skills in the beautiful game in England.
But, perhaps we should hold fire on the skills rant, after all, Gary Tuddenham recently won a Gold Medal at the Skills Olympics. Stop the madness please!
Comments (1)
Yes there is a skills gap in this country, however as a basic skills tutor I have to look at this from an educational angle. Literally every week I see a young person who has left school with poor GCSE results in maths and English. It is very worrrying because alot of these young people want to work in different industries and they haven't got the grades that they need so they are pushed into retail or some menial jobs. Another example that contradicts this is that I am also fully aware of young people that have completed university degrees in education, teaching etc, and they are either out repairing roads which as you know is manual labour or serving behind bars in pubs. Yet the government strategy is the more qualifications you have the more you can earn. So is there really a skills shortage or have all the skills gone underground because manual labour pays more. There are so many different factors that can relate to a skills shortage, we need to look at everything.
Posted by martin maher | February 20, 2008 10:20 AM
Posted on February 20, 2008 10:20