Editors Blog

To publicise this year's National Learning at Work Day organiser Campaign for Learning is asking celebs and MPs which one skills they'd like to acquire. We have some suggestions.

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.

Government has since promised to plug this skills gap through a £1bn investment over the next four years.

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.

The papers are full of Gordon Brown's latest initiative to boost the skills levels of the UK workforce.

Poor families are to be paid extra cash if they commit to training or work.

Ministers are apparently off on a little jaunt to New York to see how such a scheme is working over there. The programme gives money to poor people in deprived areas in return for them enrolling into training or staying in work.

This new idea comes from the government which last month announced individuals would have their benefits cut if they continually refused job offers.

Former soldiers should be retrained as teachers who would instil discipline into tough inner-city schools, under a new proposal.

A report by think tank, the Centre for Policy Studies says ex-servicemen could have a profound effect on discipline and learning within UK inner-city schools. The fact that ex-soldiers had a “macho image” could help engender respect, particularly among boys, the report said.

It points to an “extraordinarily successful” US scheme, Troops to Teachers (T3), which provides careers for retiring servicemen who are retrained as teachers, mostly for violent schools.

The body responsible for planning and building the London 2012 Olympics has published its employment and skills strategy for the Games.

The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) has set itself a target of at least 10-15% of the contractor workforce to live locally and at least 7% to have been previously unemployed.

Now to me both those figures seem a bit on the low side. The government has been banging on ever since London won the bid that the Olympics will regenerate the East End of London and provide thousands of much-needed new jobs for local residents.

The five 'host' boroughs in which the Games will be held - Newham, Hackney, Waltham Forest, Tower Hamlets and Greenwich - have high levels of unemployment, particularly among the ethnic minority population.

I read with interest about the budding success of a programme put into place by The Professional Cricketers’ Association (PCA), to get retiring cricketers into places of work.

The Placement and Learning Access Network (PLAN) provides ex-cricketers (20 in 2007) with meaningful work experience, training and coaching with one of a number of leading companies.

Many of these men in white/or pyjama clad, depending on the form of the game these days, are made to sacrifice academic study and personal development in favour of their playing career.

It means that when they retire, they can often struggle to find appropriate alternative employment.

The programme boasts many success stories including the placement and permanent employment of opening batsman Phil Weston who retired recently from Derbyshire. Weston joined National Australia Bank subsidiary, Yorkshire Bank, as a Business Partner.

Weston joins four other players on placement, who will no-doubt, add to company branding image.

Tim Bostock, divisional manager for National Australia Bank, said: “We’ve been greatly encouraged at how well this first round of placement worked. As a result, we are creating a formal internship programme that will be used with the players we hope will join us next winter.”

So the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) will indeed be closed down by 2010, as revealed by Personnel Today.

The government announced its intentions in a White Paper which underlines details of the transfer of £7bn to local authorities to help colleges and sixth forms deliver the reforms needed to raise the education and training leaving age to 18.

A new Skills Funding Agency for adults will get £4bn to oversee the distribution of funds to the sector and manage the performance of further education colleges. It will also house the new National Apprenticeship Service (NAS) for good measure – just lump it all in there, why not!

Mark Haysom, chief executive at the LSC, said two new bodies will replace the skills council.
For young people there will be a new national Non Departmental Public Body, with some regional capacity, which will support local authorities in their new role in commissioning and funding 14-19 provision.

"The world does not stand still. In 2010 the LSC will enter its tenth year and this represents considerable longevity in an era of constant change," said Haysom.

Indeed it doesn’t Mark, and by change I assume you mean the entire world change and not just the three changes that the LSC has undergone since its formation a mere six years ago?

The government's UK skills training system has long been criticised by a number of business bodies for being excessively bureaucratic.

The impending demise of the Learning and Skills Council is due, as much as anything, to the failure of much of idle yoof to find work or something useful to do instead of modelling faux sports wear on street corners.

The Government's answer to this is to compel 16 to 18 year olds to stay on at school or similar and keep themselves occupied learning something of use. The money for this has to come from somewhere - and that somewhere is the budget that pays for the LSC.

It was only when today when I read a review of last night’s Hancock and Joan on BBC4 last night that I remembered why I’d intended not to start watching the new series of The Apprentice on BBC1.

But watch it I did. Lured by the promise of another batch of boasting blockheads, I quite enjoyed my schadenfreude fix when the first of the numerous abominable “entrepreneurs” fell flat on his face.

And now, like the fish the two teams struggled to sell on Islington market, I'm hooked. Well, sort of.

Star of the show, barrister Nicholas de Lacy Brown, (he added "de Lacy" to make himself sound more sophisticated he admits) was put in charge of pricing.

Our sophisticate failed to think twice about pricing a lobster at £5 and it was this that ultimately brought him back into the board room, alongside fellow toff Raef and team leader Alex.

Cannons were fired across the nation’s capitals earlier this week, while a fly-past of Red Arrows and Typhoons coloured the London sky, to celebrate several military landmarks.

Britain's Territorial Army (TA) is marking 100 years of service, while the RAF celebrates its 90th anniversary.

I have the utmost respect for military personnel, people who put their lives at risk to 'to serve and protect', so to speak.

And none more so than TA reservists who seem to live parallel lives, having to juggle civilian lfe with deployment on the battle field for months at a time.

The 35,000 TA reservists are proof that soldiers and military minded personnel can provide the corporate and business sectors with skills gained while serving their country.

Speaking on behalf of TA employers, Anne Minto OBE, group HR director at energy company Centrica, said employers recognised the skills and experience that service in the reserve forces bring to employees, "particularly in areas such as leadership, teamwork and thinking under pressure."

There's burying your head in the sand and there's burying your head in the sand in a glass bucket. And unsurprisingly the dear old Home Office has opted for the more public display of intransigence in response to the High Court ruling that its changes to the highly skilled migrant programme (HSMP) were illegal.

Strolling down to parliament yesterday to watch MPs grill Lord Leitch about his hugely influential report on the nation's skills, I wasn't sure what to expect.

What could politicians in the Innovation and Skills Select Committee possibly want to know about the Leitch Review of Skills that they didn't know already - the report's been published for well over a year and a fair chunk of it has by now been made government policy.

Whatever it was, Leitch made sure he was well prepared: he turned up with a special copy of Personnel Today published earlier this year which highlighted the role employers have in improving skills.

"I use that as a reference point," he told me as I sat down to interview him afterwards.

Imagine Manchester United boss Alex Ferguson on the eve of a massive Champions League game popping over to Spain to give the Real Madrid coaching team a few tips on how to beat his side.

Or England cricket coach Peter Moores jetting off to Sydney for a chat with the Aussies about tactics ahead of next summer's Ashes showdown.

It's hard to imagine that, isn't it? It just wouldn't happen.

But take this admittedly far-fetched analogy into the complex world of employer-led skills training and the line between fact and fiction starts to blur.

Skills chief Chris Humphries has touched down back in the UK today after a whirlwind trip to China. The reason he was there? To advise them on how to engage employers and 'create an effective skills system'.

That's right - our skills supremo has been helping out the main competition.