Employers' needs should determine FE funding

7 April 2006:

The White Paper on further education reform has been welcomed by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) [http://www.cbi.org.uk] as a crucial step towards ensuring people have the skills needed for business to compete in the 21st century.

Britain’s manufacturers also welcomed the proposals for reforming the system of Further Education (FE) with their focus on making provision more responsive to the needs of employers and individuals. Responding to the White Paper, EEF [http://www.eef.org.uk], the manufacturers’ organisation, applauded the Government for accepting the majority of recommendations of Sir Andrew Foster. However, the EEF believes that there is some way to go before employers and learners are genuinely in the driving seat.

The UK has one of the lowest rates of post-16 participation in education in the industrialised nations (75%). Over 70% of the 2020 working age population are already over 16. It is therefore likely that many workers will have to reskill at some stage in their working lives.

Currently, only 44% of school-leavers gain five GCSEs at grade A* to C including English and Maths. The Department for Education and Skills [http://www.dfes.gov.uk] itself views this standard to be the very minimum employability skills for basic productivity.

The EEF therefore welcomed placing "skills for employability" at the core of the FE sector’s role, along with measures to ensure that employers are involved in the design and delivery of training programmes. The commitment to clarity of roles and reduced bureaucracy is also a positive move, it said, but warned that, given previous promises, employers will be sceptical until they see delivery.

Last year employers spent £33 billion on staff training, according to the Learning and Skills Council [http://www.lsc.gov.uk] but only 15% of employers source training provision from FE colleges.