As part of his reshuffle, prime minister Keir Starmer has moved responsibility for ‘skills’ from the Department for Education to the Department for Work and Pensions. Pat McFadden, formerly of the Cabinet Office, has moved jobs, replacing the struggling Liz Kendall at the DWP – although it’s reported a new ‘growth department’ is going to be formed.
It was originally thought that education secretary Bridget Phillipson’s brief would be restricted to schools and universities, it transpires that Phillipson will keep responsibility for ‘further education’. This includes T-levels and other classroom-based vocational courses. Meanwhile, McFadden will take over ultimate responsibility for apprenticeships.
On coming to office in 2024, Labour established a new body Skills England – which was ‘sponsored’ by the Department for Education and swallowed up the responsibilities of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, set up by the Tories. By implication Skills England will now operate across the Department for Education and the current DWP.
Skills is no stranger to being moved around government department. For much of the New Labour years education and skills sat together under the banner of the Department for Education and Employment which was eventually renamed as the Department for Education and Skills (DfEE). It became part of a Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) in 2007 until 2009 when it went to the new Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS)! Then from 2016 to 2024, most skills responsibilities were transferred back to the Department for Education.
But Skills has always been no more than an ‘also ran’, with a relatively junior minister in charge. This is because rather than those following the academic route to university, it’s generally working-class young people towards the back of the labour queue who are considered to be lacking work skills. But rather than providing real employment opportunities state-backed skills initiatives have largely been ideological offensives.
During the 14 years of the Tories for example, policy focused on restoring division between learners. With continued increases in the number of university students, but without equivalent growth in the number of graduate jobs, new technical qualifications delivered through FE colleges were promoted not only as alternatives to university, but also as a response to an inverted crisis in ‘intermediate’ skills. Yet to date, these ‘middle level’ certificates have had minimal success, as university applications by UK school and college leavers continue to hold up.
In addition, a variety of lower-level initiatives have been aimed at reducing the number of NEETs -backed up by threats and sanctions. This was always the approach of the Manpower Services Commission of the 1980s. Established against the backdrop of sharply rising youth unemployment, the MSC amounted to no more than “training without jobs.” While officially advocating skill development to boost economic growth, McFadden is mainly focused on cutting welfare costs.
Comparisons have continued to be made between the UK’s, particularly England and Wales, underfunded and badly organised system of industrial training compared to other European countries, notably Germany, where skills policies and technical education has been linked to, but also dependent on wider industrial strategies and job creation In this country it has been left to individual employers who in making short-term decisions, do not necessarily tally with longer term training needs in the economy
Nowhere is this more apparent than with apprenticeships, where the number of starts by young people under 19 continues to be particularly low – never reaching much above 1 in 4. This has been in sharp contrast to the German system where, as part of a ‘social partnership’ between government, trade unions and state bodies, apprenticeships provided a rite of passage to employment for young people.
On the contrary, because of a general lack of state intervention in the economy, the UK has also had significantly higher rates of de-industrialisation and the ‘precariatisation’ of its labour force, with young people being hit the hardest. It’s no longer possible or even desirable to be ‘doing it like the Germans’ but a proper skills strategy can only be part of a wider jobs’ strategy. This is even more essential in the age of AI.
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