Working futures 2004-2014: national report

The latest series of the Working Futures documents are now available on the Sector Skills Development Agency (SSDA) website. This comprehensive set of employment projections for the UK focuses on the future patterns of demand for skills from 2004 to 2014. These documents are a product of a partnership between the SSDA, the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) and the Learning and Skills Council (LSC).

The overall picture for the engineering, manufacturing and construction sectors is mixed. For example, whilst output for the manufacturing sector expanded slightly in 2004, strong productivity growth meant that employment continued to fall by approximately 2¼ per cent. This is expected to result in an accelerated decline in employment, largely because global competition and the relocation of jobs to countries with lower labour costs.

Despite increased productivity and the trend to relocate jobs overseas, the replacement demand for workers in these sectors is strong. This takes into account the need to replace those who leave their jobs due to retirement or other reasons. When added to any structural change (projections of employment based on changing occupational roles), the replacement demand easily outweighs any losses resulting from increasing productivity and the relocation of jobs etc.

The total projected skill requirements for engineering and sectors aligned to engineering is therefore very high. In engineering, manufacturing and construction there is a total demand for around one and a half million new workers. Most of which are in the professional occupations or associate professional occupations (300,000) or in skilled trades occupations (538,000 required).

Working futures 2004-2014: national report, Skills for Business, 2006, can be downloaded from the SSDA website
 

Youth Matters, Government response

Youth Matters, the Youth Green Paper, was published on 18 July 2005 and the subsequent consultation ended on 4 November 2005. The Government response, Youth Matters: Next Steps was published on 8 March 2006 and sets out the vision for empowering young people, giving them ‘somewhere to go, something to do and someone to talk to’.

The ETB responded to the Green Paper in November last year expressing concerns regarding the proposal to give schools and colleges the right to commission Information, Advice and Guidance (IAG) services directly, where they believed the provision was poor. We strongly requested that careers IAG remained a centralised national service and be separate to the devolved package of other IAG services such as health, social issue etc. Further fragmentation of existing careers networks, will make it even more difficult for organisations like ETB to gain access to careers advisors working in schools and further education.

This latest response does recognise this concern but proposes that the quality standards for IAG that it plans to put in place by April 2007 will eliminate this risk. In addition there will be a mechanism to withdraw devolved funding if the provision commissioned by schools/colleges is not meeting the quality standards. The paper also cites plans to develop ‘a simple and innovative ICT and helpline service for young people’.

Accurate and up to date careers information is essential for all those advising on careers in the Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) sectors, and although we welcome quality standards and the centralisation of careers information and advice via a website and helpline, we still have concerns that the proposed changes to the delivery of the service will result in further fragmentation and a lack of impartiality.

Click here to view the ETB initial response to ‘Youth Matters’ (November 2005)
Click here to view the Government response ‘Youth Matters – Next Steps’ (March 2006)
 

Shaping a fairer future

The ETB welcomes the recommendations from the Women and Work Commission's report: Shaping a Fairer Future, and strongly recommends that more is done to redress the causes of the gender pay and opportunities gap.

The review concludes that many women are working far below their abilities. Women are crowded into a narrow range of lower-paying occupations that do not make the best use of their skills and many girls and young women are still following traditional routes in education and training, and are being paid less than men as a result.

Among the long list of recommendations, this review advises the Sector Skills Councils (SSCs) to work with employers to provide and promote Apprenticeships for women in industries where there are skills shortages. This is an area where the engineering community needs to do more. According to the Learning and Skills Council only 2.7 per cent of engineering apprenticeships in England are being undertaken by women.

It remains a major concern that engineering, in which there is a skills shortage, is still not attracting young women in significant numbers. We will continue to work with our stakeholders to make engineering for women more appealing.

Working with EC^UK and the IIE, we will be mapping advanced apprenticeships to the UKSPEC professional standards for engineering, allowing us to asses the suitability of these qualifications and identify the pathways into engineering.

To download the Shaping a Fairer Future click here
 

 
The Budget

Possibly the final budget announcement from this Chancellor puts skills and education on the centre stage.

On skills the Chancellor announced that “Today the British economy has just nine million highly skilled jobs. By 2020 it will need 14 million highly skilled workers” [those with level 3 qualifications and those not formally qualified but employed in an occupation where the above qualifications are normally required]. “And of 3.4 million unskilled jobs today, we will need only 600,000 by 2020.”

To meet this challenge the Chancellor announced a raft of new measures to ensure the skills profile of our workforce is fit for the future. Resources will be set aside so that, up to the age of 25, further education to the scale of A-level standards will be free of charge. Also increasing employer involvement to better match the courses on offer to the demand for skills as well as a comprehensive programme for the recruitment, retraining, retention and reward of 3,000 science teachers.

The ETB welcomes these positive measures to improve the skills base of the UK. Tackling the low levels of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) skills of the UK workforce remains a pressing issue and we need to ensure it remains a priority. We hope that this, along with developments in the curriculum at Key stage 4 from September 2006 and the setting up of the National Network of Science Learning Centres, shows a genuine commitment to addressing this problem.

Over the past year the ETB has been working to increase the skills of STEM teachers and create better links to employers and training providers. To this end we have launched a programme of teacher CPD through extended work placements as professional development is a key factor which can contribute to revitalising science in schools.

We look forward to seeing further details of the Chancellor's proposals for education and skills.

The budget is available on the Treasury website
 

 
Specialised diploma factsheet

A factsheet is now available to download from QCA providing further information on structure, lines of learning and development timescale.

Click here to find out more
 

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