World-class skills. HM Treasury publishes Leitch Review.

Update - 27/1/2007.  For four overlapping but contrasting views on the Leitch Review of Skills, by Bob Harrison, Markos Tiris, Kevin Donovan, and Donald Clarke, see the January 2007 issue of the Association for Learning Technology Newsletter.

A day earlier than some were expecting, the Treasury published the outcome from the Leitch Review of Skills: Prosperity for all in the global economy - world class skills, and [14/12/2006] there is a brief and coherent overview of the whole report on the TUC web site.

Several readers of Fortnightly Mailing will welcome the review's strong support for the work of Trade Union Learning Representatives, as well as its recognition that the emphasis must begin to shift from the provision of Level 2 training and education to Level 3.

People working in public sector education may be more anxious about the review's recommendation that routing public funding for adult vocational skills will "be through demand-led routes, ending the supply-side planning of skills provision". "Train to Gain" for employers, and, from 2010, the re-introduction of Learner Accounts for individuals will be the main ways of funding adult vocational education.  "These accounts should not be based on providing colleges with a block grant based on expected demand and clawing back the difference at the end of the academic year. Instead, colleges should receive full funding only when individuals enroll on and complete a course. This will give the best providers freedom to expand, while encouraging all providers to be more responsive to the demands of their customers – in this case, individuals."

The proposal for "rationalising the number of bodies aiming to articulate the views of employers into a single Commission for Employment and Skills" is not the throwback to the Manpower Services Commission that it might at first seem, since the latter, if I remember rightly, employed a large number of civil servants, which is not what is now envisaged. And although there will be trade union presence on the Commission, and, as mentioned above, the importance of union involvement in skills and education issues in organised workplaces is taken as read, it will not be on the old-style 50/50 basis: employers will be in the driving seat.  This squares with the overwhelming emphasis of the report that the purpose of training and education system is to produce what the labour market needs, plain and simple, with a sideline, if strong, emphasis on:

• entitling young people to training and education to a much greater extent than at present;
• pushing employers into ensuring that their workers can improve their skills, whether or not that particular employer needs them to so do.

You cannot argue with these latter two points.

Nowhere in the document do the terms personalisation or personalised (maybe that bit of mantra has not reached into the Treasury?) appear; and of on-line learning, e-learning, informal learning, or the new methods that are emerging for knowledge generation and dissemination there is no mention.  For a document concerning skills, that looks forward to 2020 (and bearing in mind that searching a PDF for key terms is sometimes a misleading way of reaching judgments of this kind!) this seems to be almost bizarre.

Finally I spotted a "dodgy" chart, reproduced below. Can anyone see what is wrong with it?

Comments

[Doug Gowan]

Those Treasury people have got their tables in a twist. The UK has notoriously the longest working hours in Europe and the government insists on opting out of key parts of European
laws on maximum working hours. Meanwhile France has introduced the 35 hour week.

What this means is that 'GDP per hour worked' must be higher than 'GDP per worker' when indexed against the UK - but the chart shows it the other way round.

==
Thanks Doug. I reckon if you swap the colours in the legend round, the chart makes sense. Otherwise it is gibberish. Seb

[nigele1]

Readers may also like to look at the ALI Chief Inspector's Report 2005-06 where he makes very specific reference to problems emerging in Train to Gain where assess-train-assess is being replaced by assess-assess-assess and the loss of educational value to learners as this new model is adopted.

The whole report is well worth looking at. Note the strap line "PHENOMENAL IMPROVEMENT IN ADULT SKILLS TRAINING - But constant change threatens further progress".

Nigel