CFE - After Leitch: Implementing skills and training policies

The submission was informed through our work and experience as a research and development not for profit company, the majority of which has been at a sub-national level looking at the implementation of policy at local, sub-regional and regional tiers of government and its agencies.

Part of our work has included market research in the field of higher education and employer engagement, and Employment and Skills Boards (ESBs).

Both these reports highlight issues with both supply-side and demand-side reforms initiated by the Leitch review. In particular our submission draws attention to:

The need for a more sophisticated understanding of the extent and nature of the demand for higher level skills at a regional level
The fact that businesses that do invest in higher level skills really do invest, but the majority do not invest at all and within that cohort over half regard themselves as what our research characterises as ‘hard’ nos to training (i.e., the principal reason not to train is a result of a conscious business case)
Employers do not recognise administrative boundaries and are exasperated by multiple approaches by local agencies and brokers without any seeming sense of coordination
Demand-led employment and skills partnerships offer real advantages to the successful integration of the employment and skills agenda, meeting local employers’ recruitment and training needs and upskilling the local population
The lack of a single governmental voice on whether ESBs are supported or not, creating confusion across Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) and their regions and hesitation in moving forward with any changes to their current landscape in response to Leitch

CFE feel there are a number of areas that lack current evidence-bases and therefore remain largely uncontested:

Differences in the relationship between skills levels, productivity and skills utilisation
The nature of employer demand for skills and the different levels of demand in those enterprises that will have most impact on economic development in current global capital investment markets

CFE’s full submission to 'After Leitch: Implementing skills and training policies’ can be found here.