At a time when investment is much in the news, perhaps it is the right time to take a closer look at the Skills Accounts initiative launched this Autumn.
First mooted in the Leitch Review of Skills ‘learner accounts’ were seen as part of a system more responsive to the demands of individuals and employers. The employer route was through the Train to Gain initiative, and individual route through Skills Accounts. Since then the idea has developed in a number of policy papers, all very cautious and distinctly aware of the possibility of the same rush to implementation that hampered the success of Individual Learning Accounts (ILAs) in 2000/1.
ILAs, before they became mired in allegations of fraud, were seen as a tool for co-investment in learning. If you put £25 in of your own hard-earned cash, the state would add a further £150. A precursor was also the raft of personal learning accounts or employee development schemes around at the time. This was a mechanism where employers would invest in their workers’ own personal development learning.
This concept of co-investment was picked up by Lord Leitch as a means of making the market for skills more responsive. With Skills Accounts, as they currently are shaping up, this has evolved into a means of managing a set of entitlements. A Skills Account has become a means of redeeming an existing set of entitlements. Instead of providers getting funding in twelve monthly chunks, the flow of funding will be related to activated Skills Accounts. This does not mean the quantum of funding will be any different—especially if the number of approved providers remains the same.
So with safety first in mind, the roll out of Skills Accounts will be staged and tested alongside other government initiatives, crucially the development of the adult careers service and the availability of a unique learner number. The Skills Accounts pathfinders in the East Midlands and South East will start with allocating accounts through trusted providers and the new careers service regional contractors. In the first year the targets are quite modest suggesting we have learnt a lesson of not setting the bar so high that we have to help providers jump over it. The focus is on the quality of the service at this stage not the quantity, but the number of individuals that could benefit is still quite high. In the East Midlands this could amount 17,000 people, and in the South East a staggering 40,000.
So how will the system work? It is early days yet but there will be a number of entry points to a Skills Account. You can either come in via the web, a telephone call, or face to face meeting with an adviser in the community or at a college. Once this happens the Account is activated and a Skills Voucher will indicate the levels of eligibility. Once I decide to ‘spend’ some of the entitlement it is transferred out of my account by a registered provider—hence minimising the potential for fraud. Then I do my course and the outcome is recorded on my Skills Account.
This is important as a Skills Account is both an account for and an account of learning. And in this it becomes a very powerful and empowering tool for government and the individual respectively. It is useful for government in that there is a direct record of success owned by the individual and fully portable (thus the current reform of qualifications is crucial to this argument). It is empowering for an individual because they own it and see a direct consequence to their investment of time and money into learning. We can collectively see therefore the fruits of our mutual investment in learning: individual and state, which is one part of Lord Leitch’s argument.
So this is all very exciting stuff and one matched by a potentially huge investment in its success. But there are one or two things that need to be straightened out. The first is the name Skills Accounts. I hope that the brand management consultancies have not already invaded this territory as from where I sit there’s not much wrong with the term ‘Skills Account’. My problem is the current working definition of the word ‘skill’. As I mentioned earlier the word ‘account’ is something we are all familiar with: it is plain English. So before we go down the ‘Oyster’ route, consider what the term already says: an account of and an account for skills.
It is the term 'skill' that is problematic, as in recent years its meaning has been hijacked to mean: ‘economically valuable skills defined by qualifications’. When we know that the skills both employers and individuals value cannot always be measured by these blunt instruments. Skills Accounts allow individuals to gain and record small bites of learning and recognition of learning that are at the heart transformative and empowering of lifelong learning. It is great news that Skills Accounts will be universal, and probably a good idea that the funding within them is targeted—but we need to think carefully whether using qualification levels is the best way for targeting resources.
The other thing missing from the current debate around Skills Accounts is the role of employers, many of whom already run personal learning; such learning is often a gift or reimbursement for a course not connected with job role. I have worked for two companies that provide them. The most famous one in the literature is the Employee Development and Assistance Programme (EDAP) established in 1988 at the Ford Motor Company. This programme alone accounted for funding 1% of all adult education in England at the time! This is clearly an area of hugely untapped potential.
Following Leitch, imagine a situation where in a few years time we have a universal skills account where government, employers and individuals all put money for learning—incentivised by tax breaks or pension credits. Just as the original ILAs back in 2000/1 required a £25 investment of your own cash alongside government money any scheme needs to work by combining the investment of state, individual and employer (where possible).
The way forward has to be the co-investment model - as long as we can get a definition of skills that suits all investors!