Technical Craft Skills (Hansard, 30 January 2003)

§ Mr. Ivan Lewis

We are already doing much to improve the quality and availability of provision and the direct partnership between employers and the education and training system. By June we will have set out our national skills strategy and delivery plan setting out how we will further boost numbers of young people acquiring technical and craft skills across the economy and how we can get more adults to acquire vocational skills and qualifications.

I have set out as follows some examples of the important work already in train: We have begun to make a start through our Success for All Strategy in bringing employers and training providers closer together to ensure that skills priorities and shortages are addressed. From August, colleges will be expected to agree three year development plans with their local Learning and Skills Council (LSC). This will ensure that funding is allocated on the basis of each college meeting headline targets, including targets for employer engagement. The targets will be specific to the role each college will play in responding to local skill needs and for many, these will clearly link to reducing skills shortages and gaps in their area. The Learning and Skills Council is engaged in substantial adult skills pilots in each of the occupational areas mentioned. These pilots are nationally managed and locally delivered through a consortium of local LSCs, the development-phase Sector Skills Councils, employers and providers. The pilots are proving highly successful in identifying and overcoming barriers to employer-led training programmes, and when mainstreamed will enable large numbers of adults to train or re-train for technician skills which are currently in very high demand. The Council offers substantial support for adult trainees through its heavy subsidies (of between 50 per cent. and 75 per cent. of full cost) towards college and other provider fees. In all the Council provides several hundred million pounds of subsidy towards the training of technicians every year, and provides progression routes to high level skills and HE. A new Standards Unit has also been established within my Department to focus specifically on improving the quality of teaching and learning. The Unit will concentrate on developing best practice materials in up to four curriculum areas in the 1024W spring and summer terms of 2002–03. Construction, which includes plumbing and joinery, has been identified as one of these priority areas. We are currently setting up, through the new Sector Skills Development Agency, a network of Sector Skills Councils (SSCs) that will bring together employers, trade unions and professional bodies to work with government to meet the skills needs of their sector. SSCs covering plumbing, mechanics and construction (which includes joinery) sectors are in development phase. We are wholly committed to Modern Apprenticeships (MA) as a quality work-based learning route for young people, increasing the supply of skills at craft, supervisory and technician level across industry. We have adopted a challenging target for MA entrants by 2004—28 per cent. of young people to begin an MA by the age of 22—and are working with the LSC to ensure all MAs meet the highest standards and to encourage take-up among employers and young people. A new Modern Apprenticeship Task Force will take a key role in promoting MA to employers and thereby contributing to increased take-up. Provisional figures for 2002–03 show that the number of young people engaged in Foundation Modern Apprenticeships in construction (which includes joinery) and plumbing has increased dramatically. Our national skills strategy and delivery plan will set out how Government Departments, the Learning and Skills Council, Sector Skills Councils, Regional Development Agencies and other agencies will work even further together to deliver the economy's skill needs.