Control over apprenticeships policy will shift to the Department for Work and Pensions following last week’s reshuffle, the skills minister has confirmed.
Adult skills will also move while Skills England will “continue to work across government,” Jacqui Smith told FE Week today.
It comes after a shock reshuffle last week, where Pat McFadden took the “skills” brief from Bridget Phillipson’s Department for Education and Smith was appointed skills minister across both departments.
The skills sector was left to ponder over the last week precisely which policy areas would be moved to DWP under plans for growth-boosting “super ministry” under McFadden.
In an interview with FE Week at the EuroSkills competition in Herning, Denmark today, Smith said policy responsibility for apprenticeships, apprenticeship policy and adult skills will move to DWP.
The minister said: “Apprenticeship policy and the apprenticeship levy and policy around that will sit in DWP.”
Alongside apprenticeships, “certainly the adult skills fund and all that work in adult skills … Skills England has already been working across government so that won’t make such a difference. But those things are essentially now the responsibility of DWP, except they’re my responsibility and I work across both departments,” Smith added.
“Further education” and higher education will remain with DfE. A ministerial statement on the changes will be published “in the very near future”.
Bigger emphasis on skills
Smith described moving skills policy to DWP as a “logical next step” because she is “really determined that we bring skills work out of the DfE across the whole of government.”
She told FE Week: “What it means is a bigger emphasis on skills in a larger part of government.
“It means Pat McFadden, who alongside Bridget [Phillipson], is a leading cabinet minister within the government taking on that responsibility with respect to adult skills both to continue the work that’s happened in the last year, but also to make sure that work is integrated into all of the labour market work on the ground, the work that Job Centres and job services are going nationally.”
The minister pointed to a range of skills policy initiatives which are already involving other government departments, such as the defence technical excellence colleges with the Ministry of Defence, and digital skills work with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
“It’s always difficult in government to break down silos, but we have put skills much more centrally at the heart of what the government is trying to achieve than has ever, and I’ve been around a bit including two previous stints at the DfE, that I have ever seen before in government.”
A NEET solution
McFadden has already identified tackling rising numbers of young people not in education, employment and training (NEET) as a priority for his new department. An estimated 948,000 young people aged 16 to 24 are NEET.
Smith said McFadden’s vow was a “bringing together” of the work in schools and colleges to prevent young people from becoming NEET and the post-19 initiatives already led by DWP.
“We’ve invested in youth guarantee pathfinders, and where we’ll be able to bring all of that work together, along with the benefit system, along with the work that’s happening in Jobcentres to make sure that we really do make a difference to the wholly unacceptable numbers.”
This will surely give DWP a bigger say in local devolved administrations and devolved adult education budgets. Perhaps we may even see the funds being removed from devolved authorities and placed with Job Centres. The DWP funding for training and adults will surely become on pot. Gues some back office administration may be merged here too and a greater synergy between DWP and HMRC.
It has beurocracy written all over it and the associated costs.
Let’s wait and see eh.
Suspect they’ll just have a local rep’ on devolved authority boards – a bit like they did with ESF.
The fickle nature of politics, media and public perception has pushed NEETs up the agenda.
When the NEET figure increases by 1 to hit the 1,000,000 figure, it will be national news.
When it increases by 1 to reach 1,000,001, it will barely make a headline.
Lets hope we don’t end with something like a gvt backed ‘start-up loan’ scheme to get them off the books and create an insolvency problem down the track…