As sure as night follows day, Skills England will not last.
Not because it will fail in its work or because its people lack competence or commitment. It won’t last because it is a political creation – and every time the government changes, the new administration wants to show it’s doing something different. That is the rhythm of Whitehall.
Quangos such as Skills England are born with great fanfare and expectations they will “transform” the skills system. Yet they are constrained from the outset. Ministers demand results yesterday, chairs and board members soon realise the limits of their power, and enthusiasm ebbs away as delivery lags behind political ambition.
Government skills policies tend to sit at 30,000 feet – simplify the funding and qualifications system, fix NEETs, involve employers, upskill the workforce. The flexibility this vagueness provides can be useful, but it leaves others to fill in the detail. That is where representative bodies come in.
Good representation matters
Membership organisations exist to serve their members, so they have vested interests. The best ones use that mandate positively, proposing ideas that make policy work better and help members thrive while delivering government objectives. The worst attack others, highlight problems without offering solutions and forget that the elected government, like it or not, sets policy direction. If you dislike the policies, the remedy is at the ballot box.
Running a membership body is never easy. Every member has a different view. The art is to satisfy enough of them, enough of the time, while demonstrating progress overall. Across the skills landscape, common interests are clear: a shared strategy, proportionate regulation, sensible investment and a bridge between policy and delivery.
What we hear on the ground
At The Skills Network, we partner with hundreds of colleges, independent training providers, local authorities and awarding bodies. Week in, week out, I meet principals and CEOs. The themes are strikingly similar regardless of organisation type. Funding is tight, that’s a given. But the deeper frustration lies in how the system works, or doesn’t. Regulation often seems to get in the way of delivering what government itself says it wants.
We should also recognise some practical truths. Local authorities have political masters; colleges are public sector; independent providers are, well, independent. Whether not-for-profit or commercial shouldn’t matter. If the funding and rules are right, all can contribute effectively to national goals.
One voice, or many?
Ministers often claim they want a single voice from the sector, but only when that voice agrees with them. In a fragmented landscape, “divide and rule” is easy. Previous attempts to unite the sector have faltered because individual interests trumped collective purpose, critics sniped from outside, sponsors distorting agendas, with no neutral arbiter to manage disagreements.
A sector-led solution
So what might a Skills England-style body run by the sector for the sector look like? One that endures beyond political cycles and focuses on what really matters: defining and delivering an effective skills system and maximising the billions already invested?
Key elements would include:
- A strong chair, skilled in managing relationships between member bodies, politics and the civil service, and scrupulously non-partisan.
- Balanced representation from across the delivery spectrum, each with an equal voice.
- Collective responsibility: members publicly back decisions even when debates behind closed doors are robust.
- Clear boundaries on when the organisation speaks with one voice and when members can lobby individually.
- Realism: don’t try to boil the ocean. Set a long-term vision and take steady steps towards it.
- A small coordinating team working through member bodies rather than creating another bureaucracy.
- A focus on delivery, representing those charged with implementing government and employer priorities – not necessarily including employers themselves, who define need..
Worth the effort
Building such a body would take time, patience and compromise. There would be many disagreements, and progress would sometimes be slow. But done right, it could make a profound difference to the stability and coherence of our skills system.
Skills England will come and go, as its predecessors did. What endures is the need for the sector itself to take ownership – to collaborate, focus on delivery, and speak with clarity about what works. Only then will our skills system be resilient enough to outlast the next political cycle.
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