Success in the FE and skills sector should be measured by job outcomes and not just qualifications, the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES) has recommended as part of a five-point plan to increase workforce skills.

In its report, Growth Through People (pictured right), published today, the UKCES laid out “action priorities” for the next two decades, which it said must be achieved to boost productivity, wages and social mobility.

The report warns the career ladder has become harder to climb as mid-level skilled jobs have been replaced by high-skill or low skill-jobs.

Part of the solution to this, it said, was to ensure that success was “measured by a wider set of outcomes not just educational attainment” — these wider measures would include the learner going on to employment or a pay rise.

It added: “To improve productivity and social mobility, measuring and rewarding educational attainment via qualifications alone is no longer good enough.

“A system constructed in this way provides centrally-driven incentives for education providers to produce high volumes of easy to deliver qualifications.

“It offers no incentive to collaborate with employers or other educational institutions to deliver the skills that people and businesses really need.

“Qualifications are important and give learners portable evidence of skills, but they must also lead to good labour market outcomes — a job, a better job, or for the business, the ‘job done better’.”

As well as measuring outcomes, the report’s actions included a call for employers to take the lead on improving skills, supported by government.

The report said: “Governments should commit to supporting employer leadership on skills, individually and in partnerships, as a central part of long-term growth plans and a way of aligning public and private resources.”

It also called for increased workplace productivity to be recognised as “the key route to increasing pay and productivity”, saying that “equipping people with the right skills and giving them the best opportunities to use them will lead to better paid job”.

Another priority, the report said, should be a greater focus on opportunities to “earn and learn,” with a “step change in attitude and uptake of quality vocational routes into good jobs”.

“High quality apprenticeships should be a normal career pathway for many more young people, and a normal way for businesses to recruit and develop their talent pipeline,” it says in the report,  which is supported by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC)

“Employers, working collaboratively, should have the lead role in designing apprenticeships to ensure they have value in the labour market. The public contribution should be channelled via employers to stimulate greater employer uptake.”

The report’s final priority was closer links between work and education, to ensure people were prepared for the workplace and could continue learning.

Sir Charlie Mayfield, UKCES and John Lewis Partnership chair, said: “Up to 90 per cent of the current workforce will still be in work in the next decade.  That’s where we will win or lose on productivity. And that’s why employers must lead, and be given the space and encouragement to do so.

“That needs to start early, with more integration between the worlds of work and education, and extend, via a new norm of earning and learning, into a lifetime of development, increasing productivity and pay.”

See FE Week edition 120, dated Monday, December 1, for sector reaction to the report.

The organisation that oversees the work of Local Enterprise Partnerships (Leps) is in crisis following the resignation of its chief executive, prompting a call for more funding.

The Lep Network chair Alex Pratt, above, has written to all 39 partnerships to warn the network could close without more government support, and to announce that boss Alison Porter is to leave the organisation on December 8 because of over-working.

In the letter, which has been circulated by Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna, left, after he raised concerns about the network in the House of Commons, Mr Pratt warns that growing interest in the network in the wake of pledges to devolve responsibilities, including skills, to local areas, means its workload can no longer be completed.

Mr Pratt also revealed that the network, currently funded with a £5,000 grant from each Lep as well as funding from central government, planned to go cap-in-hand to Cities Minister Greg Clark to seek more funding and support.

In a statement sent to FE Week, Mr Pratt said: “Inevitably the work loads of Leps themselves and the Lep Network have increased considerably.

“This means that the workload of the Leps and the Lep Network has increased substantially. The Lep Network chief executive was recruited in a part-time capacity which is now unsustainable given the demands on the role, the devolution discussions and the additional planning required in advance of an election.

“Our chief executive is not in a position to take on the necessary full time, full-on role and has decided to step down next month. We are in discussion with Government around the need for increased support in line with demands now being placed on the Lep Network.”

In the letter, he said: “We have concluded that the Lep support for the Lep Network of £5,000 per annum plus the proposed funding from Greg Clark is insufficient to pay for a team of three plus the minimum additional support needed to cover off the role (circa £500,000).

“As a result we have entered into discussions with Greg Clark to explain the situation and to suggest that without more support from the centre it would be our proposal to close the LEP Network and pass the roll to Civil Servants or AN Other, which could for example mean the LGA or DCLG taking it on (neither is ideal).”

Speaking in Parliament on Thursday, Mr Umunna pressed Business Secretary Vince Cable, right, on the letter, but was told all was well.

He said: “Four years ago, the Secretary of State said that the regional policy was Maoist and chaotic. Does this not demonstrate that very little has changed?”

But Dr Cable said: “It demonstrates nothing of the kind. The Lep network is working exceedingly well. Leps are voluntary organisations; some are outstanding and innovative and others struggle, as this one has done.”