Improving technical education is one of three key campaign priorities for Labour, Shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt has announced.
Addressing the Labour Party conference in Manchester, Mr Hunt outlined the three most important issues as his party heads into its general election campaign, including childcare reform, a qualified teacher in every classroom and efforts to provide for the “forgotten 50 per cent”.
He described technical education as the Tories’ “greatest failure” and referred to the “forgotten 50 per cent” of young people who didn’t go to university and were denied “the rewarding education they deserve”.
He added: “The third plank of our plan, is a vocational education system to rival Germany’s.
“A Labour Government will ensure Further Education colleges focused on training for local jobs, proper apprenticeships lasting two years, a technical baccalaureate, with respected qualifications, careers advice, technical degrees so young people can earn and learn.
“The old barriers between academic and technical crumbling under the next Labour government, righting the wrongs of the last five years.”
For extended coverage of the Labour Party conference, see edition 112 of FE Week.
Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna today told of his commitment to investment in apprenticeships and new technical degrees.
In his address to the Labour Party conference in Manchester, Mr Umunna said one of his biggest priorities was to see “apprenticeships quadrupled” if his party were to win next year’s General Election, and added that plans for increased investment would play a big part in that.
He also repeated a pledge to establish new technical qualifications.
Mr Umunna said: “It’s up to us to act, but we need to do more to ensure our businesses can compete in the world and create the jobs of the future.
“That’s why we set out Agenda 2030 – our long-term plan to support business, grow our economy, and earn our way to a higher standard of living for all.
“It’s a plan that does away with the snobbery that says an apprenticeship is not as important as university. So we will invest in high-quality apprenticeships, and new technical degrees.”
It comes after shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt committed to establishing a technical education system “to rival Germany’s”.
In his speech to the conference yesterday, Mr Hunt described technical education as the Tories’ “greatest failure” and referred to the “forgotten 50 per cent” of young people who didn’t go to university and were denied “the rewarding education they deserve”.
He added: “The third plank of our plan, is a vocational education system to rival Germany’s.
“A Labour Government will ensure FE colleges focused on training for local jobs, proper apprenticeships lasting two years, a technical baccalaureate, with respected qualifications, careers advice, technical degrees so young people can earn and learn.
“The old barriers between academic and technical crumbling under the next Labour government, righting the wrongs of the last five years.”
See edition 112 of FE Week, dated Monday, September 29, for full coverage of FE and skills at the Labour conference.
Governors should “be a bit braver” when challenging colleges on teaching and learning, according to former Department for Business, Innovation and Skills chief Dr Sue Pember.
The ex-head of FE and skills investment and performance at BIS, who is now a governance adviser at the Association of Colleges (AoC), said governors should trust their instincts when observing lessons.
Sue Pember addresses the seminar on college governor leadership. Inset: delegates at the seminar, organised by Westminster Briefing and the 157 Group
Dr Pember, addressing governors and principals at a seminar organised by Westminster Briefing and the 157 Group on Wednesday (September 17), said: “You as individuals, you have all been through the school system. I would trust your instinct. If it’s boring to you and you’ve just been in 10 of them [lessons] that look really boring, trust your instincts and think, would you sign up to that course? Be a bit braver about this.”
She added: “Staff and student governors come into their own with you when they’re talking about the curriculum, because they’re the ones that can signpost you through — you know, level two, level three, BTec national, HNC — they know this, they are living and breathing it.
“They will know the curriculum changes that are coming through, and I still don’t think we use enough of staff and student governors around the governing body table to help explain.
“It’s normally the senior leaders who feel they have to talk about some of these things, but other people can talk about them as well. So how can you, as individuals, use your skills? Well, first of all, you should be assured that you’ve got systems that are assessing the teaching and learning in the college.”
With the focus of the conference ‘college governor leadership: involvement on learning teaching and assessment,’ Dr Pember also spoke about the need for governors to be assertive and not get too “cosy” with college leadership.
From left: Ann Zinkin, governors’ board chair at Barnet and Southgate College, and Olivia Dorricott, director of leadership, governance and management at the Education and Training Foundation
“Yes, you have to be assertive,” she said, “but not assertive with the finger out, but assertive in the form that you’re clear and you communicate and you ask good, challenging questions.
“There is a set of behaviours in the way a governing body acts. There shouldn’t be a clique where they go away, you know, the chair, the clerk and the principal, and then they come back and say, ‘We met last week in the pub and I’ve sorted it’. That really drives me crazy, and I hate when the principal says, ‘oh, we’ve just had a pre-meeting’.”
The seminar also heard from BIS deputy director for standards and qualifications Bobbie McClelland, who said governors needed to be well-informed about policy to do the job well, and could rely on regular updates from government.
She said: “High-performing governing bodies need to be clear on their roles, setting their direction and being outwardly accountable.
“To do that, you need to understand the wider policy context and government expectations, and we have done a number of things in this area which I hope you’ll see are helping you.
Peter Eyre, governor at Sixth Form College Farnborough
“The last couple of years, the minister has written out, on a termly basis, to governors, directly, about the important things that government is thinking about. And if you’re not getting those letters, you need to be asking your clerk where they are, because they are there for you.
“They are letters which attach a whole set of briefing about latest government thinking on the important issues — and of course they featured very strongly most recently the English and maths story, the workforce measures that the government is actually putting in place to support the sector to actually improve the quality of teaching and learning in English and maths.
“I hope you are aware of those measures, because there’s more than £30m being thrown in over two years to actually enable you to recruit graduates, to enhance the skills of your existing staff — so there’s a lot going on in that front.”
Senior Ofsted inspector Julie Ashton also addressed the seminar, focusing on the importance of the role of governors in ensuring
English and maths provision is of a high enough quality.
Andy Gannon, director of policy, press relations and research at the 157 Group
Ms Ashton said: “When I was a newly-qualified teacher back in 1992, English and maths was important then. I have taught in schools, I have taught in sixth form colleges and general FE colleges, and it’s never gone away. So what really saddens me is that it’s 2014 and it’s still a priority and we still for whatever reason haven’t got it right.
“The responsibility for delivering English and maths is everybody’s responsibility, not just the English and maths specialists, it has to be much broader than that.
“To me it’s that accountability of the senior leadership team which matters most. Governors and senior leaders comparing perhaps success rates which perhaps include and exclude Functional Skills so you can
spot the differences and then challenge them.”
Olivia Dorricott, director of leadership, governance and management
at the Education and Training Foundation (ETF), spoke about the help and support the ETF offered governors, but also shared her personal experience as someone new to a governing board having recently started the role at Waltham Forest College.
She said: “I also am here I suppose in a personal capacity. I have just become a governor, and so I am living a new induction.
Patricia Tomlinson, governor at Hull College Group
“I am having some pretty significant and serious conversations with the senior leadership team about what they expect from me, and I was just saying, in my inductions with them, I have asked them what they expect from me as a governor, and that question, asked in five different places, has been very revealing.
“They want me to arrive at meetings having read the papers, they want me to ask questions and they want me to be present, and aware of the college and in particular the students.
“My initial pushback was on technology. If as a working mother-of-two with two volunteer roles you want me to read the papers, then put them in a format I can find time to read, and that doesn’t mean a deck of papers, it means technology, technology, technology.”
Bentley Motors has opened a manufacturing training base at South Cheshire College.
The new training facility, which has two classrooms fitted out for academic and practical work, will prepare level three apprentices to help build the luxury car maker’s new sport utility vehicle set to be unveiled in two years.
The first 40 apprentices, who will also work at Bentley’s manufacturing headquarters in Crewe, will be inducted at the college by the end of the month.
They will be trained at mechanical and electrical engineering, bodywork painting, and crafting fittings such as panelling for car interiors.
Principal Jasbir Dhesi said: “This is a fine example of a college working to provide a bespoke employer-led apprenticeship programme. I am proud that nearly all training associated with high-level technical skills in the production of Bentley cars will be in Crewe.”
Pic from left: Crewe and Nantwich Conservative MP Edward Timpson, South Cheshire College principal Jasbir Dhesi and chief executive of Bentley Motors Wolfgang Durheimer at the launch of the new training centre
The number of young women considered not in education, employment or training (Neet) is 29 per cent higher than it is for young men. Dr Carole Easton considers why this is the case and what it means for the skills agenda.
Young women want to work, but hundreds of thousands are stuck not earning or learning.
Our Scarred for Life? inquiry into females who are not in education, employment or training (Neet) recently presented its initial findings in the Totally Wasted? The Crisis of Young Women’s Worklessness report.
We highlighted the fact that there are 418,000 women aged 18 to 24 compared with 325,000 men.
The number of female Neets has barely changed in a decade and on average they
will also be Neet for longer — three years rather than two.
As well as the key point that young women want to work, our initial findings — based on focus groups, surveys and face to face conversations—– show that the advice, training and support available to young women not leading to any employment or leading to jobs that are too few in number and too poorly paid to be sustainable.
We have discovered a lot about what young women need, but have also heard from training and FE providers about the challenges they face, including financial constraints. But we need to gather more evidence before making detailed recommendations next year.
The right support is vitally important because in many cases young women are being sent down a path that quickly becomes difficult to escape from. They need the right advice in the first place but also the opportunity to change direction if they realise they have made the wrong decision. That’s what is lacking at the moment and that’s why they are stuck.
Many young women are directed towards traditionally female sectors even though their interests and aptitude lie elsewhere.
We commissioned a ComRes poll of 859 Neets which showed that female Neets were three times more likely than male Neets to have been told by careers advisers to think about becoming care workers, nannies, nurses or hairdressers and male Neets are at least six times more likely to be told to think about becoming IT technicians, construction workers or electricians and plumbers.
When I was 18 I decided to study IT. Finding myself in a slightly alien world dominated by men, I decided to move on. That was, I’ll admit, a long time ago, but even now the world of IT is still male-dominated and that’s not about to change — for every one woman doing an apprenticeship in IT there are ten men.
Young women should be part of the equation when it comes to considering skills shortages in
their area
Reflecting that early careers advice, young women are training for jobs traditionally associated with women. The apprenticeship figures show that five sectors account for 61 per cent of all female apprenticeships, while the same proportion of men work in more than ten sectors.
It is little wonder that so many women
end up Neet when they are competing for jobs that simply don’t exist.
A young woman I met in Blackburn had qualified as a hairdresser and become “self-employed” as none of the salons she approached would use her services otherwise. She struggled for months to
make enough money to live on and eventually gave up.
She is not alone. On average, there are five qualified hairdressers for every job in hairdressing. But young women heading down this career path aren’t told how hard it will be for them to make a living in their local area.
The same goes for childcare. So many of the young women I have met around the country have been encouraged to study childcare without being warned, for example, that in areas of deprivation and high unemployment few can afford childcare so there will be no demand for their services.
Locally, young women should be part of the equation when it comes to considering skills shortages in their area. Nationally, it is time to recognise that it doesn’t make economic sense to deny women who want to work the opportunity to do so.
Marketing a brick is no easy task. “It’s not one of those things where there’s more than meets the eye — it’s a brick. You quickly run out of superlatives for the latest brick,” says Stephen Wright, who landed an early 1980s job in marketing with a brick and tarmac company fresh from a business degree from Coventry Polytechnic.
It’s a far cry from the world of qualifications, where Wright has headed up the Federation of Awarding Bodies (FAB) since last month.
“The sector is very variable, and awarding bodies are not homogenous — some are large, some are small, some have got very large international business,” he says.
And such variety does not, for the dad-of-three, equate to an overpopulated sector.
Wright, aged one, with grandfather Ernie, a train driver
Indeed, he takes issue with the idea that there might be too many qualifications, as concluded by the Nigel Whitehead review for the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, which successfully called for public funding of many adult qualifications to be cut.
“I can understand the perception,” says 50-year-old Wright, but adding: “It doesn’t make sense to me because I’ve never worked for an awarding body which makes qualifications for fun just to annoy people like Whitehead.”
For new Skills Minister Nick Boles surveying all of the qualifications on offer, he admits, “it does look confusing.”
“But actually if you look at it from a niche position, as a business in a particular industry then you might know the three qualifications related to your sector,”
says Wright.
“There are thousands upon thousands of different employment sectors so it’s no surprise that there are thousands of different employment qualifications all at different levels, and even though some of them have small numbers of entries, they are exactly right for a particular need.”
“I’ve never worked for an awarding body which makes qualifications for fun just to annoy people like Whitehead”
But he acknowledges there is still a lot of work to do to illuminate the sprawling world of qualifications.
“We did a survey in the late 1990s about what qualification employers recognised most, and it was the O-level,” he says.
“But O-levels had finished in 1988 — it just shows that within the sector a lot goes on, but out there it’s such a small part of what people generally do you have to work very hard explain it.”
And it is the subject of the O-level replacement GCSE, and also A-levels, with regards annual headlines proclaiming exams are getting easier, that gets Wright hot under the collar.
Wright (right) playing football with younger brother John in 1970
“No, exams are not getting easier,” he says.
“There’s not really any great incentive for people to make exams easier. I guess there may be the temptation to go for one kind of qualification rather than another, but the vast majority of qualifications are well-designed, valid assessments of people’s skills.”
His three sons, George, aged 22, Henry, 20, and Oliver, 18, he says “work 100 times harder than we ever did and their expectations are so much higher”.
Wright’s first insight into vocational education came in 1993, when he began marketing the Devon and Kent trainee enterprise councils (Tecs).
Since then he has worked for awarding bodies small and large, from City & Guilds and Edexcel to ITEC and the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management.
And now as FAB chief executive, he says he’s only just realising how valuable the organisation’s work is for members — despite being a member since its inception in the early 2000s.
“The first thing that hit me was just the sheer range of subjects it gets involved in,”
he says.
My kids don’t believe I know anything about qualifications
“When [former chief executive] Jill Lanning handed over, I totted up just how many groups she was attending and it was 47 different committees and groups, which is quite astonishing.
“And that level of representation I just wasn’t aware of.
“I was aware of the weekly newsletter and as a small awarding body I thought was fantastic, it meant I didn’t have to go to 47 different committees to keep abreast of the main things that are going on — so my first job is to keep that going.”
Wright, one of three children, was born and raised in Southport where his parents — television rental company manager Ian and school dinner lady Joan — were “the very standard lovely mum and dad who looked after us, and encouraged us and supported us”.
School on the other hand, was less supportive.
Wright with sons, from left, Oliver, George and Henry in 2004
“I didn’t really enjoy it, but didn’t hate it either,” he says.
“The school’s expectations were pretty low and I accepted that very willingly — I did the minimum to be pretty good, without being anything special.
“Everyone has the odd inspiring teacher and there were certainly some of those, but generally an air of low expectations has an impact on everybody at the school.”
Wright now lives in Kent with wife Jane, a landscape artist, and Oliver, who is set to follow his brothers to university.
But despite his expertise in qualifications, Wright still experiences the same difficulties of any parent watching their offspring go through exams.
“I’m here to really do something with this rather than just keep chugging along”
“My kids don’t believe I know anything about qualifications,” he says.
“I say to them ‘Find out what the specification is, because that’s what you’ll be assessed on’ and they say ‘You don’t know anything about it, Dad’.
“They don’t listen to me, and then you notice that they sort of have later on.
“So I’ve said priority one is do something you’re interested in, you get the best results out of it.”
It seems he’s following his own advice
in his new role.
“Awarding is a fantastic sector to be in, it has such an impact on people’s lives and on the economy, the success of the country, by increasing skills, increasing people’s confidence,” says Wright.
“I’m still getting into the job. I’m just looking around, but I’m enjoying the fact that my day job is something I really want to do, and I’m here to really do something with this rather than just keeping it chugging along.”
And one of his priorities for FAB, he says, is “not only work with awarding bodies to get them to understand employers, but also to work with employers to get them to understand awarding bodies and what that can bring to their learning and development strategy”.
Wright (centre) with, from left, brother John and friend Nick Fahey-Wilson at watching England vs France in Euro 2004
He also says part of his focus will be
on how FAB can “support, help and encourage awarding bodies to get into
the international market”.
“I went out to South Africa with City & Guilds and it’s quite enlightening — when you’re in the UK and people are umming and ahhing over vocational qualifications and
the value of them and then you go out to
South Africa and they’re so valued
and they’re considered so important and they’re held on such a pedestal. Yes, internationally, British qualifications have got a very high reputation.”
It’s a personal thing
What is your favourite book?
I quite like dystopian novels, like 1984 and Brave New World
What is your pet hate?
I don’t like being late, it doesn’t mean I’m not late, but I beat myself up about it
What do you do to switch off after work?
When I watch football, I can switch off everything. I used to play football with some friends but you get a bit old for it so me and a few friends have been trying a new sport every month — we’ve done canoeing, bowling curling, climbing, volleyball, sumo wrestling, tennis.
It’s just trying to find something to fill the void that football left
If you could invite anyone, living or dead, to a dinner party who would it be?
It would have to be somebody who little is known about like Shakespeare.
Also I met Charlie Duke who walked on the moon and he had amazing stories — an amazing man, and someone I’d want to meet again
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
A footballer [Wright is a Southport Football Club supporter]. I still do. A top footballer that everyone recognises is the best in that position.
The new academic year brings new pressures and priorities — and learning technology must remain foremost among these, says Bob Harrison.
The last Becta (British Educational Communications and Technology Agency) research in 2010/11 suggested that only 30 per cent of FE providers were using technology effectively for teaching/learning/assessment and management.
The 2012 Association of Colleges (AoC) survey suggested this figure was still accurate two years later despite millions of pounds being spent by the last year of Becta and two years of the Learning and Skills Improvement Service.
In fact, the AoC study concluded that government policy aims for FE and skills were in danger of being undeliverable because of the lack of technological capability and capacity.
Then we had former Skills Minister Matthew Hancock and the Further Education Learning Technology Action Group (Feltag) and its 35-plus recommendations.
They covered leadership/vision, infrastructure, regulation, workforce development, learner engagement and employer relationships.
There is a critical role for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in ensuring coherence and maintaining momentum
It is encouraging that the use of technology to improve learning in FE and skills is likely to be on every governing body agenda and the Feltag ‘nudges’ are already having an impact.
Virtual learning, blended learning and online learning are now part of the vocabulary of FE providers.
But there is a critical role for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) in ensuring coherence and maintaining momentum. There are many sceptics who falsely believe Feltag was a ‘flash in the pan’ from Mr Hancock.
They are sadly mistaken and if that view prevails, the future of FE is in danger. The challenges outlined in the Feltag report are common across all sectors. That is why the Education Technology Action Group (Etag) was established.
Of all the challenges, leadership/vision and workforce skills are the biggest and the efforts of a plethora of agencies, quangos, charities, trusts and the private sector need to be coordinated and coherent to avoid unnecessary duplication and waste of public resources.
There is also an enormous opportunity for an increase in effectiveness to create more and better learning opportunities for more learners who have improved access, more engagement, enhanced learning and tutor support, more relevant assessment and feedback and improved progression and employment opportunities.
But how will we know? Who will monitor progress? What data do we have and will we need?
That is the BIS challenge. Who will pull all this together? What data will we need to monitor progress? How will we bring some coherence to the potential free for all and overlap and duplication?
If Jisc is funding a major development, how will the Education and Training Foundation know? If UfI trust is funding a multi-million pound online/blended CPD programme for FE teachers to improve their use of technology for learning who else will know? Will all of these initiatives feed into the leadership and governance programmes of AoC?
Changes in digital technology, provision in schools and changes to the computing national curriculum, and most importantly the digital expectations of learners and employers mean the current funding and predominantly face to face deliver paradigm is simply unsustainable.
The FE system needs to realign its assets from a system designed to meet the needs of the first industrial revolution to one which meets the needs of the second revolution in an increasingly digital and global world.
The successful FE providers of the future will embrace the spirit of Feltag and not be sidetracked by 10 per cent or 50 per cent or wait for BIS to issue more clarification on how to implement Feltag as it will be a long wait.
FE providers should grasp the opportunity to sell off some of their empty glass palaces and invest in more teachers, learning design and a technological infrastructure that will allow them to engage, motivate, inspire, support, teach, assess and progress learners.
The FE providers who do not grasp this opportunity are in danger of becoming museum pieces of our industrial heritage.
After spending most of my life working in FE and adult education I am not prepared to let that happen.
More than 800 apprentices were today in the dark over their qualifications and job future after Skills Funding Agency (SFA) lead contractor Phones 4u plunged into administration.
The Staffordshire-based mobile phone retailer was placed into the hands of administrators PwC on Monday (September 15) after network operator EE joined Vodafone in cutting ties with the retailer.
A PwC spokesperson declined to comment on whether the apprentices and staff working for the company’s training arm could be saved by a future buy-out.
She said: “It is too soon to comment in any detail on these matters as the situation is still unresolved and we do not know what will happen.”
Employer provider Phones 4u, which was rated as good by Ofsted in 2009, was allocated an adult skills budget of £850,274 and £287,843 for 16 to 18 apprenticeships from the SFA this academic year.
The cash funded training, through subcontractor EQL Solutions, of staff that worked across 550 stores.
An EQL spokesperson told FE Week said: “We are Phones 4u’s chosen apprenticeship provider and we share their sadness at the business going into administration.
“Our colleagues are doing all they can to support the Phones 4u apprentices during this difficult time.”
Phones 4U spent £1m five years ago developing its training academy at Fort Dunlop, in Birmingham, which replaced its previous training base in Yarnfield, Staffordshire.
Specialist facilities at Fort Dunlop included dedicated areas for laptop and mobile phone handset training and a fully functional Phones 4u store where staff could develop customer service skills.
Training at the academy included a week-long induction programme for new staff and further courses for employees seeking promotion.
The company also ran a 15-week on-the-job training programme which new staff completed at the stores where they were based.
And Ofsted praised the Staffordshire-based company’s in-house customer services, business administration and management advanced apprenticeships that were run at the time by subcontractor Elmfield Training, before it went into administration a year ago and the contract passed onto EQL.
However, Phones 4U stores remained closed on Monday, hours before it was put into administration, leaving around 5,600 jobs under threat — including the apprentices.
An SFA spokesperson said: “Following Phones 4U’s decision to cease trading, the agency is in communication with the company to monitor developments to ensure that apprentices receive the most appropriate support to help them continue with their apprenticeships.”
Dame Asha Khemka explains what was behind her recent visit to India, and why colleges should renew efforts to have a stake in its skills development.
It was an honour to be one of five college principals that joined Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s 40-strong trade delegation to India to explore opportunities presented by the new Indian government’s focus on economic growth.
To see the FE sector represented so strongly on the education and skills group that also included Dawn Ward OBE [Burton and South Derbyshire College], Stella Mbubaegbu CBE [Highbury College, Portsmouth], Norman Cave [Bournville College] and Paul Little [City of Glasgow College], along with the Association of Colleges’ international director John Mountford, confirmed the importance in which it is regarded by the government.
Moreover, I was delighted there was such a strong focus on skills during this first high-level visit to India since Prime Minister Narendra Modi was elected in May.
With Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg emphasising time and again the role UK FE colleges can play in supporting India’s ambitions to train 500 million people by 2022, I felt we had somebody truly championing the work we do, on the international stage.
Our meetings with ministers and senior Indian government officials, and discussions with business leaders during the three-day visit to New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore gave valuable opportunities to continue the work started on Prime Minister David Cameron’s delegation in 2013, of which I was also a part.
So, why is India such an important market?
As one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, a large portion of the global workforce is sitting in India. Indeed, many of its citizens come to work in the UK. Why not play a part in ensuring they’re even better-skilled when they arrive here?
That doesn’t mean prioritising Indians over our own students. But let’s be clear. Many of our industries already employ large numbers of Indians; therefore our country directly benefits from having a highly-skilled, well-trained workforce.
Similarly, many British companies now have a sizable presence in India. This is mirrored by our own FE sector — albeit on a much smaller scale — with several colleges already operating there.
Indeed, my own college is working with the Cordia Group of Educational Institutes to develop the vocational curriculum for its planned new construction college in Sanghol.
Meanwhile, our subsidiary company bksb’s recent expansion into India will help thousands of citizens develop their English using its functional skills on-line learning solutions.
This demonstrates the opportunities that India’s growing skills agenda presents.
And in forming its first-ever Skills Ministry, the Indian government has stated its intentions very clearly.
Yet the UK faces huge competition from countries such the USA, Australia, Germany and Switzerland.
Why not play a part in ensuring Indian workers are even better-skilled when they arrive here? That doesn’t mean prioritising Indians over our own students
Individually, our colleges can only do so much. Yes, the consortium approach of AoC India has given us a credible voice and a seat at the table. It has also been successful in attracting £400,000 of funding through the UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKIER) to enable member colleges to forge partnerships with Indian community colleges.
But now is the time to take things to the next level.
That is why I have written to Nick Clegg setting out a six-point plan to make a quick and visible impact in India.
My proposals include the formation of a Skills Task Force made up of ministers, government advisers, skills agencies, UK Trade and Investment, UK India Business Council and FE colleges to create a large-scale skills development project plan.
Initially working with a small number of large employers, we would consider their skills needs, develop a framework and, ultimately, train their workforce. By pooling our resources and talent, we can create and deliver a strong and successful skills landscape.
Re-creating the UK’s world-class education and skills system in India would reap rewards for both nations.
However, we need to move quickly if
we are to be a part of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
