Cost of living: 8 in 10 providers warn of soaring salary and facility costs

Eight in 10 private training providers have warned that they are being seriously impacted by rising salary and building costs, with two thirds fearing staff turnover could hit their business hard, a new survey has found.

More than 200 providers responded to a September survey by the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) around the biggest cost of living impacts.

Some of the findings, published today ahead of AELP’s autumn conference in Manchester tomorrow, outlined the stark picture trainers were facing amid the economic gloom.

Survey respondents have asked the organisation’s future recommendations to government to include an increase in funding bands and review of overall delivery costs, assessing wage inflation and staff shortages, measures to address increasing bureaucracy, and increasing employer incentives to take on more apprenticeships.

Here are the key findings…

Salaries and facilities costs top providers’ pressures…

Rising salary costs topped the list of biggest cost pressures, with 86 per cent saying they would be seriously impacted.

More than eight in 10 also cited the rising costs of facilities and premises as a big issue.

AELP said its findings indicated that higher level apprenticeship standards were suffering because of “increased wage expectations of appropriately qualified tutors and trainers”.

One respondent said that “in the past year the market salary rates for good quality tutors at these standards have increased by almost a third”.

…prompting fears for staff turnover

Two thirds of survey respondents (67 per cent) said increased staff turnover was a fear, while training consumables and travel and subsistence costs were also raised by more than two thirds.

The AELP findings said: “It is becoming difficult to retain and recruit staff on a trainer’s salary for a lot of higher-level qualifications and financial standards, as individuals can attract much more by staying in the industry.”

Assessment costs have crept up

More than half – 53 per cent – of respondents said they had noticed the costs of assessments, which included apprenticeship end point assessments (EPAs), had gone up while their own funding had remained static.

Providers have asked for AELP to consider assessments in their future recommendations to government.

Some providers said that prices had changed notably when it was confirmed that end point assessment organisations could charge up to 20 per cent of the standard for the cost of an EPA.

Some sectors impacted more than others

Catering and hospitality, transport and logistics, care, construction, and engineering and manufacturing were the sectors most impacted, according to the findings.

AELP said that these were the “sectors with high capital or resource outlays that were in general being very badly affected”.

In addition, it found that standards relying on practical skills and higher proportions of training materials, like construction, were particularly vulnerable.

In the case of areas like care and early years provision, many respondents said that they were already badly funded and inflation movements had made that situation worse.

‘Rising costs are really starting to bite’

Jane Hickie, AELP chief executive, said: “Our research backs up what AELP members tell me on a daily basis – that rising costs are really starting to bite. Many training providers are extremely concerned about what the future holds, and, despite unprecedented inflation rates, some funding bands have not been reviewed for many years.

“The current situation is simply not sustainable and – alongside continued long-term investment in skills – we need urgent intervention from government to ensure funding matches the true cost of delivery.”

School and college system minister Baroness Barran stays on

School and college system minister Baroness Barran will remain in post – seemingly completing the Department for Education’s ministerial line-up.

Barran, who founded domestic abuse awareness charity SaveLives, has survived all the recent reshuffles, meaning she will work under a fifth education secretary this year.

Barran’s appointment seems to complete the DfE’s ministerial line-up. Gillian Keegan is education secretary, Nick Gibb and Rob Halfon are ministers of state, and expected to take up the schools and skills roles respectively.

Claire Coutinho is a junior minister. That leaves the university brief, which did have its own minister but was recently made part of the skills minister’s portfolio.

Barran took on some responsibilities for post-16 education following Liz Truss’ reshuffle in September. These included education provision and outcomes for 16 to 19 year olds; college governance and accountability; intervention and financial oversight of further education colleges and reducing the number of young people who are not in education, employment or training.

Full briefs for the new ministerial team have not yet been confirmed.

Claire Coutinho appointed education minister 

Claire Coutinho, the MP for East Surrey, has been appointed as a minister at the Department for Education.

She was appointed as minister for disabled people just last month, and became an MP in 2019.

She will join the department as a junior minister. Coutinho work at investment bank Merrill Lynch and accounting firm KPMG before being elected to parliament. She’s also served as a special adviser at the Treasury.

She will join Nick Gibb, who FE Week understands will be named schools minister, and Robert Halfon, who is set to be named skills minister.

That means Coutinho is likely to replace Kelly Tolhurst, who was schools and children’s minister. 

Tolhurst tweeted that it had ”been a privilege to serve as Minister for Schools & Childhood. I have decided that now more than ever, with the challenges we face I want to focus on supporting & helping the people of Rochester & Strood, representing my constituents & businesses from the backbenches.”

A ‘British Baccalaureate’? What you need to know

New prime minister Rishi Sunak reportedly wants to reform post-16 education with a new ‘British Baccalaureate’.

So, what do we know about the policy, and how likely is it to come to fruition?

FE Week has all you need to know…

1. Compulsory English and maths to 18, but 🤷 on the rest

Calls for some sort of Baccalaureate to replace GCSEs or A-levels have been around for some time.

The National Baccalaureate Trust published detailed plans earlier this year which would see pupils study English and maths up to 18, but also personal development and research projects, such as the Duke of Edinburgh.

The EDSK think tank proposed a new three-year baccalaureate to replace A-levels, BTECs and T-levels. EDSK director Tom Richmond said if government was “serious about boosting technical education, it must end the political obsession with A-levels”.

Returning DfE minister Robert Halfon has also previously called for GCSEs and A-levels to be scrapped and replaced with one “holistic baccalaureate” for 18-year-olds which recognises academic and technical skills and personal development.

There isn’t much meat yet to the proposed Sunak policy. It was one of the policies he put forward during his failed leadership bid earlier this year.

Sunak said a new “British Baccalaureate” would require all pupils to continue to study core subjects like English and maths in sixth form.

When asked at the time, his campaign would not provide a full list of subjects.

Two problems: the government is already struggling to recruit enough maths teachers, so would have to come up with a plan to recruit more.

The second is cash: post-16 education has seen the largest funding cuts of all education areas.

The British Baccalaureate policy was one of the key proposals in the recent Times Education Commission, which called for a “broader academic and vocational qualifications at 18, with parity in funding per pupil in both routes, and a slimmed-down set of exams at 16 to bring out the best in every child”.

2. Plans part of vocational education push

The Times reported a Downing Street source saying Sunak believed if there were “one silver bullet in public policy” that would improve lives, it would be investment in education and skills. “This is an absolute priority for the prime minister,” the paper reported.

Rather than pumping more funding into existing and well established colleges and providers, Sunak supposedly wants a new network of ‘elite’ technical institutes to transform vocational training. This was an idea also favoured by Liz Truss.

But the focus is very much on putting vocational schooling at the forefront of policy, The Times added.

Former skills minister Gillian Keegan, who left school at 16 to do an apprenticeship, has been made education secretary to oversee the drive.

Before it was announced he would be returning as skills minister, Halfon told the Times the new baccalaureate would see students “have a much wider curriculum so they get the skills that they need and employers want”.

He said Sunak was “supportive of vocational education because he understands to improve productivity we have to improve skills”. Halfon has long called for a baccalaureate system to “ensure pupils can access skills and vocational education as well as academic learning”.

3. But there are big barriers: time, and Nick Gibb

A big stumbling block to introducing any new major education reforms is time – the current government essentially has two years tops to drive through changes before a general election.

The current students starting A-levels last month won’t finish their courses until the summer of 2024, so such reforms would almost certainly need longer.

This could potentially mean the next two years are used to scope out the plans, with them becoming one of the Conservative government’s key education election pledges in 2024.

But, there’s still a likely blockage: returning schools minister Nick Gibb – a strong traditional education advocate who has driven education reform, based on those principles, for the best part of the last ten years.

A move from academic study at post-16 to a more vocational focus is unlikely to get his backing.

As one policy expert said: “I can’t see Gibb signing off the end of A-levels before an election.”

For a change, the Conservative government proposal would likely get support from unions.

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said the government must also be “more flexible in allowing and supporting a choice of subjects that students can study pre-16 which embraces technical and vocational education”.

Robert Halfon and Nick Gibb return as education ministers

Former skills minister Robert Halfon and ex-schools minister Nick Gibb are making a return to the Department for Education’s ministerial team.

The pair were announced as new ministers of state in the DfE tonight as part of prime minister Rishi Sunak’s reshuffle.

Their roles are likely to be confirmed in the coming days, but FE Week understands that Halfon will return to skills and Gibb will return to schools.

DfE sources have indicated that current skills minister Andrea Jenkyns and minister for school standards Jonathan Gullis left their posts on Thursday afternoon, although there has been no official confirmation yet.

It comes just hours after Jenkyns addressed a Westminster Hall debate on last week’s Colleges Week.

No update has been given for the children’s minister role, currently held by Kelly Tolhurst.

Halfon held the skills brief from 2016 to 2017 before being sacked. He then became the chair of the education select committee and has held the role since.

Gibb had served as schools minister for most of the last ten years before being sacked last year by Boris Johnson.

Their appointments come as Sunak is reportedly planning education reforms including a new “British baccalaureate”, which is an idea favoured by Halfon and would require children to study a wider range of subjects in post-16 education, with English and maths compulsory.

The prime minister will also announce plans for a network of elite technical institutions, the Times reported.

Former skills minister Gillian Keegan was announced as the new education secretary yesterday.

The appointments mark a shift in experience at the department, whose ministers had much less experience both as MPs and in senior roles

Halfon said it was an honour to be reappointed to the DfE and is “looking forward to working with colleagues to deliver the prime minister’s exciting education & skills agenda to ensure every student can climb the educational ladder of opportunity”.

Gibb also said it was an “honour to be asked by the PM to return to the DfE. Looking forward to helping deliver the PM’s ambitious plans for ever higher standards in schools and world class technical education.”

A new education committee chair will now need to be appointed to replace Halfon.

Colleges and providers ‘don’t really know’ if tutoring is working, Ofsted finds

“Most” colleges and FE providers do not know whether the government’s Covid-19 tuition scheme is helping students catch up with lost learning, Ofsted has warned.

The inspectorate has published an independent review of the £500 million 16 to 19 tuition fund that was rolled out during the pandemic as part of the Department for Education’s education recovery package.

During its visits to 21 further education providers From September 2021 to July 2022, it found learners were “overwhelmingly positive” about their tutoring experiences, but the quality “differed” with some sessions put on simply for students to do coursework assignments or exam revision.

Here’s what you need to know…

Leaders do not know if tutoring is working

Ofsted said colleges and providers suggested that tuition had re-engaged learners, increased their confidence and resilience, and changed their attitudes to learning.

However, “many” leaders and managers acknowledged that they had “not yet developed efficient means of assessing learners’ progress through tutoring or back in the classroom”.

“Although many tutors used assessment well for diagnosis, not all were reviewing progress to identify whether the gaps were closed after the tuition sessions,” today’s report said.

“In many cases, teachers and learners described the impact of tutoring in terms of summative results or were awaiting the outcomes of end-of-year assessments to comment on impact.”

Some providers said they would judge whether tutoring worked according to “whether there had been a general improvement in grades, or progress ratings, across the whole group rather than evidence that learners knew and could do more”.

Some providers did not follow eligibility rules

The DfE said the tuition fund should be used for “small groups” of up to five students, or up to seven in exceptional circumstances.

It could be used for students who had not achieved up to a grade 6 in GCSE English and/or maths, as well as disadvantaged learners who had achieved those grades but were from the 27 per cent most economically deprived areas of the country.

Aside from eligibility, the scope was relatively open but the guidance specified that providers should use the fund to support tuition activity “above and beyond the programmes of education already planned”.

Ofsted said “some groups” were too large to allow the tutor to tailor the sessions to learners’ starting points, and they did not receive individual attention from a tutor. This meant that the sessions were unlikely to help learners to catch up.

In about a quarter of cases, group size was sometimes between five to seven learners. While this is acceptable under the DfE’s guidance, leaders “did not provide reasons for these decisions”.

And in four providers, Ofsted saw group sizes of more than seven. The watchdog warned that in groups of this size, “tutoring is likely to have less impact because the content is not adapted to the learners’ needs and they do not receive individual attention”.

In two of the independent learning providers visited, leaders did not check eligibility at all, and used the funding to provide extra support sessions for all learners. Ofsted said: “Learners could not distinguish tutoring from regular teaching sessions. Most learners at these providers were from disadvantaged backgrounds and would have been eligible for funding in any case.”

Tuition sessions used simply for coursework and revision

In about a quarter of providers visited by Ofsted, some tutoring sessions lacked planning and were instead open spaces to complete coursework assignments.

“This is not tutoring”, the watchdog said.

It also found that in some academic sessions, the tutor relied too much on learners to choose the content that they wanted to focus on which simply led to exam revision for exams rather than a focus on well-defined gaps in knowledge.

Some providers also used the tuition fund to deliver missed vocational content to whole groups of learners.

Recruitment for tutors proved a struggle for some

Ofsted found that tutors were often recruited from existing teaching staff and the quality of teaching was generally good.

But there were recruitment challenges, particularly in vocational and technical programmes.

Some providers recruited graduates as tutors because of challenges employing specialist teachers, inspectors found. These providers tried to recruit graduates with subject expertise in the area they were tutoring, as well as teaching or tutoring experience. However, this was not always possible.

Ofsted makes no comment on the quality of graduate tutors compared to existing staff.

King Charles laments lack of vocational education and ‘abandoned’ apprenticeships

King Charles has praised the value of apprenticeships but warned they are often “abandoned” and criticised a lack of vocational education across the country.

The comments were made before he became King in a one-off-episode of The Repair Shop, which will be broadcast by the BBC tonight at 8pm.

The then-Prince criticised the lack of vocational education, labelling it a “great tragedy”.

In the episode, he praises the value of technical skills and apprenticeships and says he has the greatest admiration for people who have technical skills.

Students from the Prince’s Foundation building craft programme, which teaches traditional skills including blacksmithing, thatching, stonemasonry, and wood carving, are filmed meeting Charles and showing the work they do. 

King Charles says: “I can see the difference we can make to people who have technical skills, which we need all the time. It gives people intense reward and satisfaction.

“I still think the great tragedy is the lack of vocational education in schools. Actually, not everybody is designed for the academic.

“I know through the Prince’s Trust. I see the difference we can make to people who have technical skills which we need all the time. I have the greatest admiration for people.

“That’s been a problem I think sometimes that’s forgotten. Apprenticeships are vital but I promise you people… they just abandoned apprenticeships for some reason.”

The rest of the episode shows the presenter, Jay Blades, and his repair team mending an 18th-century bracket clock and a piece of Wemyss Ware pottery made for Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee which the King recalls was damaged whilst someone was opening a window.

The then-Prince says: “Quite a lot of the people we’ve trained on these courses come back as tutors, so you get a wonderful circle. Some of them will be coming back for years, filling the skills gaps.”

One repair team member says: “Learning on the job and making the mistakes myself; that has taught me more than I could ever learnt out of a book”.

David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said tweeted that it was “great to have HRH King Charles advocating for skills, vocational, and technical education”.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We recognise that an academic route is not for everyone. Young people now have a range of high quality technical and vocational training options to choose from including apprenticeships and new T Level qualifications in a range of exciting subjects, helping them gain the skills they need to forge a great career.”

Skills funding: return to austerity?

The government has made technical education and adult skills a priority in order to improve economic growth and ‘level up’ poorer areas of the country. There is clear room for improvement here given low levels of adult skills and low take-up of technical qualifications.

However, rising levels of inflation and student numbers are putting growing pressures on budgets. The government is also more likely to be looking for savings in the upcoming fiscal statement.

Growing pressures

In the decade up to 2019, colleges and sixth forms saw some of the largest funding cuts across all areas of education. Spending per student in further education and sixth form colleges fell by 14 per cent after inflation and by an eye-watering 28 per cent in school sixth forms. The government has sought to change direction by providing an additional £2.3 billion in funding by 2024 compared with 2019. While this represents a significant injection of additional funding over the next few years, the effect on per-student spending will be dampened by rising student numbers and rising levels of inflation.

With the population boom in schools gradually working its way through the system, we already expect student numbers to rise by over 160,000 or 17 per cent between 2019 and 2024. Numbers will continue to rise by 2 per cent between 2024 and 2026.

Rising inflation will also eat into budgets. School sixth forms already face higher costs from rises in teacher pay (more than 5 per cent on average September 2022), an 8-9 per cent increase in support staff pay, as well as pressures from energy and food prices. The proposed pay award for college staff is currently lower at 2.5 per cent (with extra cost of living payments for low-paid staff). This might ease financial pressures on colleges, but might not be sustainable due to competition for staff with schools and ongoing industrial action across colleges.

Given rising inflation and student numbers, we now project that spending per student in colleges in 2024–25 will remain about 11 per cent lower in real terms than it was in 2010–11, and about 27 per cent lower in school sixth forms. These past cuts and further rises in student numbers will make it difficult to cut total funding for colleges and sixth forms.

Will skills spending be maintained?

Total spending on adult education and apprenticeships fell by 38 per cent after inflation between 2010 and 2020, with most of this driven by a 50 per cent fall in total spending on classroom-based adult education.

This will be partially reversed by an additional £900 million in extra spending in 2024. This includes an additional £550 million to restore full public funding for first full Level 3 qualifications and ‘Skills Bootcamps’, an additional £170 million for apprenticeships and about £190 million per year on the new ‘Multiply’ programme to improve adult numeracy. Even with this extra funding, spending on adult education and apprenticeships will still be more than 25 per cent lower in 2024 than in 2010.

This may be an area where the government looks to make savings. Scaling back new initiatives before they have been fully rolled out, such as ‘Skills Bootcamps’ and the ‘Multiply’ programme, might be easier than cutting existing programmes.

There is also a strong case for reform of the apprenticeship levy and funding system. Since the launch of the apprenticeship levy in 2017, firms have failed to spend about 25 per cent of the money in their digital accounts or about £500 million per year. Failing to spend essentially free money is not usually a good sign of value-for-money.

There are strong incentives to repackage existing training as apprenticeships in order to qualify for subsidy. Labour have already signalled a desire to reform the system to widen what qualifies for subsidy, partly to reduce this incentive.

Furthermore, there are potential sources of inconsistency. Degree-level apprenticeships effectively receive full public funding for course fees up to £27,000. This contrasts with university courses, where students are expected to repay loans to cover their course fees. While there is likely to be little appetite for another big bang reform, there is a strong case for reforming and targeting the system to achieve better value-for-money.

It would therefore not be surprising if the government sought to reform and make savings in the apprenticeships budget.

Labour eyes widened apprenticeship levy, return of EMA and individual learner accounts in government

A future Labour government should widen the apprenticeship levy to include other forms of training, bring back the education maintenance allowance and rollout further devolution, its council of skills advisers have said.

The party’s Council of Skills Advisers, chaired by former education secretary in Tony Blair’s government, David Blunkett, published its ambitions for the future of skills policy this morning.

Commissioned by party leader Keir Starmer, the report was teased at last month’s Labour party conference, and is designed to shape future policies to address the nation’s skills gaps and bolster economic recovery if the party wins the next election.

Here are the key recommendations…

Expand the apprenticeship levy

Teased at the party conference, Labour seeks to reform the levy into an “apprenticeship and learning levy” so that it can contribute to specified training costs that are not limited only to apprenticeships, with a particular steer towards 16 to 25-year-olds.

Furthermore, all apprentices on level 2 qualifications should be given the right to progress to a level 3 advanced apprenticeship, it said.

The 25 per cent limit on transferring levy funds should be lifted to make it easier for smaller firms to access.

Currently employers with a £3 million or more wage bill pay into the levy at a rate of 0.5 per cent of their wage bill, but are only expected to use half of their sum to pay for apprenticeships while the rest goes towards paying for small and medium-sized employer apprenticeships and other parts of the system.

Labour’s party conference announcement said under its new levy system, large employers could “spend up to 50 per cent of their levy contributions on non-apprenticeship training, with at least 50 per cent being reserved for apprenticeships to preserve existing provision”.

Question marks were raised over how small businesses would continue to access the levy if larger employers use more of it. The report has not shed any further light on how the funding for this new system would work.

The council’s report does put an emphasis on expanding apprenticeships for younger people and to that effect recommends that Labour should “reinstate and develop a Young Person’s Taster Apprenticeships programme to offer meaningful and engaging vocational opportunities at age 14 to 16”.

‘Shared apprenticeships’ for SMEs and larger firms

While not addressing the details of how a new apprenticeship and learning levy would work between larger and smaller firms, the council has proposed a shared apprenticeship scheme between SMEs and larger firms which have greater resources.

They only exist in small numbers at the moment, according to the report, and would aim to help businesses keen to get involved but without the resources to do so. Further details have not been shared.

Introduce a skills tax credit for SMEs

The council said SMEs should be given an additional incentive to provide training for their
employees and suggested the introduction of a skills tax credit.

The report said: “As recommended by the Learning and Work Institute, this could be modelled on the R&D tax credit, and could allow employers to deduct 230 per cent of the cost of apprenticeships and accredited training from their tax bills, with a higher skills credit,
allowing 300 per cent of training costs to be deducted, in priority, levelling up areas.”

The idea of a skills tax credit has been put forward by various sector leaders and organisations in recent years.

Establish a National Skills Taskforce

Key players should be brought together, such as further and higher education bodies, trade unions, central and local government, and employers of all sizes, the report said, to develop long-term plans and ensure devolved decision making meets national objectives.

In addition, government departments should be co-ordinated more to develop skills policies.

Regional and sub-regional devolution

Decision-making and spending should be devolved where possible, the council suggests, with the NST helping simplify the “patchwork” of local bodies responsible for skills, such as local enterprise partnerships, mayoral combined authorities and local authorities. Combined authorities should take the lead in revamped skills commissioning.

Local skills improvement plans (LSIPs) – documents produced in collaboration with employers to direct skills commissioning – should be an ongoing process and not one-off exercises, it said.

Career service overhaul

The careers services should undergo a “complete shakeup”, Labour’s plans say, and feature trained careers leaders in all schools. Furthermore, regional or sub-regional careers hubs should be formed to provide every student with access to mentors and engagement opportunities with colleges, universities and employers.

Career awareness training should be made available to teachers, and a young people’s taster apprenticeship programme should be developed to offer vocational opportunities for those aged 14-16.

Job Centre Plus should be responsible for an all-age careers advice service, it added.

Further collaboration between FE, HE and businesses

“Post-16 learning, both vocational and academic, must be seen as a seamless pathway through apprenticeship, further and higher education – which instead of being juxtaposed as competitors, should instead be seen as partners in delivering a high-skill, high-productivity, technologically enabled workforce for the future,” Labour’s proposals said.

That could take the form of local “clusters” of colleges and universities where governance and back-office functions are merged.

Ofsted review

Although not going quite as far as Labour’s 2019 proposals in which the party suggested abolishing Ofsted in favour of a two-phase inspection system, the latest report does still advocate a review of the education watchdog.

That would be a national review of the inspectorate, although there are no further details on the scope of that review.

Quality assurance for higher education providers that lies with the Office for Students should be re-examined, with a separate quality assurance agency to be considered.

Reintroduction of the education maintenance allowance

The EMA should be resurrected in England for all 16-to-19-year-olds – including those on apprenticeships, the council proposes.

EMA offered students a weekly payment to help youngsters with their studies, but was scrapped by the coalition government in 2011 in England. It continued in the devolved nations.

This isn’t the first time Labour has called for a return of EMA.

Reintroduce ‘individual learner accounts’

Labour says individual learner accounts will share the cost of learning between the individual, employer and the state, and feature in the devolved budgets for combined authorities.

It hopes to incentivise employer co-funding to “further boost the range of training that can be made available to workers”.

For years, ministers have tinkered with the idea of handing choice and power to the student by giving them access to a “bank” of the loans and grants they can spend on tertiary education.

The idea has had various names – Individual Learning Accounts, as they were under New Labour in the early 2000s, as well as personal learner accounts, individual education budgets, skills accounts, skills wallets. But a software system open to fraudulent abuse under the ILA system, launched in 2000, caused a horrified Estelle Morris to end them just a year later.

Form learning and skills ‘passports’

The council says these would develop individual profiles for learners to add to throughout their life as they develop skills records and qualifications.

Public procurement contracts to include upskilling

Public procurement and supply chains should seek to boost apprenticeship recruitment as part of their conditions, or contain clauses relating to skills and training.

Labour says it is “vital” for social value, and should be evidenced in contracts as to how apprenticeships will be created.

Right to retrain

Progression pathways for adults must be opened up, according to the report, with plans for a new “right to retrain” providing more flexible access to free courses for adults, specifically a first level 2 qualification from an approved provider.

Elsewhere, financial support for adult learners should be expanded.

Lord Blunkett said: “What the report spells out today is nothing short of a revolution in meeting the skills needs of the nation.

“It addresses the immediate pressures of the moment, but it also offers a social democratic solution to the challenges of the future, including the rapidly increasing impact of artificial intelligence and robotics, re-equipping the nation for the economy of tomorrow.”