Labour pledges to widen the apprenticeship levy

Labour would reform the apprenticeship levy so that it can be spent on other types of training if the party comes into power.

The party plans to turn the policy into a “growth and skills levy” where businesses could use up to half of their contributions to fund non-apprenticeship training such as modular courses.

Full details of the policy are set to be published in a report produced by Labour’s Council of Skills Advisers – led by Lord Blunkett – in the coming weeks.

It is unclear at this stage how small and medium-sized employers would continue to access apprenticeships under the proposed system, but shadow skills minister Toby Perkins promised that non-levy payers will not see a reduction in the amount of funding available to them.

Keir Starmer made no mention of apprenticeships in his speech at his party’s annual conference today, but he did make a commitment to “give employers new flexibility to invest in world class training they need”.

Following his speech, the Labour Party press office announced several skills reforms to be overseen by a new body called Skills England, which would enforce greater devolution of adult education funding streams as well as an overhaul to the apprenticeship levy system.

Only employers with a wage bill of £3 million or more pay into the apprenticeship levy, at a rate of 0.5 per cent of their annual wage bill.

The current government’s levy policy was designed so that large employers would not use all their funds. Levy-payers lose access to their contributions after 24 months and unspent money is made available to small and medium-sized businesses who do not pay the levy to use to train apprentices.

Expanding the apprenticeship levy was a policy idea favoured by the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who pledged to reform the policy in his 2019 general election manifesto. His commitment followed calls from multiple industry representative bodies for apprenticeship levy payers to be able to fund wider skills training from their levy cash.

A Labour spokesperson said that under its newly proposed “growth and skills levy”, firms will be able to “spend up to 50 per cent of their levy contributions, including currently unspent money, on non-apprenticeship training, with at least 50 per cent being reserved for apprenticeships to preserve existing provision”.

“This flexibility will enable businesses to use more of the money in their levy pot for training, rather than it sitting unspent, investing in essential skills that we need to prepare Britain for the challenges of the next decade,” the spokesperson claimed.

It is unclear whether it is therefore Labour’s hope that all levy-payers will utilise all of their levy-contributions, which would mean there is no money left to fund SME apprenticeships, or if additional funding will be made available. 

Perkins told FE Week that full details of how SMEs will be able to access apprenticeship funding will be shared by Labour’s Council for Skills Advisers. But he offered assurance that SMEs would not see a reduction in the apprenticeship funding they can access.

Labour’s spokesperson said that for SMEs who do not pay the levy, they would “be able to reclaim 95 per cent co-payments on approved courses in the same way as they do for apprenticeships”. Again, it is not clear at this stage precisely how this will work.

Labour said it will establish a new expert body, Skills England, to oversee its skills reforms. This includes approving a list of qualifications that businesses could spend their “flexible levy money”.

The list of qualifications will include modular courses in “priority areas, which lie at the core of our industrial strategy, including digital and green skills, social care and childcare that would boost training opportunities with a view to supporting national ambitions such as the transition to net zero”.

The growth and skills levy would also fund “functional skills and pre-apprenticeships training helping tackle key skills gaps especially around basic digital skills that hold back individuals and organisations”.

Labour said it also plans to merge the various adult education skills funding streams such as the Shared Prosperity Fund and Multiply, with the existing adult education budget. This would then be devolved to combined authorities who currently have control of the AEB for their area.

‘Skills England’, which would replace the current Unit for Skills within the Department for Education, would oversee this effort. Labour said the body would be run by experts from the Treasury and Department for Education, and pull together relevant trade associations, large and small employers, representatives of trade unions, central and local government, further and higher education. 

Meet the ministers: Who’s who in Liz Truss’s first DfE lineup

The government has finally confirmed portfolios for new Department for Education ministers appointed in Liz Truss’s first reshuffle.

Andrea Jenkyns remains minister for skills – although her title has been shortened from “minister for skills, further and higher education”. Meanwhile Baroness Barran – who had been minister for the school system – is now minister for the school and college system.

According to the DfE website, Jenkyns’ role now also includes strategy for post-16 education and covers funding for educating or training 16- to 19-year-olds, however higher education reform and Covid-19 recovery for further and higher education are no longer listed in her responsibilities.

Obligations she held for reducing NEETs (not in education, employment or training) and careers education and guidance have moved across to Barran.

In addition, Barran’s role includes education provision and outcomes for 16- to 19-year-olds, governance and accountability of colleges, and intervention and financial oversight for further education colleges.

The DfE has confirmed that universities will come under the skills portfolio, and said that the FE brief has been split between two ministers given its breadth. Jenkyns will drive the skills agenda and Barran take responsibility for the college system, it said.

Elsewhere, the previous schools and children and families briefs have been carved up and shared between new ministers Kelly Tolhurst and Jonathan Gullis.

In another sign Truss plans to make good on her promise to open more grammar schools, Tolhurst’s brief includes “strategy for schools, including standards and selection”.

She will also oversee exams and SEND. While Gullis will take charge of overseeing school accountability, behaviour and catch-up.

Here’s what’s in each minister’s brief…

Kit Malthouse, education secretary

ministers

Early years

Children’s social care

Teacher quality, recruitment and retention

The school curriculum

School improvement

Academies and free schools

Further education

Apprenticeships and skills

Higher education

Andrea Jenkyns, skills minister

Strategy for post-16 education

T-levels

Qualifications reviews (levels 3 and below)

Higher technical education (levels 4 and 5)

Apprenticeships and traineeships

Funding for education and training for 16 to 19 year olds

Further education workforce and funding

Institutes of Technology

Local skills improvement plans and Local Skills Improvement Fund

Adult education, including basic skills, the National Skills Fund and the UK Shared Prosperity Fund

Higher education quality

Student experience and widening participation in higher education

Student finance and the Lifelong Loan Entitlement (including the Student Loans Company)

International education strategy and the Turing Scheme

Baroness Barran minister for the school and college system

Academies and multi-academy trusts

Free schools and university technical colleges

Faith schools

Independent schools

Home education and supplementary schools

Intervention in underperforming schools and school improvement

School governance

School capital investment (including pupil place planning)

Education Investment Areas (jointly with Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Minister for the School Standards))

Education provision and outcomes for 16 to 19 year olds

College governance and accountability

Intervention and financial oversight of further education colleges

Careers education, information and guidance including the Careers and Enterprise Company

Reducing the number of young people who are not in education, employment or training

Safeguarding in schools and post-16 settings

Counter extremism in schools and post-16 settings

Departmental efficiency and commercial policy

Kelly Tolhurst, schools and childhood minister

grammar schools

Strategy for schools, including standards and selection

Qualifications (including links with Ofqual)

Curriculum including relationships, sex, and health education and personal, social, health and economic education

Admissions and school transport

Early years and childcare

Children’s social care

Children in care, children in need, child protection, adoption and care leavers

Disadvantaged and vulnerable children

Families, including family hubs and early childhood support

Special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), including high needs funding

Alternative provision

School food, including free school meals

Children and young people’s mental health, online safety and preventing bullying in schools

Policy to protect against serious violence

Jonathan Gullis, school standards minister

School accountability and inspection (including links with Ofsted)

Standards and Testing Agency and primary assessment

Supporting a high-quality teaching profession including professional development

Supporting recruitment and retention of teachers and school leaders including initial teacher training

Teaching Regulation Agency

National Tutoring Programme

Education Investment Areas (jointly with Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Minister for the School and College System))

School revenue funding, including the national funding formula for schools

School efficiency and commercial policy

Pupil premium

Behaviour, attendance and exclusions

School sport

Digital strategy and technology in education (EdTech)

Geoff Barton to step down from ASCL role in 2024

Association of School and College Leaders general secretary Geoff Barton has announced he will stand down from his role in 2024, three years earlier than planned.

The union leader, who was re-elected unopposed to a second five year term last year, was due to hold the role until 2027.

But Barton said he believed 2024 would be the “right time for our association to have a new leader with a fresh approach”. He will leave in April of that year.

The former headteacher was elected in a landslide in 2017, in the first contested election in ASCL’s history. He said he was giving notice now to kick-start the “lengthy” election process for a new leader, to “ensure that there is a smooth transition”.

“I’ve decided to step down as ASCL general secretary in April 2024. By that point I will have been in post for seven years, and I believe it will be the right time for our Association to have a new leader with a fresh approach.

“Over the next 18 months, it will be business as usual for me, and I look forward to continuing to work with the ASCL team – with, and on behalf of, our 22,000 members. As we always say, we work on behalf of members and act on behalf of children and young people.

“That’s what I’ll keep doing.”

So you’re a leader in FE for the first time ever?

Leadership courses are often focused on schools or are too costly. To develop as a leader, collaborate and listen hard to your staff, writes Jonny Kay

Among those FE staff heading into 2022-23 with a mix of excitement and nervousness will be those who have become leaders for the first time.

Many new leaders will be taking up roles and so our attention turns to the support, guidance and training they will need.

Much like those entering initial teacher training, new leaders can expect to work with a mentor, complete a statutory induction and work to identify their own developing needs.

But what support is available outside of their new role?

Well, over the last year, the national professional qualifications have been relaunched. They are now less focused on specific roles and more focused on leadership and development of teaching and learning, behaviour and culture.

These qualifications are excellent and they are funded, but there remains a clear focus on primary and secondary school settings, leading many to ask: what is available for FE leaders?

Of course, there are opportunities available and the Education and Training Foundation has a range of courses for new, aspiring and current middle and senior leaders.

But these courses can be costly, too broad in content or unavailable until numbers are confirmed.

As a result, there remains a lack of FE-focused leadership training opportunities. But why is it so important to have FE focused leadership development?

To start with, FE remains the most truly diverse sector, and leaders are tasked with managing and leading that diversity at all stages.

They must handle staffing, induction, finance and budgeting, progression, timetabling, recruitment, retention, managing achievement, apprenticeships, higher education and adult provision.

Some of this simply does not exist in primary and secondary settings (or they do so at a significantly reduced level. Middle leaders in FE regularly manage 50 or more staff and a budget in the millions of pounds).

As a result, the generic elements of leadership (delegation, clear communication, curriculum intent, managing teams) are very different as there are so many variables to manage, mitigate against and consider.

So, what can new leaders do to continue their development in FE?

The answer to this is collaboration.

Network with both new and experienced leaders

By collaborating and networking with new and experienced leaders within and outside of your own setting, there is the opportunity to share best practice and discuss new strategies to resolve age-old problems.

It is also important to accept that failure is inevitable. There is no such thing as a perfect leader, so it is vital to accept that you will make mistakes.

This is why it is so important to identify and work with a mentor and a coach – they perform different roles but will become equally as important.

Both will give feedback which will allow you to develop effectively, as will your team: giving regular feedback opportunities to your team will help to shape what leader you become.

Remember that effective leaders speak last. Seek to communicate, open a dialogue and gain feedback from your team as they will give you the richest feedback on the impact you have. Good leaders communicate – ineffective leaders broadcast.

Feedback is important. Seek it always: you have two ears and one mouth for a reason.

The simplest method for improving leadership is to consult the literature. Read. Broadly and often.

Books from inside and outside of education will provide a host of approaches; whether Sir Alex Ferguson’s Leading, Simon Sinek’s Start With Why or Mary Myatt’s High Challenge, Low Threat, each will signpost transferrable skills and ideas to support the steps you want to take.

No matter the preparation or training undertaken by a new leader, it’s important to remember that what is out there is support only. You must find your own leadership style and find what works for you.

Like anything, this can take time. In the coming months, new leaders will strive to be different things for different people, dealing with innumerable new challenges using a range of leadership models and styles.

To do this successfully, authentic leadership is key.

New ministers: change universal credit rules so people can skill up

People on universal credit say work coaches don’t engage properly and rules stop them from accessing training, write Trinley Walker and Olivia Gable

Throughout the pandemic, the government placed a strong emphasis on the role of training and re-skilling through programmes.

It has done this through Restart and JETS (Job Entry Targeted Support), which formed part of its Plan for Jobs.

But the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Education can be misaligned in practice.

For example, universal credit is underpinned by a “work first” approach.

Re-entry into the labour market is prioritised for out-of-work claimants, with individuals required to demonstrate the steps they have taken to find employment each week.

Should they not fulfil their requirements, they risk being sanctioned (losing financial support).

Although different types of conditionality dictate how much time claimants must spend on job search activity, a significant proportion have to show 35 hours of activity.

This leaves little opportunity for training and education.

But what if people claiming universal credit hold ambitions that reach beyond the immediate and available jobs they can get with their current experience and qualifications?

What if they want to boost their opportunities to access better-quality work?

Conditionality rules makes it hard for claimants to take up training opportunities.

The government’s skills bootcamps are a case in point.

Many of its courses are highly intensive, run over a 16-week period and sometimes requiring full day participation, while others require evening and weekend learning time.  

For many people getting universal credit, this would leave no time to meet the requirements to search and apply for jobs set out by their work coach, and so could risk a break in financial support.

This means people with a universal credit claim generally cannot access full-time training.

The government is now running a pilot scheme called Train and Progress which allows a small number of claimants to access up to 12 weeks of training without having to meet work search requirements.

In our recent research, we conducted interviews on this issue.

While most of the interviewees were engaged in training in some way, these efforts could be disrupted by their conditionality requirements.

Some interviewees were required to conduct job activity for 35 hours a week, limiting their ability to undertake training.  

One person we spoke to had to use classroom time to search for jobs, putting her at risk of missing out on the learning experience.

One claimant had to use classroom time to search for jobs

Interviewees also reported variable experiences with their work coaches.

While some interviewees benefitted from relationships with work coaches who were responsive to their needs, too often, this wasn’t the case.

Typically, people found their engagement with work coaches to be transactional. It was conducted through brief meetings in which their underlying needs were not addressed.

Some interviewees had to research training opportunities themselves as their work coaches were not well informed about the local area.

Our research also found that childcare responsibilities present a further barrier to training.

There could be significant strain where parents were attempting to balance training courses with conditionality requirements and part-time work. 

We are calling for:

  1. People on a course while receiving universal credit to have a one-year pause on conditionality so they can study full-time or part-time without risking their benefit entitlement.
  2. The DWP to create opportunities for people on universal credit to discuss training access with their work coach at any point in their claim. This should trigger a training-focused meeting and potentially signpost to the National Careers Service.
  3. The DfE to ensure work coaches have up-to-date knowledge of local skills ecosystems, labour market demand and training opportunities, including government skills initiatives, by establishing a specialised group of career developers.
  4. Better alignment between DWP and DfE programmes to facilitate training for people on universal credit.

With the cost-of-living crisis set to deepen further, it is vital that people on low incomes who want to build new skills are offered tailored advice and support. This will allow them to access training that might help them move in to more secure forms of employment.

How do you go from ‘just’ a clerk to a great clerk?

Governance professionals like clerks aren’t there to set the strategic direction of a college. But they can still create ripples of change, writes Lisa Farnhill

The role of a clerk was described as an “unseen strategic leader” in a paper by the Further Education Trust for Leadership.

In other words, the clerk might have a quiet yet forceful alternative standpoint. This includes influencing perspectives and challenge around equality, diversity and inclusion.

Although my perspective isn’t entirely unique, perhaps my experiences are.

I have witnessed and suffered acts of devastating inequality. I have stood up for myself, stood in alliance with marginalised co-workers, risked my own career progression and educated myself and my children about what is right and wrong. But I haven’t always got it right.

I’ve backed down, admitted defeat, and walked away when the fight was too fierce and personal losses too great.

The erosion of confidence when faced with an unwinnable and unjust fight remains a large chip on my small shoulder.

As a clerk, I’m responsible for advising the governing board and ensuring compliance with regulatory and statutory requirements.

I guide, steer, advise, and yes, I carry out administrative tasks, but overall, my role is strategic.  

This enables my pursuit of what sometimes feels like a one-woman mission to right society’s wrongs.

This for me is when governance must go beyond compliance. My position enables me to empower change.

However, seeds of doubt creep in. Because as “just” the clerk, I have no vote, I don’t write or approve the policies, “set the strategic direction” or “determine the educational character and mission of the college”.

So how do I ensure I can have a positive influence in my work?

This is where I don’t give up.

I recall one occasion in a board meeting where a staffing report was challenged. The discussion was: “Our workforce isn’t overly diverse. How does this compare to our student cohort and community? Is our staff body representative?”

The response was an evidence-based assurance that our workforce reflects our student cohort and local population.

So the challenge ended.

But was this enough? I felt we could go further to champion diversity, including neurodiversity.

As a college, we’re a beacon of the local community and have the most supportive, inclusive college culture.

How could we ensure this seeped out into our community, enabling us to be the root of change for our town?  I thought wider.

Why was our community not diverse? Were we looking at this backwards? Could we work towards our community reflecting our college diversity rather than us reflecting what is already there (or not there)?

There was also a clear business case. Governance studies have proven diversity improves productivity and feeling included ensures students enrol and stay.

We weren’t thinking wide enough.

I was left conflicted. Pleased there was challenge, disappointed there wasn’t more, yet knowing it is my place to guide and not to challenge. Knowing I can’t change the world.

I was left conflicted

I didn’t give up. I decided if I thought there was more the college could do, there was more I could do, but perhaps not alone.

As the Association of College’s director of diversity, Jeff Greenidge knows legislation, history, trends, best practice, and how to deliver a message with impact.

Additionally, Jeff is chair of a governing board in a non-diverse town, and knows first-hand how to use college governance as the beacon of change.

Jeff listened, shared ideas, and offered support. He embedded my message of endless possibilities for positive change into an engaging and thought-provoking session for our governors. I felt proud again.

I had done what I was there to – influenced and facilitated. I had been a great clerk, not ‘just’ a clerk. With a supportive, responsive board, I felt empowered again.

I also then delivered our message to the AOC CPD week. Jeff knew that I wanted to influence change, and he supported me to do it.

In turn, attendees felt empowered to begin their own ripples of change.

So can you start your own ripple and be the beacon of change? To build an inclusive future for everyone, we need to ensure everyone knows that they are not “just” anything.

Labour needs another Wilsonian ‘white heat of technology’ moment  

Radicalism and realism will help the party to win the next general election, argues Tom Bewick

In October 1963, the Labour leader Harold Wilson delivered one of the most memorable political interventions of the 20th century.

Historians refer to it as the “white heat of technology” – a memorable phrase in the text, characterised by the opposition leader’s focus on education and science as the means to higher living standards.

The expansion of FE and the creation of the Open University (Wilson originally called it a “university of the air”) is a direct legacy of this period.

His speech at Scarborough also coincided with a turbulent decade for the country. The “swinging sixties” were about more than mini-skirts and the Beatles.

It was a new age of automation. 

Britain and the west were locked in an ideological and economic race with the Soviet Union, as one bloc tried to outdo the other, believing it had the best answers for progress.

We all know how the story ends. The west eventually won the Cold War. And economic growth of 5.7 per cent in 1964to  helped unleash a new Britannia.

To put this in historical perspective, average annual productivity growth in the UK since 2010 has been a sluggish 0.7 per cent. On this measure, the country is second from bottom in the G7.

What is perhaps most striking about Wilson’s speech was its clear-eyed honesty. It was a brutal lecture in both radicalism and realism.

Like the party today, Labour in 1963 had been in the political wilderness for 12 years.

It was genius of Wilson to tell the party faithful “there is no more dangerous illusion than the comfortable doctrine that the world owes us a living”.

He had a sobering vision for Britain – “that we will have just as much influence in the world as we can earn, as we can deserve”.

The following year, in 1964, Labour returned to government with a majority of four seats.

Fast forward to the present and Sir Keir Starmer faces a similar set of challenges. His task is not helped by Russian aggression in Ukraine that is once again upending the global order.

The temptation in Liverpool next week will be to tell the party faithful what they want to hear.

Starmer must inspire with a tough love message

Instead what the Labour leader must do like his election-winning predecessors, Wilson and Blair, is to inspire them with a tough-love message.

The tough part is to tell them that statism, practised under Labour and the Conservatives over the past decades, has failed this country.

If the trade unions think Labour back in power equates to a fresh round of top-down Whitehall-driven schemes, they should think again.

The debt-overhang of the pandemic and energy insecurity will constrain public spending for years to come.

Starmer’s more conciliatory tone should be that – with voter support – everyday working people can wrestle back control of society from an out-of-touch elite. Giving people, as equal citizens, real agency back in their lives.

In FE, we need to move beyond sterile arguments about whether colleges should be nationalised or privatised.

The Labour response should be to implement an ambitious programme of mutualisation of the sector.

In policy terms, that’s three things:

1. Devolve all post-18 funding to the individual, truly creating a lifetime skills guarantee, with no restrictions on what courses or qualifications learners can take.

2. Remove bureaucracy entirely from the skills system via a war on administrative duplication and waste. Inevitably, that means some quangos may have to disappear from the landscape altogether.

3. Every FE provider should be invited to become a mutual, where FE staff can become co-owners of the enterprise alongside the local community. Like the John Lewis partnership, FE mutuals would have complete control over how they are run.

And finally, Starmer can echo Wilson.

The latter said: “We shall need a totally new attitude to the problems of apprenticeship, training and re-training for skill”.

Skills toolkit platform launched in lockdown is under review

The government is reviewing a much-vaunted platform that signposts people to free skills courses after coming under fire for publishing and celebrating unreliable data.

Figures for registrations and completions of courses featuring on the “skills toolkit” are supposed to be updated monthly but have not been published by the Department for Education since May 2022.

The DfE told FE Week it has paused the release of this data because officials “do not yet have reliable skills toolkit statistics due to lack of complete data returns from all providers.

“We are reviewing the operation of the skills toolkit and will confirm our plans in due course,” the DfE added.

More than £1 million of public money has been spent on developing and advertising the “skills toolkit”, which consists of a web page on the National Careers Service and directs visitors to free online content provided by the likes of Amazon, the Open University, Microsoft and LinkedIn.

It was launched in April 2020, shortly after the first Covid-19 lockdown began, to help people boost digital and numeracy skills during the pandemic.

Ministers were quick to hail the platform, with then education secretary Gavin Williamson describing it as having a “transformational impact on so many people taking furlough” during a speech in October 2020. But a previous FE Week investigation found that many of the courses are simply short video tutorials or PDF documents that people can stop and start, with no tuition and no external quality assurance. Despite this, ministers repeatedly claimed the skills toolkit courses were “high-quality”.

FE Week previously revealed how significant overcounting led to revised estimates of “registration” claims, which can include web hits from anywhere in the world, as course providers do not filter for geographical locations. FE Week also revealed how some course “completions” were being counted when users spent three minutes looking at one of the online resources.

The DfE publishes “experimental” skills toolkit data alongside its monthly apprenticeships and traineeships statistics release. The publication  does point out the limitations of the data and makes clear that reporting of registrations and completions varies by provider.

In March 2021, the Office for Statistics Regulation reprimanded the DfE over the data after FE Week’s findings raised concerns, especially after inaccurate registration figures were told to parliament.

Since then, it appears the toolkit has reduced in size: there was almost 80 courses to choose from but there are now just 61.

The DfE’s data release claims that as of May 2022, there have been about 256,200 course registrations and 51,700 course completions.

DfE outlines next steps for UK’s first skills taxonomy

Proposals for a map of skills provision to determine shortages across England have progressed, with plans for the first phase of work beginning in November. 

The Department for Education last year revealed ambitions for a ‘skills taxonomy’. This would act as an algorithm to identify and map skills shortages for jobs and occupations, and develop future college courses. 

Education chiefs predicted the taxonomy could play a role in developing local skills improvement plans (LSIPs). These documents would outline priority post-16 skills needed in regions or counties developed by business-led boards. 

The East Midlands and Sussex chambers of commerce developed their own local skills taxonomies when creating their trailblazer LSIPs earlier this year. 

The DfE’s Unit for Future Skills has put out a pipeline notice for a £50,000 contract for the first phase of work, delivered over two years from November. 

That phase of work, according to the notice, is for stakeholder engagement, detailing methodology, and developing a detailed workplan for developing the skills taxonomy. 

The second phase, subject to a separate contract, will focus on developing the taxonomy itself. 

The notice said a review will take place after phase one to evaluate “quality and feasibility” to determine whether to proceed to phase two. 

The call for bidders is expected to go out at the end of the month. 

The notice said: “The Unit for Future Skills within the Department for Education is seeking to establish a UK-specific taxonomy that will enable the department (and government more widely) to better organise and describe LMI [labour market information] and extract greater insights from it. 

“This will greatly improve our understanding of what jobs require which skills, and which qualifications provide different skills. This in turn will help identify skills mismatches, allowing policy makers, education providers, employers etc to respond appropriately.” 

The latest planned contract tender followed a £25,000 research review last year by Frontier Economics for the education secretary’s Skills and Productivity Board, a group of labour market and skills economists tasked with influencing the direction of policy in skills. 

It is expected the board will use the taxonomy to highlight areas of skills shortages that could determine future policy to address gaps.