On the 23rd of January 2017, PM Theresa May launched a consultation on the UK’s future Industrial Strategy – “Building our Industrial Strategy: green paper”. The consultation closes on 17th of April 2017. The paper sets out Government’s vision towards “building a modern industrial strategy, which will deliver an economy that works for everyone.”
The PM emphasised that the Government “want to build an industrial strategy that addresses long-term challenges to the UK economy” – challenges which are reflected in the 10 pillars of the Industrial Strategy Green Paper. She added that collectively, the ten pillars aim to address current issues around “low productivity” and “unbalanced growth” in the UK economy.
In addition to investing in science, research and innovation, skill development has been identified as another key pillar of the proposals. The challenge set out by the Government in relation to skill development aims to address the UK’s poor performance in basic and technical skills, STEM skills shortages, sector skills shortages and lifelong learning which all have an impact on the UK’s economic productivity, both regionally and nationally. In doing so, the green paper identifies a number of key issues:
- There remain significant problems with basic skills. England is the only OECD country where 16 to 24-year olds are no more literate or numerate than 55 to 64-year olds.
- The UK has a shortage of high-skilled technicians below graduate level. Only 10% of adults hold technical education as their highest qualification, placing the UK 16th out of 20 OECD countries.
- The UK faces particular shortages in sector that depend on science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) skills. Nearly half of businesses report a shortage of STEM graduates as being a key factor in being unable to recruit appropriate staff.
- There are also skills shortages specific to certain sectors, which force some employers to look overseas to fill certain vacancies, where the Nuclear Industry is seen as a prime example.
- The UK needs to do more to empower students, parents and employers to make confident and informed choices about their education and careers options, whether they are in schools, technical education or HE.
- Accelerating pace of technological change means there is a growing challenge with lifelong learning and supporting people to up-skill and re-skill across their working lives.
The Government’s approach to addressing this skill development challenge through the Industrial Strategy proposes the following actions:
- Action to improve basic skills
- The creation of a new system of technical education
- Addressing STEM shortages
- Identifying and addressing sector-specific skills gaps
- Higher quality careers information and advice
- Testing new approaches to lifelong learning
The HE sector will play a key role in addressing these challenges and actions alongside schools, colleges and the newly formed institutes of technology in order to realise one of the key objectives of the proposals. The PM stated: “Our aim is to improve living standards and economic growth by increasing productivity and driving growth across the whole country.”