Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she taking with Cabinet colleagues to ensure that education and training programmes meet local skills needs.

The department is working with colleagues across government to put employers at the heart of local skills systems, through the rollout of Local Skills Improvement Plans. These employer-led plans will help ensure that skills provision better meets the needs of employers and helps people develop the skills they need to get good jobs and succeed.

Additionally, the Unit for Future Skills (UFS) was set up in 2022 to provide decision makers in the skills system with information they need to invest in the right skills to meet national and local employer needs and support economic growth.

The UFS proactively works across departments and with organisations beyond government to:

• Improve the coverage and timeliness of jobs and skills data to provide a robust foundation of research and data.
• Structure and improve access to the data by linking up data sets, mapping education, skills and jobs at local levels and providing tools that enable exploration of the data.
• Provide insights to enable learning, thinking and discussion on skills data and research as a centre of expertise for skills data and future insights on the labour market.

For example, the Local Skills Dashboard supports local skills planning and delivery, including up-to-date information and published data on local skills, education and employment. Data is provided at bespoke geographies, including Local Skills Improvement Plan areas, in an easy-to-navigate format alongside links to additional resources and data downloads. The dashboard is available at: https://department-for-education.shinyapps.io/local-skills-dashboard/.