Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessments they have undertaken to identify the critical skills that UK-based businesses need; and what steps they are taking to ensure that the UK workforce has those skills.

The department recently conducted the latest Employer Skills Survey, which provides robust assessments of skills shortages across the UK by region and by sector. The results of this survey will be published by the end of summer 2018. The department also holds responsibility for ‘Working Futures 2014 to 2024’, which provides labour market projections. A summary of this report is attached and the full report is available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/513801/Working_Futures_final_evidence_report.pdf.

In addition, we are establishing Skills Advisory Panels (SAPs), which bring together local representatives including business, training providers and tertiary education to make sure that the local provision of skills, and the delivery of skills policy in local areas, meets and responds to changing employer needs. Along with SAPs, we hold frequent meetings with businesses from across sectors to ensure we adapt our programmes to meet their needs.

We are working with employers to jointly design and deliver policies and programmes, which will make the skills system more responsive to employer needs, while giving individuals the skills they need to succeed. This includes making apprenticeships longer, better, with more off-the job training and proper end point assessments; and developing T Levels to offer a high quality and rigorous technical alternative to academic education. The National Colleges and Institutes of Technology will provide higher level technical skills needs. The department is developing a new National Retraining Scheme, an ambitious, far-reaching programme, which will give adults the skills they need to thrive and support employers to adapt as the economy changes.

We established The Careers & Enterprise Company (the Company) to connect schools and colleges with employers to offer young people meaningful encounters with the world of work. Since 2015, the Company’s Enterprise Adviser Network has recruited over 2000 Enterprise Advisers. These senior business volunteers work with individual schools or colleges providing strategic guidance on their careers plans in order to open young people’s eyes to opportunities and raise their aspirations.