Britain's scandalous skills gap will hold back business

published 4 July 2006

Britain is "doing all the globalisation stuff" better than its main economic competitors, but its lack of skilled workers remains a serious problem, says Sir Digby Jones. The Confederation of British Industry's outgoing director-general says that half of UK school-leavers are ill-equipped to enter the jobs market.

"It is the responsibility of business to train people for specific roles and to help retrain for other work, but kids have got to come out of school being able to read and write," he told Christine Buckley of The Times. With six million people in the workforce below the standards of literacy (and 17 million without the grasp of numeracy) expected of an 11-year-old, "business is still spending a small fortune on what is essentially remedial education", the paper comments. Much basic manufacturing has moved to lower-cost countries, so most UK jobs demand greater skill levels than they once did.

Sir Digby's successor at the CBI, Richard Lambert, is also alarmed by the "scandalous shortcomings in our approach to education and training". Setting out a six-point plan in The Sunday Telegraph to boost Britain's competitiveness, he cites its lowly rank of 24th out of 29 developed nations in the proportion of young people pursuing further courses after the age of 16. The Government, "busy shuffling the deckchairs" with initiatives such as the Learning and Skills Council, hasn't added any real value, says Lambert. England's web of skills and training agencies, although "unbelievably complex", needed to be beefed up, not destroyed. Lord Leitch, who will publish his recommendations for remedying the skills shortage this autumn, warns that even if current targets are met, there will still be big shortcomings in the year 2020. Meanwhile, other countries are raising their game.

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