Transcript Higher Ambitions in a Modern Labour Market Challenges and

Higher Ambitions in a Modern Labour Market
Challenges and opportunities
Alison Wolf
King’s College London
Today’s World
• Huge expansion in education – in the
developed world, full-time to 18 the norm, in
developed and developing, very rapid growth
in higher education
• Major changes in structure of labour market
• In most developed countries, disappearance
of the youth labour market
Disappearance of the youth labour
market for 16-18 year olds
Recent in the UK which maintained
teenage employment at high levels longer
than most other European countries
Raising of participation age
But huge increases pre-dated this
and reflect the labour market and
apprenticeship context
FTE numbers of 16-18 year olds in schools plus FE colleges
'000s
600
500
400
Schools
300
FE colleges
200
100
0
1985
1994
2010
Part-time education shrinks among the young
Percentage of 16-18 cohort in education
60
50
40
Part time FE
30
Full time FE
Full time schools
20
10
0
1985
1991
2000
2011
Best predictor of being in employment next year
is being in employment this year
• Young people are always the ones who are most
vulnerable to unemployment. Ratio of youth to adult
unemployment is almost always large, though it
varies among countries
• Getting the first job is critical
• But problems for today’s young compounded not
only by shrinkage in ‘proper’ apprenticeships but
also by shrinkage of the ‘Saturday job’
The ‘hourglass economy’
• Post-war, huge increase in professional, managerial
and technical jobs. Growth has slowed enormously.
• Huge productivity rises in manufacturing and services
have squeezed the number of skilled jobs in manual
and white-collar middle ranks
• Big increase in numbers of low-paid service job,
which require soft rather than technical skills
• However, these changes, while real, are ongoing, and
do not particularly impact on the young rather than
on older workers
Manufacturing as a share of GDP
35
30
25
20
France
Germany
15
UK
10
5
0
1980
2009
The fastest-growing – and the largest growth
800000
700000
600000
500000
400000
2001
2009
300000
200000
100000
0
Conservation officers
Town planners
Paramedics
Educational assistants
Care assistants
Marketing and sales
managers
The case against the old
vocational education regime
Why we needed (yet more) reforms
in 2010
Stacking up qualifications
• Diverted resources – huge inefficiencies
• Encouraged schools and colleges to steer
students into easy-to-pass awards
• Discouraged resits of Mathe and English GCSE
(they might fail…)
• Confused what government pays for with
what the labour market actually rewards
• Had no ‘clear line of sight to work’
Priorities and the “Wolf Report” study
programme
• Good Maths and English – used as filters for
employers and also genuinely important in a very
wide range of jobs. The labour market recognises
these GCSEs. It does also reward actual skill in both.
• Qualifications that are substantive and recognised as
such. (It would have been nice to avoid qualification
reform for the nth time– but it is unavoidable.)
• Work experience: the hard part and truly vital.
• And it can be done.
Apprenticeships in the UK
• The standard and single largest destination of
school-leavers until the 1970s
• Attacked head-on in the 1980s
• Re-embraced by government in the 1990s
• BUT
• Quality systematically undermined by targets,
funding regime, payment-by-results
The countries with the best record for youth
employment and transitions are all countries
with large apprenticeship systems:but in each case, these have developed
organically, without disruptions, and remained
employer-owned.
We effectively destroyed the institutions which
created and maintained apprenticeship and
they will take years to re-established. However,
‘proper’ apprenticeships are highly desired and
rightly so.
Although ‘top’ apprenticeship countries tend to
have more manufacturing than the UK, the
differences are not big: - labour market trends are
general. These countries have also
a.Extended apprenticeship into non-traditional
fields
b.Included a major ‘general education’ component.
General education recognises (a) the changing
nature of the labour market and the fact that many
apprentices change sectors and (b) underpins
progression
Current apprenticeship reforms return
control to employers, and demand more
substantive content and end-ofapprenticeship assessment of mastery –
as do ‘top’ apprenticeship countries, and
as we once did.
But this and future governments must
hold their nerve. Unfortunately, the
recent English ‘tradition’ is one of endless
meddling and re-design.
In our favour…
• We have finally re-joined the rest of the developed world in
extending demanding general education beyond 16
• Our universities are highly flexible in terms of entrance
requirements and course design. (This is a mixed blessing, but
means it is very easy for them to recognise and accept nonstandard entry routes)
• There is general recognition, at least in 11-18 education, that
numerical targets and payment by results drive down
standards. We probably won’t make that mistake again for a
while.
• We have a highly ‘wired’ society, in which young people of all
classes are increasingly good at researching their options.
Plus every parent in
Britain wants their child
to achieve…
Thank you