Failure of secondary schools hidden by GCSE results, says business

Wednesday 23 August 2007

The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) today called for a major rethink of secondary education as GCSE results are announced. The FSB believes that the continuing upward trend of GCSE results is masking a deterioration in the level of basic skills that schools are providing their pupils who enter the world of work at 16. This leads to reduced productivity in small firms who have to spend the first several weeks of new starters’ careers filling in the gaps in their education.

A quarter of small firms reported facing one or more skills shortages when seeking to fill a job vacancy. Over ten per cent of businesses reported that both basic literacy and numeracy skills were lacking in new recruits. A further ten per cent reported a lack of communication skills as a problem.

The FSB also believes that the Government’s ‘skills pledge’, where businesses are encouraged to sign up to bring their staff to a level equivalent to 5 GCSEs at grade A*-C, is aiming to force businesses to pick up the pieces of a failing school system. The Government has threatened to legislate to force businesses to train staff to this level after 2010 if this has not been achieved voluntarily – the FSB believes that this is unacceptable. This is because the average small business employs four people and cannot afford to lose a quarter of the workforce for a day to go into formal training schemes.

Small businesses train their staff in informal ways so that they can do the job for which they have been employed and this is not currently recognised by the Government as training.

Colin Willman, FSB Education Chairman, said:

“The secondary school system is not producing enough sixteen year-olds that can hit the ground running on their first day in the world of work.

“The skills that businesses need from school-leavers are literacy, numeracy, punctuality, communication skills and an ability to be well-presented. This allows them to contribute immediately as they start their new job.

“Sadly, at the moment these skills are lacking in many sixteen year-olds and this explains why more firms are turning instead to new migrants from other EU nations to fill their job vacancies. This threatens to leave more young people on the scrapheap if action is not taken urgently in the secondary school system. The Government’s plan to keep children in school until 18 will only be a success if more vocational training is provided that relates to the needs of employers. However, the basics should be taught before 16 and another two years at school will achieve nothing if this is not achieved.”

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