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Issue of the day: Skills and training
Party spokesmen debate their plans for education, skills and training.
Labour: Skills minister Ivan Lewis
We want to give more young people the chance of going into higher education, and that has led to some criticism that what the country really needs is 'plumbers, not graduates'. But of course it's not a matter of either/or. We need both.
Those who suggest we should choose between higher and vocational education offer a false choose, which fails to reflect our true national interest in a global economy.
Apprenticeships are stringent, carefully monitored, work-based training programmes designed for current and future employees who are normally aged between 16 and 24.
When modern apprenticeships were introduced 10 years ago, they were mainly associated with heavy industry. Times have changed, and apprenticeships are now available in most sectors and in all the new high-tech industries. But the principle of learning by doing, and the recognition that skills are best developed by hands-on experience, is as true today as ever.
In the last few years there has been massive growth in the number of people going into apprenticeships. In 1997, 75,800 young people were on apprenticeship programmes; today there are 255,500.
[F]or the first time we are opening up apprenticeships to a wider age range - trialling a lifting of the current age cap of 25 in various sectors, to allow older people to benefit. We also want to ensure that those apprentices who have the ambition and ability to do so can enter higher education, and we are taking steps to make that progression easier.
Vocational qualifications have for too long been seen as second-class. Skills are a vital national asset. Apprenticeships are one of the key elements in maintaining and replenishing our skills base, and ensuring our country’s future economic success and stability.
Conservatives: Shadow education secretary Tim Collins
There is much to celebrate in British education: Teachers who are dedicated and caring; universities with some of the best research and learning environments in the world; children with energy and enthusiasm.
But there is also much that can be better.
Top-up fees deter able students. Tony Blair broke his solemn word. In our first week we will scrap fees. Tony Blair, Charles Clarke and I have one thing in common – none of us paid any fees when we went to university.
Today, some parents know the only school they can choose is simply not good enough. Under Labour you need money or the right postcode to be sure you can pick a good school.
In our first months, Conservatives will publish a bill to legislate for the right to choose. In our first week we will start to remove the rules which stop good schools from expanding or new schools from starting. We will fund 600,000 extra school places to make choice a reality. And every school will be grant maintained - because freedom works.
This text is a portion of the speech delivered to Conservative Party conference on October 5.
Liberal Democrats: Education spokesman Phil Willis
The UK has a skills gap at nearly every educational level. This has not been helped by successive governments' policies that have concentrated on 'education for the best and skills for the rest'.
In order to tackle the double disadvantage of those adults who do not have a Level 2 (34 per cent overall) and who are also economically inactive (3.95 million) there needs to be greater integration of workforce development and welfare to work policy. Currently, there is a tension between the focus of the Department for Education and Skills and the Learning and Skills Council on qualification outcomes, and the Department for Work and Pensions and Jobcentre Plus's focus on job outcomes.
[T]o really tackle the skills gap there must also be significant engagement with the issues of professional development for teachers and clarification of the way the diploma will stimulate post-16 learning for those young people who are not in full time education.
With unprecedented levels of funding for the first time in many years, we have an opportunity to really tackle the skills gap that this country desperately needs to close.
But without imaginative and joined-up thinking we will continue to waste talent, time, and our chance on the world stage.
The above texts are edited versions of articles which first appeared in the Parliamentary Monitor magazine.
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