CITY AND GUILDS GROUP – WRITTEN EVIDENCE
(YUN0051)
Youth Unemployment Committee inquiry
Challenges
The labour market is clearly experiencing significant challenges currently as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
From what we have seen through our work in terms of the challenges many young people are facing currently, many of them were in already in existence pre-pandemic but have been exaggerated. This is as a result of lockdown restrictions on learning and assessment plus the overall restrictions in the labour market – particularly in sectors that supported entry level roles.
For a short period, there could be some consideration of further incentives to encourage recruitment of young people as part of apprenticeship targets with additional payments to companies if percentage quotas are met. This may help them as they compete in the jobs market with displaced, experienced workers.
One of the newer challenges is the impact of digital poverty as access to so much interaction has become predicated by access to technology devices and connectivity.
The City & Guilds Foundation is acutely aware of the challenges facing learners at all levels across the UK, including the many learners who receive support from our charitable partners or directly through the Foundation’s bursary programme.
We applaud efforts being made by the UK Government and charities across the country to make the hardware necessary for online learning available to those in need. This support must continue to be rolled out urgently if we are to limit the impact of the pandemic on the estimated 1.14 million-1.78 million children in the UK (9%) who do not have home access to a laptop, desktop, or tablet to learn.
We would also like to thank the telecoms providers who have already pledged their support to help remove the data barriers facing many young people through voucher schemes and the exploration of making some free online learning sites available without data charges. This will be critical if 880,000 children who only have access to mobile internet connections are to be able to access the growing wealth of online resources available.
The City & Guilds Foundation is also playing a part in this by making every effort to ensure that the beneficiaries we support are not limited by lack of access to technology and that we remain in active dialogue with our network of charitable partners and youth advisory board to ensure they receive the support they need.
Finally it will be important to consider how such support will transition into first time work opportunities and not just learning support. As the world of work changes and expectations of remote working increase we cannot allow young people to be left behind just because they do not have sufficient home access to technology. This could perhaps be supported through tax incentives where employers provide targeted support for home working. This would also help reduce carbon footprint impact of travel as part of Net Zero targets.
Looking to the future, the concept of place of work and flexible hours will start to change for some industries, however there is also a chance that there will be a polarised impact as some industries and roles will not change to the same extent. Many employers have had to adapt their working practices over the course of the last year and many are now considering what the future will look like in terms of the ‘return’ to the workplace. This polarised effect is seen in the manufacturing sector where factory staff must be on site, but admin staff can work remotely.
Although we don’t yet know the exact impact of the pandemic on the labour market/workplace, our Recovery and Resilience research published in 2020 found:
Based on the above, it seems likely that there will be a disproportionate impact on those at the low wage, low skill end of the spectrum and as a result could negatively impact upon younger, less qualified people trying to get a first foot in the labour market. Additionally, for those young people already in the labour market, it could limit their opportunities for progression within organisations as well. Once more, there is still a danger that we will see further rounds of redundancy as the Job Retention Scheme is wound down and young people may be amongst that wave of redundancies.
Although many businesses will seek to retain some of the flexibilities in working of the past year moving forward, it’s worth bearing in mind the potential impact this could have on young people entering the labour market. Aspects such as learning how to work in an office, developing relationships with colleagues, training and induction are all made more difficult with remote work. If this is the first time a young person is working in an office based environment, then employers will need to ensure they are conscious of this and have systems in place to help young people settle into the workplace.
As an organisation we have concerns for those young people seeking to access work currently and who were already disadvantaged before Covid-19. With lower access to personal contacts, previous employers, or recruitment consultants our fear is that as a result of the pandemic, and without steps being put in place this situation will worsen.
Induction of new staff will need to change whether they are young or old and this will apply equally whether full time jobs, apprenticeships or traineeships. Companies must be careful to consider how an induction and mentoring programme can work effectively for remote staff.
Although working from home can be valuable, it is not a panacea. ONS personal and economic well-being in Great Britain statistics published in January found that those in high-income groups were more likely to be able to work from home, with 55.1% of people with income over £20,000 able to work from home compared with 19.1% of people with income less than £20,000. It’s important that employers keep this in mind whilst recruiting younger workers, as well as taking on apprentices and trainees.
Technology changes have already been mentioned and linked to that aspect is the growth in data production and data analysis. Data interrogation is a role that can be performed in any location but brings with it challenges around data security and access. Young people may be more likely to engage with wider online social activity and so it will be important that staff are educated about the risks associated with combinations of work and personal access.
Industries that have traditionally accounted for high demand in youth labour will recover with time for example hospitality, leisure and tourism. It is therefore important that those connections are rebuilt. Looking to the future, the shape and nature of retail may change, and so consideration should be given to where the shift in roles is occurring and where potential growth may take place in roles such as logistics and warehousing. The pandemic has also highlighted a renewed respect for the health and care sectors. Careers advice in schools and colleges must therefore adapt to these labour market shifts to promote sustainable good work in growth sectors.
Prior to the pandemic, ONS statistics on the probability of automation in England, showed that the jobs which are at the highest risk of automation are disproportionately done by younger people with over 45% of the high-risk jobs currently occupied by young people between the ages of 20 and 30 years.
This is an area of concern for the City & Guilds Foundation, and we will be piloting Skills Transition Hubs later in 2021, targeted at young people with our Skills Bridges programme which identify transferable skills and support individuals to move toward those sectors. We hope that this programme will evidence mechanism for supporting young people to transition away from at risk sectors and into sectors with significant employment opportunities like the Care Sector.
Funding of pre-18 learners is largely sufficient if the programmes of learning can be targeted to where the work is. There remains a disparity between the maths and English funding available to learners outside the school system and there is no clear rationale for this. Literacy and numeracy are key enablers for meaningful employment and should attract appropriate funding.
Post-18, young people need particular help as they transition through to post-25 and consideration must be given to how funding for education and training connects with benefits. Many young people may not be able to study full time at this stage of education and there should be mechanisms that allow combinations of part-time study and work as well as the combination of benefits retention of learning programmes leading directly to employment destinations.
There should also be a review of progression constraints. In the current labour market, it is highly likely that learners will need to change career direction and there should be an allowance for second Level 3 achievements or even at times, backwards steps to Level 2 to then advance in a different direction. Destination awareness will be key, and must be linked to better information, advice and guidance for all ages and not just school children.
Primary and secondary education
The education system as it currently stands is constrained in terms of what it is able to deliver and how it can prepare young people for the world of work if it must rely solely on the input of teachers.
New models should be explored such as teacher/lecturer switches to allow greater integration with the world of work and exposure to employers. Space should be created to allow wider work related skills to be developed and possibly greater use of cross curricular work in secondary schools based around industry set projects with less time devoted to exam based teaching where learners follow a narrow set of academic subjects.
As an organisation we also provide a Work Ready offer. This is about providing work skills for the unemployed and job seekers.
Work Ready is designed to meet the needs of all learners no matter how old they are, the level of their current knowledge and skills or their career ambitions. Work Ready provides the building blocks needed to help learners get into sustainable work and, once in place, to keep them there. Our work ready offer includes:
Employability and personal development qualification - providing skills such as CV writing, preparing for employment and enterprise. It also includes units on Work Experience.
Short courses and vocational skills - we offer the widest range of short courses and vocational qualifications to develop key skills for work.
Skills for working life - provides the personal and work-related skills that enables progression into further learning or supported employment, or enhancement of independent living skills.
There is certainly more that can be done to prepare young people with the knowledge to explore the opportunities available to them. We need to ensure that careers advice and guidance are seen as important and valuable routes to finding employment. Without this tailored support it becomes difficult for people to understand or even know about the careers available to them.
At a local level, there needs to be better intervention programmes which go hand in hand with local employer mentors to showcase the world of work.
Work experience is vital in preparing young people for work, something which our report Great Expectations highlighted. Although this was published in 2015, many of the key points raised haven’t changed, especially in relation to careers education and work experience.
Our report found that 28% of young people thought that previous work experience was important whilst employers had a very different view. 78% told us that they think work experience is essential to ensuring young people are ready for work while two thirds of employers (67%) would be more likely to hire a young person with work experience over someone with none.
In our Act Now report published in November 2020 we outlined where we believe careers education and guidance can be more effective.
We propose that the government devolve more skills funding to mayoral combined authorities to allow them to develop recovery strategies from Covid-19, including careers guidance which goes hand in hand with the skills and jobs needs of the area.
Our proposal would also see the creation of employment and training hubs in areas of high unemployment.
The hubs would act as a one-stop skills and jobs matching service for adults in employment who “might need to or want to upskill or retrain and those seeking employment”.
They would provide careers advice and guidance, direct people straight into employment in other sectors where possible, direct people into college or university if needed but would also provide short, sharp training interventions to get people back into work.
The Ford programmes of Project-Based Learning billed as Next Generation Learning should be explored and taken forward as examples of how primary/secondary and employer engagement can transform curriculum and education. The EDGE Foundation programme exploring the future of education could also be used as a vehicle to explore change.
The barriers to the adoption of such a model are limitations in school/college awareness of employers and school/college structures that promote silo subject based teaching. The staffroom mentality is dominant in secondary and tertiary education and perhaps does not serve young people well in terms of the transition to work.
Finally, the preoccupation of exam achievement at 16 should also be reconsidered as that is no longer an exit point from education and training – it is now a staging post for next stage learning and training.
Further education, higher education and training
The parity of esteem debate between vocational and academic education is a long held one, which does not seem to progress.
Looking at one of the more recent examples, the shift in emphasis for the FE White Paper towards a Skills for Jobs White Paper is a positive move by the Government in that it recognises the clear connection between skills development and progress into meaningful employment.
We also agree with the Government’s assertions in the white paper around the fundamental role FE has to play in delivering the skills pipeline of essential talent this country needs today, to grow back from Covid-19.
We believe that there need to be greater incentives around destination rather than just achievements, perhaps with greater weight on employment destination and especially in high demand/high value sectors. This would shift provider behaviour, which in turn would shift learner behaviour. There should also be more promotion of the value of vocational routes with case study information on earnings potential 18-25 and beyond set against debt of loans and probability of employment etc
For FE to play this role effectively, we suggest devolving more power to regions to decide on the skills interventions most needed to support their local areas. Additionally, college-based training will not work for everyone, and this needs to be accompanied by flexible funding. We would welcome any future proposals to give more autonomy to regional administrations to be able to implement bottom-up solutions to meet local skills funding.
Looking firstly at FE, there should potentially be greater alignment between vocational courses (as opposed to research and innovation courses) with stronger focus on industry placements or sandwich years to create a better transition into employment. As with FE courses, higher level courses should map to labour market demand or be clearer in the academic/research destinations for employment.
We also propose that roles and opportunities should be linked more closely to the curriculum young people are being taught. In doing so would help them to map their strengths and interests to particular careers.
In terms of employer involvement, there is a need for employers to not only drive employment for young people, but also sustained employment that offers progression regardless of their background. Businesses should also look at their recruitment processes, ensuring they are kinder to all applicants (particularly young people or those facing disadvantages). Campaigns such as Future Proof, Jargon Free Jobs and video applications are all ways in which businesses can seek to help young people into the labour market moving forward.
The pandemic has proved to be a challenging time for many apprentices as apprenticeship starts have fallen dramatically in the last year. As the pandemic has shown, the ability for organisations to take on apprentices and trainees is severely curtailed when the economy suffers. Along with this, the increased trend towards higher level apprenticeships is excluding many young people from entry level opportunities.
Looking to the future, in order to help ensure apprenticeships and apprenticeship placements are available, more needs to be done to educate and help employers understand value of apprenticeships and the values they bring to businesses. It should be clearer how they contribute to a wider workforce recruitment and development strategy blending new young talent with the development of more experienced workers into new roles and functions.
We would like to see more support for ‘would-be apprentices’ and hard-hit businesses by extending greater flexibility in the use of the levy so that it can support some percentage of wages if that is where greatest need is felt. This might be a time limited offer as we look to kickstart recruitment and the economy – if 50% of apprenticeship starts could be offered in this way it is better than 0% through conventional means. We also believe employers should be allowed an extra year to spend their levy funds if needed. This should begin to stimulate growth in apprenticeship numbers after the drop in starts over the last year.
We welcomed the recent announcement on flexi job apprenticeships directed at sectors such as creative where you may work on short-term contracts. We would however caveat this by saying this is as long as they are targeted at industries where shorter contracts have often left apprentices unable to complete their courses in the past, and as long as all apprenticeships continue to be offered a job at the end or have self-employment options explained to them
We also welcomed the announcement in the recent Budget statement for the increased employer incentive of £3,000 for new apprentices of any age who join an organisation from 1 April 2021 to 30 September 2021. What we would however like to see in addition to this is a comprehensive long-term strategy that connects all the dots of employment, welfare, skills and education, to connect people to jobs, for longer-term growth and productivity.
Aside from traineeships and apprenticeships we believe that there also need to be incentives for T Level Industry Placements which provide good progression to employment options.
It should also be clearer how employers can provide annual commitments to traineeships and industry placements as way of providing a pipeline funnel towards apprenticeships or direct employment. Incentives should remain to support the administration of these programmes within businesses.
Jobs and employment
In our 2019 report Sense & Instability, we began by noting that skills and education policies touch the lives of millions of people in the UK. Get these policies wrong at the outset and they are destined to fail the individuals and groups they are targeting before they are even out of the starting blocks.
The report also examined the changes in the skills sector in previous years, using specific examples of several policies to explore the extent to which policies have indeed improved outcomes for the groups and individuals intended.
Our report concluded that there remain concerns regarding the consideration which has been given to what good looks like in skills policy-making, and what progression routes are needed to get there, something which hasn’t altered since our first Sense & Instability report was published in 2014. We concluded that embedding impact assessment within programme design, creating an evidence base for the skills sector, developing a value for money framework for skills policy and improving access to programmes for the most disadvantaged and hard-to-reach learner groups would all help with learning from past mistakes, and trying to prevent them from happening with future policy development.
Looking to the present, our Act Now report, published in late 2020 found that young people aged between 16 and 24 will be very badly impacted by the pandemic with 1 million young people anticipated to be unemployed by the end of the year.
The Government has recognised this and put numerous interventions in place including the Kickstart scheme, additional incentives for employers who hire younger apprentices, plus more funding for traineeships (pre apprenticeships), new funding for sector-based work academies, expanded funding for Level 2 and Level 3 courses for 18 - 19 year olds and additional funding for careers advice.
There are a number of schemes aimed at assisting youth unemployment currently such as Sector Based Work Academies, Kickstart, traineeships. All of these schemes are well intentioned; however, we have concerns regarding what happens when the schemes come to an end. If they do not result in a job or move young people closer to gaining employment, then these schemes become somewhat of a sticking plaster solution.
In addition, with the proliferation of new schemes, comes employer involvement in some. Whilst this is good, the proliferation of schemes causes degree of overlap which can cause confusion to employers.
The combination of these risks could result in young people undertaking several initiatives, none of which help them with the ultimate goal of gaining permanent employment.
To answer this question, we provide examples of how we’re helping to ensure opportunities are available, and that skills meet the demand needed:
Our bursary programme: Our bursaries are designed to change people’s lives through skills. We know that for some people the cost of training can be a huge barrier to getting them the skills to find jobs and progress in their careers. And recent research indicates that without the support of bursary funding, those hardest to reach will find it harder to progress in a labour market which favours those already in higher-paying work.
We have recently changed how we award our bursaries. There are huge skills shortages in sectors that are extremely important for the future of the UK, and a growing number of jobs available that employers are finding it difficult to fill. As we have over the last 20 years, we want to make sure that City & Guilds bursaries give people the best possible chance of finding long term employment and transform lives.
From 2020 onwards, we will therefore be awarding bursaries to individuals who wish to gain skills in a range of sectors that we know need more skilled workers for the future.
Skills Bridges: We recently partnered with FutureLearn on our Skills Bridges. Our solution identifies the overall potential of a candidate and determines whether skills could be transferred into other industries and occupations. They offer candidates the tools and knowledge of the sector they need to enter into a new occupation and industry.
Our recent research report on Skills Bridges found that many lack the confidence when it comes to recognising the potential of transferable skills as a route to changing careers.
Among those we surveyed, 18-24 year olds were the most likely to be in the process of changing careers (22%)
25-34 year olds have often or sometimes thought about changing their career but don’t know where to start.
Skills bridges match skills profiles to occupational profiles to where the work is – that is a plan that plugs gaps
As the government looks to pull together its Levelling Up strategy and ahead of the publication of the FE/Skills Bill, we propose that these both take into account, and align with the ongoing reforms to devolution. We also propose that the Local Skills Improvement Plans are used to shape regional needs from a sector and learner basis.
11th May 2021