NIESR Blog:
Britain's skills problem
17 May 2017
Article by Sandra McNally
It is well known and acknowledged in the government’s Industrial Strategy that Britain has a skills problem: ‘We have a shortage of technical-level skills and rank 16th out of 20 countries for the proportion of people with technical qualifications’. As the Green Paper also says, ‘a bewildering complex array of qualifications, some of which are poor quality, makes the system hard to use for students and employers’. This shortage of ‘technical level skills’ is important because it impacts on economic growth, inequality and social mobility. It also affects a lot of people. Well over half of young people do not do A-levels each year. Furthermore, only about 35-40% of a typical cohort finishing their GCSEs can expect to go to university. The shortage of ‘technical skills’ mainly needs to be supplied by those who choose non-academic pathways. This is a major educational issue and all parties should be addressing it in their manifestos.
Related publications
‘Post-Compulsory Education in England: Choices and Implications’, Claudia Hupkau, Sandra McNally, Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela and Guglielmo Ventura, National Institute Economic Review, 240(1), May 2017
DOI: 10.1177/002795011724000113
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/002795011724000113
Post-Compulsory Education in England: Choices and Implications Claudia Hupkau, Sandra McNally, Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela and Guglielmo Ventura, CVER Discussion Paper No.1, July 2016
‘Post-16 educational choices in England’, Claudia Hupkau, Sandra McNally, Jenifer Ruiz-Valenzuela and Guglielmo Ventura. Article in CentrePiece Volume 22, Issue 2, Autumn 2016