As the industries that traditionally provided employment in Wales gradually decline, it is vital that we act to ensure the country is an attractive and supportive base for both foreign and indigenous employers. Clearly central to any efforts to develop an area’s economy are the skills and abilities of the community. We must regularly review whether the education we are offering our children and young adults equips them with adequate skills to satisfy the needs of existing and potential employers, no to mention whether it gives them confidence to start their own entrepreneurial activities.
Time and time again employers’ organisations such as the CBI inform us that young people in Wales and the wider UK are ill-equipped to meet their demands. Indeed there is nothing new in the assertion that young people struggle in the labour market because their education and training is either substandard or irrelevant to actual skill requirements. What is important is to appreciate that this is a problem with many facets that requires a flexible approach to education if as many children as possible are to meet their potential. The Conservative commitment to expanding parental choice throughout the educational service, particularly in enabling parents to select the right school for their child is indicative of what I believe would be the best course for education in Wales to chart. To this we should add such schemes as more education-industry partnerships and greater opportunities for young people to take up vocational training at an early age.
The Welsh Assembly Government has adopted a markedly different approach to education than that followed in England, abolishing league tables and reducing the number of tests children take. Prior to any consideration of how such alterations affect the skills employers are seeking, the initial test is how the education prepares the child for the future, the basic skills they attain and later how the perform in important examinations such as the GCSE. Though the former test is difficult to gauge, the statistics for the latter are worrying. While we should acknowledge the great advances made in providing for children with special educational needs, a number of children continue to leave primary school unable to adequately read and write. Some individuals will never make good the gap they have fallen behind their peers even at this early stage, whether it be in future examinations or earnings as an adult. It is our potential responsibility as politicians to work to give teachers the very best platform to minimise and in time eradicate the number of children who leave school without qualifications. Labour must similarly be taken to task for fact that the percentage of 15-year-olds achieving at least five A* to C grades or equivalent at GCSE/GNVQ level in Wales has fallen behind that in England having been equal at the time of the introduction of the National Assembly in 1999. Whereas the level achieved at this stage was equal in 1999 at 48%, by 2004 the figure was 51% for Wales and 54% for England – a 3% gap. While I agree with the Assembly Education Minister’s response to this gap that education is about more than examination results, the fact remains that examinations continue to be the principal yardstick by which Universities will decide who to accept and employers will decide who to recruit. If this deficit is allowed to increase further it could very well lead to employers gaining the false impression that Welsh students are inferior to their English counterparts: a prejudice which would have the capacity to greatly reduce economic development in Wales.
The most obvious way of trying to ensure our young people are equipped for the world of work is to listen to employers’ demands and try to diffuse their requirements into what is taught in our schools and how it is delivered. This may simply encompass organising more projects where group-work is encouraged and further efforts to replicate work experience. Initiatives such as Young Enterprise, in which sixth form pupils experience a practical insight into business take this thinking a step further, deepening pupils’ understanding of business issues and encouraging an entrepreneurial spirit among participants. It is highly important that we further explore the role that private companies can play in contributing to our children’s education.
The efforts made by the groups that comprise the National Education Business Partnership ensure that many of our children have at least some experience of business issues, but we must question whether we take industry-education partnerships far enough in Wales. For instance, the business games that large accounting and consultancy firms organise in universities, often as recruiting tools, could be translated into a schools context. We must also look to the examples set in those countries that have made successful changes to their vocational education and training system. In Australia the reform agenda has included the development of a competency based approach to training, an increased role played by industry in the system and the fostering of a more competitive and industry driven environment in which schools and colleges operate.
Looking beyond schools and colleges, it is vital that we better assist poorly qualified Welsh adults to attain skills desired by employers. In January 2006 the Basic Skills Agency published research indicating that 18% of Welsh adults are not confident with their maths, 25% have trouble working out sums with decimal points and 31% have difficulty working out percentages. However schemes aimed at boosting the skills of adults with few or no educational qualifications are often poorly attended – less than four thousand of the 1.3 million poorly-qualified adults in Wales had started courses paid for by individual learning accounts by the end of last March. The problem of Welsh adults lacking basic skills, together with the issue of encouraging employers to do more to improve their workers to improve their skills, remains a considerable challenge which the Welsh Assembly Government must act quickly and more comprehensively to address.
Responding to the demands of employers does not mean wholesale changes to our curriculum or the end of humanities courses – we simply need to do more to equip our young people for a labour market made ever more competitive by the forces of globalization. The specific nature of the new skills required by employers is reflected in the number of university courses offering qualifications in such emerging subjects as computing and tourism; industries that are key to the economic development of Wales in the present and future.
