This week, the further education sector took centre stage as chancellor Rishi Sunak announced his plan for jobs following the coronavirus pandemic. Only a day later, education secretary Gavin Williamson set out his vision for a “german-style” FE system.

Both said FE should be placed at the heart of the economic recovery plan for the country, introducing policies to support young people into the workplace, training or education. 

But at the Learning and Work Institute’s employment and skills convention on Thursday, three skills experts pitched the policies they would like to see introduced to tackle the sector’s challenges. 

News: England to get ‘German-style’ FE system, says Williamson

More: What the chancellor’s plans mean for FE and skills

Opinion: Post-16 education needs reform. Now is the time

Career changers: Charlotte Pickles, director of Reform

Ms Pickles stressed that there was a group of people missing from the chancellor’s statement: those keen to change careers. 

She said: “There are different, unique aspects of this recession but one of the biggest is the fact that it is really sectoral based, and that means that we’re going to have a small but really quite sizeable group of people who are not just going to have to switch jobs - which will be tough enough - but they’re going to have to start over again in an entirely new sector.”

To support this group of people, Ms Pickles recommended three changes: 

• Give the 200,000 people who will need to change careers a £5,000 individual learning account to fund re-skilling for a new sector. 
• Give each person a  £3,000 time-limited career changer grant, time-limited for a year to mitigate against the financial impact of retraining. 
• Introduce sector-based ambition programmes, which bring businesses and skills providers together in local areas to develop and then implement programmes to enable focused upskilling in areas that have local demand. At the end of the programme, careers changers would be guaranteed a job interview. 

Ms Pickles said these recommendations were deliverable quickly, affordable, targeted to minimise waste, went with the grain and gave a positive boost to productivity. 

Universal basic income: Alan Lockey, head of the RSA future work centre

Mr Lockey said he was not expecting the government to introduce a Universal basic income (UBI) tomorrow, but added that they should offer an opportunity to build a pilot for UBI in the communities most affected by the pandemic. 

He said that UBI was “phenomenally expensive”, but “phenomenally transformative”. The job market was volatile, he said, and the state should stop making complicated value judgements when people are looking for work. 

Technology further exacerbated that volatility, he explained, and people would have to transition between different sectors and should be supported in doing so. 

UBI was empowering for people, he said, giving them the opportunity to say “no” to bad work, terms and conditions.

He said: “It will change employers behaviour at the bottom end of the labour market and will also incentivise good work practices and change the power and balance. 

Finally, he said that UBI would generate solidarity and universal fairness - similar to the way the NHS did. 

Refocusing apprenticeship funding: Emily Jones, head of research at the Learning and Work Institute

Ms Jones highlighted the fall in apprenticeship starts - and said that urgent action must be taken to boost apprenticeships for young people. 

She said: “This is especially important now, given the wider context and economic impact of the pandemic where there’s a real risk of a spike in youth unemployment, and we know that long term this can have a scarring effect on young people’s prospects.”

She said that any solution to boosting apprenticeships must include incentives for employers and suggested three changes to apprenticeship policy:

• All 16 to 18 apprenticeships should be fully funded through the education budget to ensure consistency with other education rates and employers would be able to hire young apprentices without using their levy funds.
• Employers should be given more flexibility to how they spend the levy and allow them to use their levy funds to pay for up to half the wage costs of apprentices aged 16 to 24
• SMEs should receive a grant for every apprentice they hire aged 16 to 24.

She said: “Getting written back to work requires urgent action, and we need to make sure this gives young people a way into work. We already have an apprentice programme. And so there are some quick wins to be made, just by changing the rules and giving employees more flexibility about how they spend their money.”