The government is “obsessed” with upskilling the population, prime minister Boris Johnson said today.
Speaking at an event in the West Midlands, he said the government planned to “escalate the value of practical and vocational education.”
“It’s in post-16 education where the differences across our society are starkest,” he said. “It cannot be right that Bath has 78 per cent of the population with a level 3 or equivalent qualification, and Bradford has only 42 per cent.
“And that’s why this government is so obsessed, the chancellor [Rishi Sunak], Robert Jenrick [secretary of state for housing, communities and local government), we’re all obsessed with skilling up our population. We love our universities, we believe that they are one of the great glories of this country. But we need to escalate the value of practical and vocational education, with its power to transform people’s lives.
“That’s why we’re rolling out T levels and apprenticeships, because we know that higher-level apprentices can earn more than the average graduate five years after graduation. That’s why we’re creating the lifetime skills guarantee so the adults can go on to get those level 3 qualifications.”
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On the levelling up agenda, Mr Johnson said: “It is vital to understand the difference between this project and levelling down.
Levelling up: The importance of technical and vocational education
“We don’t want to decapitate the tall poppies. We don’t think you can make the poor parts of the country richer by making the rich parts poorer.”
He added: “Levelling up is not a jam-spreading operation. It’s not robbing Peter to pay Paul. It’s not zero-sum, it’s win-win.”
“Levelling up can only be achieved with a strong and dynamic wealth-creating economy. There must be a catalytic role for government, and government is there to provide a strategic lead, but that requires consistency - not chopping and changing.”
A government White Paper on the plan for levelling up is expected in the autumn.
WorldSkills UK: how we can make a world-class skills economy
Dr Neil Bentley-Gockmann, chief executive of WorldSkills UK said: “We welcome the vision put forward by the Prime Minister to address regional imbalances in our economic geography and ensure that opportunities are more evenly spread across the UK and we wholeheartedly agree that a focus on human capital and skills will be crucial to deliver the government’s ambition to level up.
“At WorldSkills UK, we are already playing our part in boosting standards in skills in local economies across the UK. Through our Centre of Excellence, in partnership with NCFE, which was recognised for its ground-breaking approach to training in the government’s skills for jobs white paper for England, and our Innovation Network and Skills Development Hub, we are working with 90 per cent of UK colleges, with wide geographic coverage across the UK, to share world-class standards in teaching, learning and assessment.
“However, our international benchmarking data shows the UK needs to do more to catch up on other major global economies in valuing the high quality skills we develop. This means developing a world-class skills economy to equal our already world-beating knowledge economy so that we can compete with any country globally for foreign investment on the basis of technical skills as well as academic experience.
“That is why we have commissioned a new Skills Taskforce for Global Britain, led by former CBI Director General John Cridland with analytic support from consultancy EY, to answer how we can make a world-class skills economy a reality in the UK and we look forward to sharing our initial insights with the government ahead of the publication of its white paper in the Autumn.
“By pursuing world-class standards in technical education right across the UK, identifying how best to respond to the demand for high-quality skills from investors and making sure that we have confident ways of marketing our skills prowess, local leaders should be in a much better position to articulate the vision for their local economy and leverage the high quality skills we develop to attract valuable foreign investment to their communities, increasing employment prospects and living standards for as many people as possible.”
