I’m writing this in response to Bedford College Group principal Ian Pryce’s typically thoughtful piece on why the FE White Paper is wrong about the role of employers.

Time will tell whether the Skills for Jobs White Paper changes the history of colleges in England or barely merits a footnote, so, rather than spending time arguing over what the White Paper said or meant, I want instead to address Ian’s core argument that the government is wrong to give primacy to employers.

Ian is blunt, and asks: “Do we actively want to address employer need?”

To which I say: “Why ever would we not?”

Ian Pryce’s blog: Education shouldn’t be about pandering to employer need

Skills: Third of adults ‘worry about a second career’

Need to know: The key proposals from the Skills for Jobs White Paper

When I chaired the board of my local college, I was a keen advocate of our English for speakers of other languages (Esol) and students with learning difficulties and disabilities (SLDD) programmes, in both of which we excelled, arguing in these columns for a national strategy for the former, and in our boardroom for more investment in the latter. Of course, it matters to get those things right and to give those students the best possible chances for the future.

But the vast majority of college students are looking to improve their prospects in the jobs market. “I want to get a better job” is a wholly worthy aim - not the whole point of education by any means, of course not - and unless you create your own, that means working for someone else. Employers matter because they’re the ones with the jobs.

The importance of thinking long-term on skills

The real question is about short-term versus long-term - for employers every bit as much as it is for individuals.

If you’re an employer and you want someone to mind your widget-making machine, maybe even to set it and mind it, a cheap-and-cheerful not-one-hour’s-training-more-than-we-need course will do the job just fine. But that’s a very dated caricature of modern employment. And it’s a very short-term approach.

There are rogues and fools out there, but we should not let them dictate our course.

There are other employers who struggle to lift their eyes above short-term pressures, and they deserve our help. I spent some time today helping to shape a guide to apprenticeships for port employers. We need to do that because the process is too complex, and that complexity is putting them off. This is not about spoon-feeding the lazy, much less helping them to find a way around tiresome constraints: it’s about showing them that what they really want to do - to grow their own - is possible.

There are also employers, many of them, who truly see the value of investing in their people. Like the companies on the River Thames who made a point of adding a week-long course in leadership and management to the Boatmaster apprenticeship (not a cheap addition) because they thought that was a better way to prepare their apprentices for long-term success.

This is not the behaviour of narrow-minded, penny-pinching, short-termist rogues. This is true investing in people. And these employers deserve better than the regular drumbeat of snide assumptions that they’re up to no good that we hear from so many in colleges (though never, I must be fair, from Ian himself).

Investing in our learners’ futures

There’s a lovely story about Richard Nixon’s dog chewing the carpet in the Oval Office while he was talking to Henry Kissinger. Nixon gave the dog a biscuit to distract him.  “Well done... Mr President,” said Kissinger, “you’ve just taught your dog to chew carpet.”

And despite the fine words in a succession of White Papers, that’s exactly what the government has done throughout my career (all parties; this isn’t a party political point).

They’ve offered employers an ever-changing menu of short-term bribes that do everything to encourage the wrong behaviour (like waiting for the next bribe) and nothing to encourage the investment mindset we need. It’s one of the worst failures of economic policy in my lifetime.

The prize for all of us is to get more, many more, employers out of the second group I talked about and into the third, shifting up a gear from holding back to investing. I want colleges as allies working to just that end. Working, let’s be in no doubt, to make sure that their students get the best possible future in work.

Keep our eyes on the long-term and there is no conflict between the best interest of employers and the best interest of students.  

Iain Mackinnon is a commissioner with the Maritime Skills Commission. He is writing in a personal capacity