We are not in normal times, that much is clear. How else to explain the chancellor of the governing Conservative party approaching the dispatch box in the House of Commons to deliver spending plans totalling £30 billion.
The economy has been kept on life support for the past few months. The Job Retention Scheme (JRS) has been one of the largest government interventions in economic policy in living memory. But it is not a policy that can remain in place in perpetuity.
Focus is now turning back to how the government can revive the economy over both the short and long term.
The challenges around unemployment, falling job vacancies, and declining productivity are greater now than at any point in the past 90 years.
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Background: Colleges should set up temporary job centres
In addressing all these challenges, colleges are willing and able to help – to meet the challenge Gavin Williamson set out in his speech last week. Further education colleges have a lot to offer. Much more than some policy makers might assume. The role that colleges play delivering training programmes of all shapes and sizes will be evident. But colleges can also harness their status as civically minded institutions at the heart of their communities and with links into hundreds of thousands of employers.
Skills and jobs hubs
Over the past few months, Collab Group has been working with our college members to think about how further education can contribute to the economic recovery effort and this week we sent those ideas to government in the form of a value proposition.
We have set out several areas where our colleges are well placed to leverage their expertise to create new opportunities; these include providing support to job seekers, providing upskilling and retraining programmes as well as job placement and recruitment support.
Collab Group supports the creation of what the CBI refers to as “skills and jobs hubs". As unemployment will likely rise once the JRS is ended in October, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) will need to increase its support capacity. This was reflected in the billion pounds given to the department by the chancellor last week. Over the past few years, Jobcentre Plus (JCP) has operated in an economy of near full employment. If we do experience a tsunami of unemployment on the same level as the 1980s, or perhaps worse, local JCP capacity will be critical.
So, we have made an offer to government to create the equivalent of the NHS Nightingale hospitals to support the unemployed. Collab Group colleges are offering to provide extra capacity to support temporary job centres or skills and jobs hubs. This has several advantages.
Firstly, college estates are usually located at their heart of their communities: easily identifiable and welcoming places. Secondly, the DWP is looking to rapidly expand the number of advisory work coaches. Collab Group colleges have a wealth of expertise in careers information advice and guidance services, so would be able to leverage the skills of specialists already existing within the colleges. And thirdly, colleges have excellent links with employers and understand their local labour markets well. They would be well placed to signpost job seekers to relevant training or employment opportunities.
The relationships that our colleges have with employers also underscore why they are so well placed to drive forward economic recovery efforts. The world of work is being reshaped at great speed and colleges will continue to work with employers to help them continue to grow and develop their people. Colleges understand how to build relationships and use data to respond to changing conditions.
