The world of work is changing rapidly and we need to make sure that we have the right education and training system in place.
It must prepare young people to adapt, but it must also provide ongoing support to help people build careers.
Comparisons from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development show that England is pretty good with the take-up of high-level skills, but mediocre at offering intermediate skills.
The prospect of Brexit means employers are having to be more open-minded about different types of talent and how they upskill people and maintain job satisfaction for their workforce.
High employment is ‘fantastic’
This big challenge needs well-thought-through policy solutions, which is why it is great that the Learning and Work Institute has launched a cross-party commission on education and employment opportunities for young people - otherwise known as the Youth Commission.
I was privileged to be asked to sit on the Youth Commission’s advisory board (if you have any thoughts on the topic please let me know in the comments section below).
Let’s start off by celebrating the positive.
Over the past decade, there has been a big increase in employment rates for those who are traditionally “employment-deprived”. Increased flexibility in the British labour market has allowed many stay-at-home parents, those who have reached retirement age, students and people with disabilities to work in a way that suits them.
There used to be 10-12 per cent of households where no one worked full-time. Now there are almost no such households. This is a fantastic base from which our workforce can build for the future.
An hour-glass labour market
Simultaneously, the Conservatives must not ignore two big structural problems that, if left unchecked, threaten to disrupt the good balance we have in our labour market. The first is wage growth, which over the past decade has been the slowest it has been in almost 200 years.
It matters because economic security is crucial to our wellbeing. From a day-to-day perspective, the wage ice age can seem inconsequential. The cost of consumer goods such as clothes, electronics, entertainment and food has stayed static or fallen. It is the cost of housing, health care and education - the things that give you stability and opportunity - that has sprinted ahead of most people’s ability to keep up.
The second is the development of an hour-glass labour market. The predominant prediction on technology’s impact is that mid-level work will be automated out of existence. This will allow more people to perform creative and advisory roles, but will also give less opportunity for those who undertake more mundane tasks to advance their career or earn a decent salary.
It is already estimated that 16 per cent of the workforce is in a precarious position - in low paid jobs which do not guarantee hours, and provide little savings and little freedom to get stable working conditions.
Lower participation in work-based routes
A lot of structural inequalities can be traced back to inequality in education and learning. Our education system is excellent for imparting knowledge but inadequate for building skills.
The UK compares well with other countries on the proportion of young people qualified to at least degree equivalent level. However, participation is dominated by a model of three-year, full-time undergraduate degrees at age 18 and there are still stark socioeconomic disparities in participation.
Other countries have a wider diversity of routes that can be accessed beyond age 18. The UK is a lowly 24th out of 32 OECD countries on the proportion of 25- to to 34-year-olds qualified to intermediate level, in particular, level 3. Again, it is lower participation in vocational and work-based routes that is the biggest difference.
The system is designed by those who assume people are able to choose. The government must understand the real drivers in choice and not ignore how important class, community and family are in the decisions young people make. If you and your family have no experience of further education, then you do not really have a meaningful choice in the UK system.
FE cuts hit community engagement
Currently, around 10 per cent of 16-year-olds choose vocational education and 83 per cent choose academic - such as A levels. This shows the massive cultural shift needed to make T levels a success.
Cuts in further education budgets have often hit community engagement programmes, and FE colleges are now strongly incentivised to compete for those who would attend college, rather than do outreach to attract those who are not aware of the benefits of learning.
The government needs to understand what skills and opportunities different people want. For example, polling for the Youth Commission shows that working-class people are more likely to want the opportunity of lifelong learning, whereas for young people work experience was by far the most popular policy option.
The education system, then, needs to create an environment where workers can learn so that the UK has a high-skilled workforce that is highly rewarded.
Nick Denys is head of policy for the Conservative Workers and Trade Unionists group and a local councillor in West London
