Skills for Jobs White Paper

What does the Skills for Jobs White Paper mean for Craft?

The Skills for Jobs White Paper

The Government published its Skills for jobs: lifelong learning for opportunity and growth White Paper on 22 January. The intention of the measures is:

to address the UK’s historical skills gaps
to increase the country’s productivity
to tackle the impact of the pandemic on the economy.

The measures include:

giving employers a central role in designing almost all technical courses by 2030 to link education and training to skills needed. Local Skills Improvement Plans will support this by bringing together employers, colleges, other providers and local stakeholders.
boosting the quality and uptake of higher technical qualifications by introducing newly approved qualifications from September 2022. The majority of post-16 technical and higher technical education and training (including T Levels) will be aligned to employer-led standards set by the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education. Higher technical education (levels 4 and 5) will be reformed with a new approval system based on employer-led standards.
introducing a Lifelong Loan Entitlement from 2025 for training and retraining throughout adults’ lives (the equivalent of four years of post-18 education) to make it as easy to get a loan for a higher technical course as it is for a university degree.
using a new £2.5 billion National Skills Fund to support adults to upskill and reskill – so all adults achieve their first full advanced (level 3) qualification as part of a Lifetime Skills Guarantee.

The White Paper sits alongside Government proposals to reform post-16 technical and academic qualifications at levels 3, 4 and 5 (including removing a number of qualifications), consultation on outline content for T levels, (including the Craft and Design T Level, to which we responded) and changing the focus of higher education (explicitly excluding creative subjects from high cost funding, whilst increasing specialist arts institutions’ funding).

What does this mean for craft?

We’ve long argued that there is a need to increase the diversity of routes into craft, to increase both vocational and academic routes into practice, but also to tackle the low numbers of government funded craft apprentices and the funding challenges for independent apprenticeships. So, the White Paper could provide welcome opportunities for those working in craft.

But the new vocational pathways need to be in place before some qualifications and higher education courses disappear. The change in focus of higher education institutions could force them into making difficult decisions about resourcing and running courses. And the Government needs to follow through on its commitment (paragraph 27) to work with employers in the creative sector to address the potential barriers to participation of businesses with flexible employment patterns. So craft businesses and makers need to be supported effectively to participate in and contribute to the employer role.

What is Crafts Council doing?

In our recent meetings with DfE, DCMS, Arts Council England, the Creative Industries Council and the Creative Industries Federation we are raising questions, as well as gathering evidence from across the sector.

If you have any comments do get in touch with us at research@craftscouncil.org.uk.

Here’s an opinion piece on the White Paper from Sara Whybrew, Director of Policy and Development, Creative & Cultural Skills

Image Credit: "Making Together" Craftspace workshop. Image by Liz Ord

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The Skills for Jobs White Paper

What does this mean for craft?

What is Crafts Council doing?

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