Vocal Voices

On Monday the government announced that those without A-levels who lose their jobs in the post-Covid-19 economy will be able to get a free college course. Covid is being used as a bit of a red- herring, but it is good that the government has recognised that the world of work is changing. Unfortunately the offer as it stands is next to useless.

There are a few reasons why people do not get A-levels and the major one is that they are not academically gifted in order to get them. This leads them into the types of work many would describe as manual, unskilled or semi skilled. It is sad, but very few of them will be able to be upskilled to get into the new jobs hopefully coming on line.

Another group who are in great danger of job losses are those working in the 'digital paperwork' world or what were once known as clerical workers. They are 'skilled' but only in a limited sense and those skills are basically only transferable from company to company. It is hard to fathom what they, in their masses, could be retrained to do.

We will not know what courses are on offer for a while but the media favourites are in digital skills, construction and manufacturing. It will be interesting to see how many A-level type jobs are available in those sectors and what they are.

In other words trying to get back to what we used to have - a recognition that some young people have more interest in the world of work than the world of further education. Some want to get out there and get earning a wage, and more power to them for it.
I hope that the courses offered are OK.

It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation. You need work to get the experience, but you also need qualifications to get the work to get the experience. That is why "proper" apprenticeships worked.

I taught Literacy and Numeracy in the workplace for a local college so was out and about on site and in factories. My observations are thus:

Most people in manufacturing will already be at NVQ Level 2 so the only way is up and a HNC Eng is at A-level leading to HND Eng. The Maths, Physics and Technology are notoriously difficult and the cause of many dropping out.

In construction the higher grades are:

CPCS (plant operations) & SMSTS (site management) as well as things such as:

Level 3 IVQ Advanced Diploma in Plumbing
Level 3 IVQ Advanced Diploma in Refrigeration and Air Conditioning
Level 3 IVQ Advanced Diploma in Electrical Installation.

Digital Skills are a bit of a joke. Those working in clerical type work need an NVQ Certificate / Diploma in Business and Administration.

There will be those who are able to get the qualifications, but where are the jobs?

Agree about getting young people into the world of work rather than them going to Uni and racking up debts. There are loads of professional qualifications out there that are worth far more than many degrees.

cromwell wrote:In other words trying to get back to what we used to have - a recognition that some young people have more interest in the world of work than the world of further education. Some want to get out there and get earning a wage, and more power to them for it.
I hope that the courses offered are OK.

Agreeing 100%!!

Too many young people think that University is the way forward irrespective of whether they are academically capable or not. The only thing they can be sure of is coming out of University with a huge debt. More focus should be put on apprenticeship and BTEC courses which are achievable for most young people. Not everyone is capable of completing a three year University course and obtaining a good degree at the end of it.

Having read a bit more my reservation is that the new funding is mainly for those who were in work but lost their jobs.

It is not about those who have just left education without any A-levels. That type of support remains low-level and quite poor = NVQ Entry or L1. GCSE grades D - G. Worthwhile apprenticeships, BTEC Cert 1 or NVQ L2 courses are rare as hen's teeth and require you to be in work or have experience. They also require CGSE grades above C.

Personally I would like to see more done for school leavers with quality and relevant training.

Workingman wrote:Personally I would like to see more done for school leavers with quality and relevant training.

Me too. Kevin the guy who does our plumbing / gas is 67 next week. He was apprentice trained after leaving school at 15. He can weld, plaster, cement and do a bit of woodwork because he was taught to, as those skills were useful when putting plumbing and heating in. Some of the newer guys can't do this. They go on a course and know about boilers but that's about it.
So some proper apprenticeships would be nice. If it takes three years it takes three years; a good plumber is more use than someone who has done three years on a nothing degree.

Bloomin' Nora, I have just seen a speech given by Johnson and he agrees with us - too many people doing degrees that the economy does not need and then going into work that does not require a degree when they could have done equally stimulating training without racking up huge debts!

It will be interesting to see where all this goes, but it is a start.

I'm looking forward to it. There will be a skills squeeze shortly as the simple and easy movement of people from the mainland is constrained and, also, they simply don't want to come. That gap has to be filled somewhere.

I know that Poles had a hell of a time getting a plumber for a while, until they sucked them in from further east. We'll have to grow some of our own. Normally market pressures create their own solution (training). When I left College (for the second time), at the beginning of the 90's, 60% of all degrees in Scotland were in Computing. That has fallen drastically as the Indian back office has taken over.

Anyway, we shall see how it goes. Plumbing and CH is not all fun. I've just had to haul out a leaking connection I fitted and put a file to it and change the profile so I could seal it. I lost half a wall of plasterboard to that. My CH is in pieces as I replace two radiators in the bedrooms with heavy duty Cast Iron and I am fitting two new radiators in our recently extended attic space above the Workshops (including my office). It is dirty, heavy work, which takes time and can often be extremely frustrating. Not sure how our clean handed "university" educated youths would take to that?

Suff wrote:Not sure how our clean handed "university" educated youths would take to that?

Or the WFHers and furloughed who will be out of their jobs.

I was reading a blog this morning about WFH. The vast majority of them all claim to be more productive when WFH. Really? If the company baseload of work is still the same they cannot all be working more productively, some of them must be slacking. More productivity by the many = fewer staff needed = job loses.

One guy even claimed to be 35% more productive. I'd keep quiet about that if I were him as it means he was stealing wages when in the office. Also a lot of the jobs these clerical staff do can be offshored for lower wages = more job loses. My guess, and it is only a guess, is that these people are not going to retrain as plumbers, brickies, chippies or electricians.