Sir Charlie Mayfield, chair of the UK Commission on Employment and Skills (UKCES) and chair of the John Lewis Partnership delivered a report on the UK’s skills system to parliament members and business leaders, on Tuesday 3 March.
The Growth Through People report, drawn up with the CBI and the TUC, is a 5-point manifesto for solving the country’s skills predicament, which recommends an entire rethink of how we train workers and advocates putting trade unions and employers in charge of this. It also suggests a transformation of the way schools and colleges prepare pupils for the working world.
Sir Charlie was joined by Liam Byrne MP (Shadow Minister of Universities, Science & Skills), Lord Baker of Dorking (former Conservative Education Secretary) and Lord Wrigglesworth (Treasurer of the Liberal Democrats), at the event which was convened by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Inclusive Growth – a cross-party group that works across the political spectrum to bring to light ways in which the UK’s success might be more fairly shared. The March
The UKCES chair said: “Old career paths are either vanishing or becoming much harder to navigate. Encouragingly, new paths are emerging, but they are far from achieving the scale and accessibility that’s needed to make a difference to enough people and to the economy at large. To address this, we need to see a new level of leadership from employers on skills – with government giving them the space and encouragement to do it.
“Effective leadership and strong collaboration over the long term is absolutely vital to this – that’s why I’m pleased to be speaking at the Inclusive Growth APPG event this evening. I hope we can build on the really strong and broad consensus I have already seen emerge around how to achieve economic growth that is sustained and fair – growth through people.”
Tom Phelan is an assistant editor at HRreview. Prior to this position, Tom was a staff writer at ITProPortal, where he travelled the globe in pursuit of the latest tech developments. He also writes for a variety of music blogs.
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