The Forum of Private Business has called for greater focus on employability skills to bring schools and small businesses closer together. This is in response to a House of Commons Committee’s report into youth unemployment and the Government’s ‘Youth Contract’ and calls for better basic skills training to be placed at the heart of the national curriculum.
According to the Forum’s latest training and skills member panel, 48% of respondents welcomed the Government’s present focus on apprenticeships - as opposed to higher education - but 36% said the level of skills funding remains too low, while considerably fewer (13%) said the focus and level of skills funding is ‘about right'.
In terms of work-readiness, 68% reported ‘no problems’ when recruiting graduates, 62% employees aged over 50, 47% when taking on apprentices, 40% young people, 33% recent entrants to the UK and 27% those unemployed for over a year.
In June, the Forum’s Senior Policy Adviser Alex Jackman told the committee that many small business owners report a dearth of basic skills among young people leaving the education system – including literacy, numeracy and even employability attributes such as punctuality.
He said education providers and businesses must be able to work together more closely so that essential employment skills can be honed well before young people begin their working life. He suggested this could be delivered as part of the national curriculum, which would also help to ease the steep training costs currently facing firms.
"Employers are the number one consumer of the products of education, and they are rejecting school leavers because their standards are too low," said Jackman. "We are not referring to standards of academic education in this instance, but the more basic work skills all new starters should at that point in their lives already have drilled in to them. Things like being punctual, being able to deal with difficult customers or answering the phone politely.
"We believe, and so do our members, that schools should be doing more of this type of preparation work. This would not be difficult for schools to accomplish, but for a small business teaching new starters this on a one-to-one basis is labour intensive and therefore costly.”
"We are calling for the education system to engage employers more to achieve these aims, so they can learn exactly the types of skills pupils are lacking, and also to better prepare youngsters for the world of work.”