EDUCATION AND SKILLS | IN FOCUS


LEARNING LESSONS FOR BUSINESS


EDUCATION AND SKILLS


In 1965 the CBI was worried about the teaching of foreign languages, teachers’ understanding of the needs of business, and a lack of science and technology graduates compared with the UK’s competitor countries. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. While any company executive today would echo those concerns, the landscape of education has gone through wholesale change over the last 50 years.


The year that the CBI was founded saw one of the most dramatic reforms of secondary education in England. The Labour government required all local education authorities to formulate proposals to move away from selection at 11 and to replace the system of grammar, secondary modern and secondary technical schools with comprehensives. Eight years later the school-leaving age


was raised to 16 and, since then, governments have implemented various reforms such as the introduction of the national curriculum and standard assessment tests (SATs) in 1988, and the launch of the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) inspection regime for all schools. More recently there has been an explosion in the number of types of schools. The Labour government, elected in 1997 under the slogan “education, education, education”, established academy schools that were primarily aimed at


involving a private-sector sponsor to turn around a failing school. One of the first acts of the Coalition government was to enable all state schools to convert to academy status, taking them out of local education authority control. It then enabled parents and businesses to set up new schools under the “free schools programme”. One type of free school is the University


Technical College (UTC), which offers technically oriented, vocational courses of study to 14–19 year-olds and has a university as lead sponsor. By September 2014, there were 30 UTCs around the country, with over 20 more set to open by 2016. In the arena of tertiary education the major


reform was a 1992 Act that granted university status to former polytechnics and higher education institutions. University tuition fees were introduced at £1,000 a year in 1998 and were increased in England in 2004 to £3,000 and to £9,000 from 2012.


BACK TO SCHOOL All these reforms – 35 for school systems alone – were aimed at ensuring young people have a good standard of core knowledge and skills and are prepared for success in life and work. But many businesses believe that there is further to travel before those goals are met. At secondary school level, business has been concerned that setting targets for just 60 per cent


to reach expected levels in English and maths at the end of primary school, or for 40 per cent to get five or more GCSEs at A*–C, accepts the fact that too many children will fail to reach those standards. In 2012 the CBI published a report, First Steps,


which highlighted evidence that raising educational levels to those of the best in Europe could add one percentage point to growth annually – or £8 trillion during the lifetime of a child born today. Employers want to know that they can choose from a pool of school leavers who have the basic skills needed to start work. This has become especially important given the free movement of labour within the EU.


TRANSITION TO WORK One positive development has been the renewed focus on apprenticeships, a form of training work that has its historical roots going back to the 12th century. The year before the CBI was founded, the government established 10 industrial training boards covering some seven million people across the key sectors of the time such as shipbuilding, wool and ceramics. Hundreds of thousands of school leavers entered apprenticeships in the 1960s and 1970s but the system went into decline in tandem with the collapse of many of the industries at which they were aimed. »


Opposite: The CBI seeks changes to the exam system


121


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148  |  Page 149  |  Page 150  |  Page 151  |  Page 152  |  Page 153  |  Page 154  |  Page 155  |  Page 156  |  Page 157  |  Page 158  |  Page 159  |  Page 160  |  Page 161  |  Page 162  |  Page 163  |  Page 164  |  Page 165  |  Page 166  |  Page 167  |  Page 168  |  Page 169  |  Page 170  |  Page 171  |  Page 172  |  Page 173  |  Page 174  |  Page 175  |  Page 176  |  Page 177  |  Page 178  |  Page 179  |  Page 180  |  Page 181  |  Page 182  |  Page 183  |  Page 184  |  Page 185  |  Page 186  |  Page 187  |  Page 188  |  Page 189  |  Page 190  |  Page 191  |  Page 192  |  Page 193  |  Page 194  |  Page 195  |  Page 196  |  Page 197  |  Page 198  |  Page 199  |  Page 200  |  Page 201  |  Page 202  |  Page 203  |  Page 204  |  Page 205  |  Page 206  |  Page 207  |  Page 208  |  Page 209  |  Page 210  |  Page 211  |  Page 212  |  Page 213  |  Page 214  |  Page 215  |  Page 216  |  Page 217  |  Page 218  |  Page 219  |  Page 220  |  Page 221  |  Page 222  |  Page 223  |  Page 224  |  Page 225  |  Page 226  |  Page 227  |  Page 228  |  Page 229  |  Page 230  |  Page 231  |  Page 232