The head of the UK food and drink sector skills council has welcomed a call from a leading think tank to hand more control to employers in the way skills and training are funded by the government.
Improve chief executive, Jack Matthews, said recommendations made by the think thank Policy Exchange in its recently published Simply Learning report would slash bureaucracy, deliver real-term benefits to the economy and put employers in a position to determine the content and delivery of training.
Matthews said: “Everything this report calls for is common sense to people in industry. The problem since the Leitch Report is that everyone has fallen into the trap of chasing targets, particularly the number of qualifications everyone is getting. What really matters is not the qualifications themselves or the number people are getting - it is the skills being developed and the way they are used to boost performance and productivity in businesses, and the positive impact that has on the economy, that we should really be focusing on.”
The report proposes scrapping the government’s flagship Train to Gain scheme, which funnels public funding into NVQ training, and instead directing the money to help businesses set up their own in-house apprenticeship schemes and other accredited work-based training programmes. It also proposes creating individual learning accounts to help stimulate a market for innovative, aspirational training driven by demand.
“The food and drink industry would benefit greatly from seeing accredited in-house training - companies developing their own training programmes and apprenticeships - really get off the ground. No two food and drink companies have the same training and skills needs, which means that unless the content of training is determined by the employer, it is not going to tick all the right boxes.
“That is why we have developed the new Improve Proficiency Qualifications (IPQs). Employers will have the freedom to specify what their needs are and then their training professionals or with the help of their training provider will choose from thousands of job-specific units to design the most relevant learning pathway. IPQs are critical to the development of workplace competence, which supports productivity improvement and innovation on the job.”
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