Welcome to to this, the the second of C Levelling Up lecture series.
And this session is about skills and skills that are appropriate for a society that provides good jobs for wherever you live in the country,
basically for a large majority of the population.
And I want to introduce three people who are a superbly qualified between them to talk about this process.
So I will introduce first the the the Baroness who is going to chair the whole process tonight of the discussion,
which is Baroness Allison Woolf and Baroness Woolf, has been Baroness Professor Wolf.
I'm sure there's some other titles as well, but that she has two different hats on and she's speaking tonight with only one of those hats.
On that hat is as a professor at King's College London, where she is a world authority on on this whole subject of skills.
And she's had a lifetime of work on this other hat, we should say,
is that she spends part of her week in the policy unit at 10 Downing Street, where she also advises on a very similar topic, shall we say.
But tonight she is speaking purely in her capacity as an academic, and that is important to to recognise.
Sitting next to her is. So, Chris, husbands and Sir Chris Husbands is an academic,
but he's speaking in his capacity as as vice chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University and Sheffield Hallam University,
is generally the top rated university in the country for student engagement, both for the learning experience that students get while at university,
but also in the interaction between the university and the city region in which it's located.
So he's going to be really speaking in this capacity as vice chancellor rather than as an academic in his own right.
But of course, he's allowed to straight into a wider area of expertise.
And then I'm extremely excited, honoured that that Ian Stewart has somehow found the time to come here.
Ian is the chief executive of HSBC, which is the first of the major banks to relocate out of London to a provincial city,
Birmingham, and is also a major employer in South Yorkshire.
And so even as here in three capacities tonight,
but the first capacity is that he is a major employer of skilled labour in Birmingham and in South and in South Yorkshire.
And so he's the pioneer of a major firm employing skilled labour outside the magic circle of the southeast.
And so in his capacity as an employer in a major provincial city,
this is a really exciting he's pioneered and we want to learn about that pioneering role.
But HSBC is also got a huge footprint in the Midlands and South Yorkshire.
It is a major bank operating with Sony's small and medium firms in those regions.
And so the second rule is he's at the top of a massive group of people deciding on loans for these SMEs.
And it's in that capacity where he is also very important. Have these SMEs got the skills needed to prepare a convincing case for a loan?
And that's enormously important because SMEs outside the Southeast have got to grow and at the moment,
the finance for some years is very heavily concentrated in the southeast.
So, for example, two thirds of all venture capital finance research,
and he's just goes to the south reserves in the South East because the financial system is so heavily concentrated in London.
So these are the the roles that we're particularly excited to hear Ian talk about.
And on that note, let me hand it to Baroness Wolf, who in her professorial capacity will guide the discussion forward.
Thank you very much. Thank you, everybody.
I thought that it might be helpful to everybody if I started the proceedings off by just giving us a quick history tour.
In a sense, because skills, the need for more skills, whether or not there's a skills crisis, this is something that people talk about constantly.
But it's also very easy to talk past each other.
And also, I think, very easy to miss the fact that while there are some areas where we have major challenges,
there are also some areas where actually we do very well.
And first of all, I think it's quite helpful to go back and be look at what what this country was like not that long ago.
So Parfux have the first slide.
I think it's really important to realise how rapidly this country has changed and the world has changed and the impact this has had,
both on the skills that we need. The infrastructure that provides them, so if you went back in a village just to the 1970s,
a very large proportion of school leavers who left school at 16 and most people did went into apprenticeships.
University was for a tiny minority.
Most professions, which these days of graduate people trained through articles, which was factory of homeless apprenticeship.
And it was a very different world.
I mean, in the context of tonight, our concern about levelling up this was a a more level land manufacturing, manufacturing, employment.
More important, they were much more geographically dispersed.
And also, this was a period when Towns still had, as they had had since the beginning of the century.
Typically what was often known as the tech rather than further education college.
And that was where apprenticeships did. Their apprentices did their off the job training.
This was these were very vocational institutions. And the thing I'd like to emphasise, they were very, very closely linked to local employers.
If you were running such a college, you got some of your income from usually local government,
not central government, but you got a lot of it directly from your local employers.
Now today jumping over a lot of very messy and complicated policy in between.
Apprenticeships are very difficult to obtain the highly desired by many young people that difficult to obtain.
They are better than they were 10 years ago, but they are in short supply.
But what we haven't said is we have a mass higher education system, and I think it's impossible to discuss the challenges of our current skill system
without being aware that we have created a gigantic higher education system,
as have most countries in the world, the developed world. And so we've got about 50 percent of the cohort attending.
That's not where with high in the OECD tables, we're not particularly unusual.
And compared to the 1980s in the nineteen nineties at the same time, adult and part time participation are down.
We've gone to a highly centralised system of and adult education funded by a local by central government managed by central government.
Although there's been some devolution to the mayoral combined authorities and the numbers in these
in in the numbers who are actually taking further and adult education courses has been going down.
And last but by no means least, of course, the economy has been transformed, so manufacturing has declined again.
This is not just this country I, we are no different from, for example, France in this respect,
but our manufacturing has declined and our globally competitive industries are increasingly service industries,
and they're concentrated in a few parts of the country. So this is a massive change.
And I think it's not surprising in many ways that our skills infrastructure has struggled to keep up supply.
So have we had a long standing skills crisis? Well, yes and no.
British governments have been obsessing about Germany since the middle of the 19th century.
It's also true that we have had a huge upheaval in the economy.
Manufacturing shrunk, regional colleges have grown to some extent.
Skills actually make things worse rather than better.
Employers consistently do report major skills shortages,
and the area which has shrunk really dramatically is the area of mid-level technical education.
And that's somewhere where we are really quite distinctive that if you looked at many of our competitor countries,
what one thinks of a sort of technician mid-level.
Skills and courses and provision are very poor, but also we have to be aware that know our economy has continued to grow,
hasn't done very well since the 2008 crash, but we have gone on growing.
You know, it's we are not poor. Quite the opposite.
We are globally competitive in a range of industries and universities are excellent.
They rank extremely high on all measures and they do now educate.
The overwhelming majority of our professions, a few accountants have hung in, but otherwise this is a huge shift.
So, you know, this is skills and on this we are we are doing pretty well.
Next slide. So where are the problems?
Well, if you look at lawyers and designers and economists and research scientists, I mean, no, we don't have a skill shortage.
We're doing pretty well.
We may have short term problems, but lots of competition, everybody chasing the best, but there is no problem in the skill system about it.
We are not good at responding to rapid increases in demand and skill changes.
If you look at the whole digital area again, I'm not saying the rest of the world is doing great either,
but there are genuine, pervasive skill shortages and we don't seem to be very good at responding to them fast.
We have a long standing and worsening shortage of technicians.
We have a severe shortage of what used to be called skilled trades,
cross level three construction, where we've actually set up a sort of vicious circle.
It seems to me where you rely on immigration to solve this and then the school system because again and then you rely on immigration more.
And we also have HGV drivers. But you know, honestly, I don't think that's an issue.
I mean, of course, it's an issue if you're trying to get stuff delivered.
But I think we get too hung up on the idea that everything should happen instantly.
So the skills shortage that's had the most headlines of the time that we're making this podcast is HGV drivers.
I suspect if anybody wants to this in three years time, we'll get what they signed.
But this is what I want to underline as well. We we are doing fine at the top, and in many ways, of course, we could do even better.
But you know, honestly, we're trying to find many of the top and then in the top end skills,
we are not doing well in what's known as non advanced adult education,
and we have been for the rest of the century flatlining at best and getting worse at worst.
So, you know, our apprenticeship numbers, which back in the 1970s were very, very healthy.
You know, there are things that have got better.
If you unpack that a bit, you'll find there are probably too many people who are older and deployees rather than young.
But you know, it's not it's not going off, it's actually going down.
And adult education is also going down. And finally, I think last night, those two slides, we have low levels of investment in skills by employers.
It's an interesting question why, but we do. We had over half of male school leavers entering apprenticeships today.
We have only about five percent of the 18 year old cohort at best, the three percent of last in 2020.
And government surveys show consistent declines in the volume of employment, investment in training and a lot of employers do do is statutory.
And meanwhile, in our university sector, if I could have just the last slide,
we have basically abandoned this mid-level what used to be and the HNC level training barely exists.
We have huge numbers of people doing undergraduate degrees and very large numbers of people doing postgraduate degrees.
And we have a great hold in the middle.
So let me stop that because I think that what that hopefully brings home is the fact that we have a very, very.
Out of kilter system, it's not a total failure, but it's out of kilter and it has.
Got to this point alongside, and I would say it's not been unrelated to the the rapid shifts in the economy that have
actually made a certain number of high skill service industries extremely important,
but where a large number of things, including the skill system,
have not done anything to offset this in areas where the older industries are declining and where we've
had developing this growing divergence between some parts of the country and other parts of the country.
But at the same time, it's not just in those areas that we have a problem because we are also just generally
facing a situation in which there are real skill shortages and a key part of the economy.
And the thing that is most evident, at least to me, is this I would always say flight from,
but certainly an ability to deal with the need for people who are really very skilled but not best served by trading in universities.
And those are also the skills which tend to be very, very closely linked to changes,
often quite rapid changes in the technology and requirements of employers.
And one of the things that strikes me most is this contrast between, you know,
not a utopian past for the past in which our system was much more closely linked to local employer,
local employer needs and looking towards mom than it is today. And the fact that those are the sorts of jobs which people use to.
Effectively pay for the training cells, and with those are now.
The training is paid for by government if it's paid for Toll. A lot of the time is not paid for a toll.
So I'd like at this point to to turn to my two experts on my left.
Chris, first and and and and particularly sort of interested in your perspective because you.
Run attempt to run a very, very large university, and we both work in Mecca.
Your arrest is one that has that started off with a very, very specific vocational orientation,
has has developed over time and is very plugged into its its locality.
And I'd like to ask first, Chris from that perspective and then in from the perspective,
an employer working across the across the country, but but also still retaining some presence in the southeast.
I think, you know, looking at this, looking at the scene here, first of all,
do do you agree with with my basic diagnosis that we have a top off that's functioning?
Not perfectly. I mean, I could expand four hours on the problems with universities,
but but functioning pretty well and driving driving the prosperity that has been
genuine in decades and another bit which is really not functioning well and above all,
not serving local needs. So, Alison, thank you very much.
I'm always struck whenever I listen to you, but by how much I agree with your analysis, I think that's broadly right.
I'm going to just try and take in two or three directions to point out the analysis.
I think there are some slightly different things going on here.
We have made some national policy decisions, which I think have not helped, and they've not necessarily been the major drivers here.
But at a time when the economy is changing, they've not helped. So for, for example,
the 2012 sea settlement for universities makes it very difficult for students to borrow for less than a three year undergraduate programme.
So, so and what we what we saw after 2012 was this massive collapse in part time participation in higher education.
So think of that as a reduction in flexibility. And I think that's it was David Willetts, who was the architect of the reforms,
says that that was an unintended consequence and he's right about that.
And I think that we're saying, you're right to say that the problem is not in the in the top half of the system, that by and large,
the university system is functioning well, has responded to market signals as regards this,
but it seems invasive, perhaps a bit less flexible they should be.
But by and large is working well for me, the real difficulties white light in three areas.
The first is if we look at the sectors of the economy where you identify skill shortages, they're quite different.
So in digital, it's absolutely clear that the the the economy is moving faster than the capacity of this or any skill system to respond to it.
And that's a real challenge for skill systems in this country and internationally.
And it probably means we need to rethink really hard about what's the vehicle for the delivery of skills and a very fast moving parts of the economy.
I don't think the same applies in engineering.
I certainly don't think the same applies in construction, but a bit in construction with some of the intelligent construction work.
Not entirely. So there's a big problem there. There's a second absolutely enormous problem, which is more character, more unique to this country,
which is this if you happen to be academically able young person your route through the
school school system is clearly mapped out as his GCSE and A-level at his university,
if you will, different in any respect. The system is not clear,
and the routes through the system for the I'm going to use the phrase bottom 50 percent for the low retaining 50 percent are less clear.
And what is particularly challenging is that they become even less clear.
The lower down that distribution you are. And that's just a crazy way of constructing a system.
It ought to be the other way around the academically most attaining what have the most difficult route because they're the most able to navigate it.
And the academic elite, the least able should have the clearest, clearest route through the third bit is that, as you said,
we we used to have a system which was well structured around tax free collisions, as we now call them around polytechnics and universities.
And we have, by and large an institutional structure that is geared for an economy that no longer exists.
Now digging our way out of that, there's not a single route out of it.
But I think holding those three different problems in our heads is partly what we need to do.
Very much in. Over to you.
Do you recognise these problems and as an employer hiring, not across the whole spectrum because there are obviously a lot of jobs you don't have.
Is there something that you recognise and all that institutional changes we should be making?
Or where would you start at a grand plan or even a local plan?
Well, thanks very much, Alison.
I really enjoyed your slides and it's quite funny because of a couple of pieces there that really resonate with me personally.
So I left school at a very young age and went into technical college.
I went to night school to get my qualifications.
I was a technical college and it was it was a really good establishment and I think it's a good establishment and it was very helpful to me.
But it was all mature students that were there. It was it was people who were in their 20s, 30s and older who were there for further education.
And it's interesting what you're saying about that because my motto if you if you've got an academic background or parents that push you now,
there's a big part of your own parents as well on parenting about how you're pushed in a certain direction and it is very clearly mapped out for you.
And then you've got this huge population who it's obviously not so well, not too far.
But let me tell you what we try and do as a business. If you could get in quite deep here about are you getting taught the right things at schools?
But the first thing I look for when I'm employing is a really good attitude,
and I think a really good attitude is crucial for us because what we end up getting is we get a very nice canvas and buy a canvas.
I mean,
generally well-educated people and we take people very young who we would bring into our apprenticeship programmes and we've got graduate programmes,
et cetera. But first and foremost, I would say that is the canvas.
And then we spend years putting layers and layers of paint on that canvas by doing our own in-house training and development.
And some of the things that we train on today are a complete mind shift from where we used to what we used to focus our training on.
So we will train today, people on resilience. I don't know for people in the room or people watching, but if you're if you're in your 50s, as I am,
you know, nobody ever taught me anything on resilience that was just something that was never done.
We train people in empathy because we think empathy is a really important skill nowadays.
So the skills that we're training people in are very, very different to what was maybe done before.
I really take on board a point by which just on speed, the world operates around speed now,
and that causes all sorts of problems because we move billions of currency around the globe every single day.
But it's a frozen of paradise, so we've got to train people to spot fraudsters operating as well.
These were these were things that even 10 years ago were not in our banking environment.
And of course, with the much less use of cash than traditional ways of being educated,
the Bank three was really the tail or work in a bank is diluted quite low over recent years.
What we've got to think about going forward, I think, is the needs of our customers and what are going to be there needs going forward.
And you have to train for those needs.
And if I if I was really, really clever, I would tell you what those needs are going to be over the next 20 years.
Of course, we can't do that. So you're always trying to second guess what the needs are going to be.
But certainly in my industry, they will be quite different to what we are 20 years in the past.
But people are still going to want to buy a home if we still want to be insured.
They're still going to want health policies.
All in all, the sort of basic products I think will still be with us, but they'll be quite different and they'll want these products immediately.
So. So it's how you deliver products in a very safe way at the time that the customers want it.
So the skills that I need are quite technical. I'm very struck by two two things that you as well.
I want to start by being something which since you both said I think in different ways, Chris,
you were talking about the fact that when things move very fast, it's really hard for any organised skill system to keep up with them.
And I think that's right, because first of all, organised school systems are inherently bureaucratic and that's just that's just the case.
I mean, if we go back to to the favourite favourite preoccupation of this country since, you know, since the great tech special, how to do it.
But you know, if you're going to have an organised skill system with.
And the thing which produces qualifications or licences or anything of the sort and which has public money in it,
particularly in this day of extreme accountability, you end up with something which is often very high quality, but often actually quite rigid.
And I think you're right.
I think you see if you take the examples that I had, which is sort of rapidly changing versus things where there's a clear skill set,
we just don't have enough of them engineering technicians, plumbers, whatever.
I think they all different. And what you were talking about in this large company, which does do a very great deal of training,
it has to and it's a quick two and and it does it now.
One of the things, which is very depressing and, you know, pretty clearly established,
is that the employers in this country do not spend on average a lot of training.
They don't spend a great deal and. I think there are probably a number of reasons for this.
Some, some good, some bad, but there will always be good reasons.
And so I think that, you know, thinking then not just about a huge and successful company like yours,
but thinking about smaller and smaller companies, smaller organisations, some of which may be very small, some of which will be sort of mid-sized.
How do we make it possible for them to to to keep up to date?
I think this is the highly related also tipped to pull your your preoccupation, not preoccupation.
But you know what this is all about.
If you're going to level up, then then there is a real challenge for companies and employers in small places who are also in, you know, small.
Medium. Moderately large, but not large companies, because you are busy keeping yourself alive.
Is he keeping your self employed? Your first duty is to keep it.
Keep the thing working, keep keep your staff employed,
keep your customers up and actually generating training that keeps you up to date with the rapidly changing economies is very hard,
and I would like to come back in later to the issue of how do we actually make technical,
further education colleges more overtly linked into into local employers.
But. What I think comes out very clearly from what you have both said is that the has to a successful company,
however tiny has to change, has to train, has to be know what it is that's going on out there and has to move with it.
And I do think that's hard and I'm just to tell a couple of and some slightly depressing anecdotes, if you like.
A couple of years ago, I did some quite interesting focus groups with small companies asking much about digital skills.
These were these were successful small companies.
On average, they would be employing sort of 10 to 15 people could be a couple of coffee shops, could be a travel agency, if not mostly manufacturing.
That was a small manufacturing company. And I think that I thought they were they were good.
They were good. But except when it was statutory, they didn't really try much.
And partly it was because they would just say they weren't going fast.
They were managing, they were doing OK. I think partly it was that particular small company.
It's very hard to just release people and send them off for a course. I mean, you know, you have to keep the price up.
And it was partly that they they just didn't really know how to start what it was that they should be doing.
So they think they chucked on. So what do we do?
I. Well, you get those. Well, I think one of the so many sad things about the pandemic,
but one of the great things about the pandemic is how well take no technology has walked has been phenomenal.
Well, it's what we we've got two hundred and forty thousand employees globally, and I think we had 230000 working from home within about three weeks.
So it was unbelievable how well technology work.
I've got, of course, here in this house, I might be miles along with this, but I I think we're going to move in a very different place.
And I hope we do because society needs this. And it's what it's one very simple world, which is sheer.
I I think there's an absolute need for a bank the size of us to share an alarming out.
And I think with technology, you know, you can do that much more easily.
And I think what you saw through the pandemic is, you know,
when people are putting their minds together to come up with a drug to to get us through this very difficult period,
hundreds of thousands of people came together for the greater good.
And I genuinely believe people like us who have got the infrastructure, we have got the capabilities.
We've we've got to share that with small businesses because if you think about the UK and the UK is a very interesting market.
Six million businesses in the UK five point seventy five point eight million are small businesses, of which 5.5 million are owner operated.
So one person, you know, so it's it really is this movement of people.
They don't have time to go and do all these other things they would like to do, but they they can spare an hour to go online.
In the evening, they can find time to dial into an information session.
Companies like us have got to share all this technical knowledge that we've got
to allow others to expand and we just have to stop put our arms around it.
And I think that would be a major step forward. We should do it for society if nothing else.
And is there anything that would encourage perhaps less civic minded CEOs than you to do it?
I think people are beginning to learn the lesson. The biggest one that's going to change over the next 20 years is climate.
What all finding are we on climate? I was in Glasgow last week.
It called I was hugely energised by the quality of the conversation, but I really did get the feeling of of we have to share.
And there was one topic that came out in the, I would say, the suburbs of the conversation and that was around food.
And the golden rule of a government, any government is you must feed your population.
And there was an awful lot of conversation about food shortages coming.
We have to share the knowledge to make sure we feed our population has nothing to do with a bank really evolving.
It was a very instance out conversations that companies last week.
So I'm going to pick up all of that, which went out before the pandemic, when I have my job involved in travelling a lot,
every time I get off a plane in the airport, I saw that fuel bank, which invariably set the world's local bank.
And I think there is. It may not be your flight anymore, but there is something around there.
The problem that you identified is a multifaceted problem. There's no big solution to it.
There may be a series of local solutions,
and you get to slightly different places depending on whether you start from a business, a skills provider, a young person.
So I think I think there's not a big answer to this Suzanne answer.
Well, there is an answer that works for digital and for engineering and for TV and for vehicles,
but it takes you down the road of a highly regulated skill system, and then they're all inflexibility flexibility in that.
I can only on this talk about,
and Paul invited me to do so the things that we do as a university and we're a university operating in a city region of 45000 SMEs.
So we we run something called our AI lab, which is really about giving students within university opportunities to start their own business,
and we will give them lots of support on that.
We've been the Sheffield Innovation Programme that provides skills and innovation development to now several hundred Sheffield City Region SMEs.
Every department in my university has an employer advisory board is there to
make sure that the curriculum we offer is as industry focussed as it can be.
Every degree programme in every subject in the university has work related learning and work experience embedded at every level,
trying to shorten the lines between the skills provider and the market out there.
Is that enough? No, it is not. Is that hard work?
Yes, it is. But we have to find ways. I think it is.
If that's the word sharing, it is about bringing together the supply side and the demand side.
It is productive and creating relationships as possible, accepting that there is not going to be a single solution that works in every sector.
OK, so sitting here and listening to you guys, it sounds like it should be all fine because, you know,
we've got civic minded employers who are ready to share and, you know, making universities which are plugged into their local economy.
So. So what is going wrong?
Oh, so, so so so I want to go back if I can.
So I think one thing on your slide where I think you're slightly longer 50 percent of the cohort participating.
So I think the the 18 year old participation in a tree is about thirty eight.
Thirty nine percent. In this country, 50 percent will will happen at some point.
The distinctions I'm sorry to sound slightly academic about this because that
means that the 60 percent of the population that universities are not getting to,
however, will get and they may be. So there's something what is happening to the to the to the layers below the higher education population.
And that's a big challenge. And that's where I think the skills, architecture, institutional architecture is very weak.
You showed the declining participation over the over the last few years.
That map for that graph would look pretty similar if that was the unit of resource in SC, which has also declined markedly.
And so you've got very, very stressed institutions that are really, really struggling.
So I think if we if we want to go back, it's the. Does that something is wrong?
Yes, it does, it does. It is not top black line.
If I say that three, well, that's the decline in the units of resource.
So we have significantly stressed parts of the skill system, which we absolutely need if we're going to be delivering on those mid-level skills.
And we're not A.I.M. technically, but we're not then articulating the relationships between different parts of the skill system.
So you get into the track that leads you to university and it's a trend line.
You get into the track that doesn't lead you to university and it's also a tremlett.
And that doesn't make very much sense in a world in which the skill demands are changing quickly
and jobs are going to change three four five six times in the course of a working life.
So for me, that's the place that needs focus. We've got a system, we've got parts of the system that are significantly stressed.
They need to be distressed and we need to articulate better the relationships between different parts of the system.
Nice follow through on that, because it's really a question also for free, and so suppose you are an employer,
possibly in Birmingham or Sheffield, but possibly somewhere where smaller and you are finding it very hard to get really good skilled employees.
Know, obviously attitude matters. But but truthfully, it's not the only thing that matters, is it?
So you'll find it very you're finding it very hard.
Where would you feel you could go for help in in actually identifying people who were coming through with the relevant
skills that might then come and apply to you or even to put on something which special a medium sized employer,
but rather than a very big one,
it was part of the country where you have a relatively small footprint who would actually be able to to to do something more substantial for you.
I mean, where would be your first port of call? Well, I think I think we've got to be very honest with ourselves.
Some people just will not move to another part of the world.
So, I mean, if you look at what's happening with BBC right now, you're trying to move their colleagues to Manchester.
You read about it, but we're not moving. When we moved out in UK head office from London to Birmingham, we moved twelve hundred roles.
We did not leave twelve hundred people. We moved about 100 people.
Let's be honest, OK, that's how many people wanted to go because they didn't want to move outside London.
It was just as I've worked in London, all the jobs in London and central, which means you've really got to start planning.
We started planning about four years ago and if there was a rule that we knew
was going to be in Birmingham in the future rather than recruit into London,
we recruited into Birmingham.
And that was a bit clunky for a period of time because people wanted to be in this head office environment and they weren't.
They were they were somewhere else until the head office came to them.
I think what it gets slightly more difficult. And if I think about the part of the world that I grew up and I grew up in,
a village of twelve hundred people gained a certain skill set is quite difficult because people maybe did not want to work there.
This is of technology I think is a huge enabler. You can you can dial in, you can go online, you can get some of the skills.
But at some point you've also got to be quite brave and say this if it's manufacturing,
if it's if it's services, you may have to uproot yourself to go to where the skills are.
And I think a lot of people are quite against that.
But there is a reality check at some point we are is just not going to happen in the part of the world that you're in, and that's quite difficult.
But I think it is reality. I mean, you've got Birmingham.
I mean, Birmingham is also, you know, a pretty big place. I mean, or Sheffield, I mean, my sense is that's probably not really hugely problematic.
Am I wrong? We've got we've got banking Chester in the North West, we've got a in Leeds as well.
So the one of the reasons we went to Birmingham was we didn't want to cannibalise talent in some of these other places.
I mean, we have to be sensible about this. Let me just because I asked a lot by journalists, Oh, why don't you move the ball?
And we never get the talent that is very insulting. OK, it is very, very insulting.
Oh, we have I. No. Well, I'll caveat that we've had no problem getting talent generally.
We've had a couple of pockets where it's been quite difficult. So if if I loo Typekit marketing, for example, and we don't have a huge marketing team,
but getting marketing people in Birmingham for whatever reason is quite difficult because there's a real hotbed of it in London.
But please don't tell me you won't get talent in Birmingham. We manage to hire amazing talent of amazing talent and in Leeds and in Chester,
and we've got 3000 people in Sheffield and which you believe it the most. The biggest area of expertise in Sheffield is digital.
So a real techies are in Sheffield, so thank you very much.
That chief technology officer. Well, you know,
but you have if you want really specialist skills and you've got to know on your doorstep
that you've got quite cold features coming into you and that's the education establishment.
We are very lucky in the UK.
We're privileged to live in a country like the UK where there's an abundance of education establishments who produce highly talented individuals.
We've we've just not been as good maybe in the last few years because banking is not as attractive it maybe as it once was.
I think it's an incredibly attractive industry, but I would say that.
But you know, you're competing now with big media companies, et cetera, who who offer employees something slightly differently.
So we've got to compete for that talent, and that's what it gets more difficult for.
SMEs is competing for that town. I was going to say this is.
It's a real issue, and I think it's an incredibly difficult issue.
And I mean, we're talking about skills, but it's also just, you know, other people competing for those skills.
So. So I mean, I think this is a real challenge. And let me push Chris a bit and actually pause you because you said that there are a large,
you know, the the you're saying we've got a wealth of institutions.
But earlier you said, Chris,
I think maybe I misjudged you that you thought the institutional structure was wrong since you show structural was actually just the funding.
That's wrong. Well, that's OK. You're right.
I I think I said that the positive change of institutional structure was stressed, and I think that there are ways in which we could,
with relatively small amounts of funding, dries much better collaboration across across different institutions.
And the experience over the last 20 years is relatively small.
Amounts of money that are tied to specific outcomes of specific collaboration can drive change pretty quickly.
So I think that that's that's where I'd look because I think that building a new set of
institutions is back to the old problem that the economy changes faster than you take.
So smaller towns which are which will normally some of them have even lost a college because most of it will still have a college.
And so then the question becomes, how do you how do you keep those colleges up to date?
And that's a real challenge because they're small and the there is, I think technology will take you so far.
But but if you are sort of.
Working an institution which is not part of a major city.
Yeah, it's it's there's a limit to how far you can go. Get the collaboration.
Oh, I've got two different answers and one involves a brief anecdote is quite interesting because before we went off to work,
so had the National Trust have one of these time capsule houses, somebody that lived there from 1910 through to 1950.
And when the National Trust took it out on me, it was as it was.
And in the visitor centre, there are lots of photographs of Worksop in 1910, and it's a really vibrant economy.
You know, there are lots of independent shops on the high streets. There are local manufacturers.
And so one of the things that is framed as a problem in towns is not simply the collapse of the Chinese in the school system.
It's the really significant shifts in the economy, and that's that's a massive challenge.
So in one sense, you know that we can re-energise the skills providers in a challenged small towns,
but without the vibrant economy, you'll be pushing things uphill.
Which leads me to my second anecdote and then my general point.
Alison, you told me to read an absolutely fabulous book about Janesville in southern Wisconsin, and it is fantastic.
And the story in Janesville is that the local food fight plant closes in 2007.
At the time of the crash, the federal and state governments do everything right.
They are pouring money to skills and training, and the book traces the trajectories of families,
and the investment in skills has almost zero effect because there is no way for the skills to be used.
But I think the demand does not come from the local employers.
It comes from from, you know, from some big institutions that want to do well by people.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
So, so, so so there's something around skills supply, but there's something bigger or as big about the way local local economies work.
How do you solve that problem? Well, you might have said you can't solve it.
How do you reduce the problem? I think you have to get small institutions to pool risk.
So it's collaboration. It's about shared training is about shared update.
So that collaborative course development is gearing the system to accommodate the problem that you've got in those institutions.
I think that's very interesting. And I think that's right. Yes, I did indeed tell you to to to to read that book.
It's very, very depressing and amazingly insightful.
I believe they just just this brilliant, brilliant analysis.
But I think you're right, and it comes back to the point that I was making at the beginning anyway, which, you know, I don't want.
I don't want to idealise. But but I didn't grow up in a village of 500 people that I grew up in the small town of 17000.
And, you know, when I was a child to be know the were.
There were lots more businesses and lots more sort of locally focussed employers, and they were.
Very involved with the local tech, I mean, they were having I started working on skills,
I kind of went to cross-examine my parents said, you know, by remembering this right?
So how and I think this is also about risk sharing. Of course, there's a real risk sharing element that this was this was how they grew up.
They grew up in a shared environments for training above all apprentices in those days.
But but but generally, how? How might we recreate that?
I mean, because that doesn't take away what you were talking about in which is the need to to share what is going on in the outside world.
But how how might we try to to to actually recreate that it will transform the economy,
but at least it will stop us simply pouring money from London or indeed from West
Midlands Combined Authority into what somebody thinks might be a good idea.
I mean, I don't think I mean, for us, you can't go, so I've got of it.
Yeah. So if I were looking to sell practical, offer practical ideas to government,
here's one that I think might be worthwhile, might be worth exploring and involve spending a bit of money.
There are about 400 colleges in England.
Slightly so it's all up now.
So what I would do would be to create a fund of about 200 million, 200 million, what if you shared it and evenly give each about half a million?
But I wouldn't share it has to the I'd make it forbidding. I'd say that it's for developing local skills strategies.
Local skills offers lot strategies,
the rules for bidding in that you have to collaborate with other colleges and you have to collaborate with local university.
And I think that there is still a lot of money,
but that would begin to shift the architecture into slightly more permeable institutions and you begin to get into institutional collaboration.
And I think that, you know, we've learnt that that that sort of thing releases quite a lot of innovation
would wouldn't solve the problems that you've put up on the slides on its own.
No, it wouldn't wouldn't get institutions working differently.
Yes, it would. So that sorts institutions, what about employers, I have a slightly different view on that,
so I think in this day and age that what we're trying to do here,
what we're trying to get young people and I'm very privileged, I do quite about what the prince's trust in this whole thing,
and you get to some one to the most deprived parts of society.
And if you can get people skills en masse, then then I think that is the way forward.
And when I was growing up in the open university, it was like state of the art and I would try and do as much as I could online.
And I would do that because I think you can spread the knowledge out much wider and know
that that's great to a point if you're doing practical work training to be an electrician.
Yeah, not so easy, but you can do a video with technology services.
Excellent. But I would definitely try and do online. Now that raises all sorts of questions as well.
That's OK. If you if you if you're connected at home, if you've got a computer, et cetera.
And the phone says we don't have computers, but I think I'd be able to put the money into the technology and get people access to this this
way because there are there are there are thousands of people who are getting left behind.
And if if that doesn't concern you, I think it should. I worry about people getting left behind.
I worry about who I'm going to say. I think is right, but in a slightly different way.
I'm suggesting and I get to I think that is to introduce this point.
So I love blocked during lockdown. And so what did I do?
I googled. I found a video.
I sent my laptop next to the lavatory and steps freeze, framing the video that was telling me how to fix the blockage on my traits.
And I sorted it. And that that was a skill I was developing as I needed to develop.
And I think that works for adults. The Open University is fabulous.
It never built up a clientele, 18 year olds, so I'm with them on technology for post experience, for experienced workers, for later life.
Ironically, I think there's something about socialisation of that community,
which is that the evidence seems to me to suggest that you need face to face provision with younger people.
We have that. But that's not just building up a second class because I think there's another point of not touched on yet is we are
talking about people here or generalising that all of these people want their education and they want to develop.
There are no huge part of the population who are disengaged, shall we say.
That's what I do is I'm being polite but disengaged. And it's how we get those huge amounts of talent out there who are poor for a reason.
Maybe their upbringing, it might be their home life, et cetera, have have fallen out of of of the come off the tracks a little bit,
and we should really try and get these people back on track and everyone can.
We are going to shoot for the stars past. But there's a lot of I call latent talent and we need to get back in.
And there's there's one population. I think as an organisation, we failed and I take this personally because I'm quite heavily involved in it.
And that's the disabled community.
A lot of the disabled community do not work because it's just too difficult to get these people into work, et cetera.
They are very talented people, but for whatever reason, as a society, we have not been that great.
Look at Egypt and Egypt, bring the disabled people in. So we've got a lot of talented people who we need to bring in, and I'm using one.
It's maybe a good example. It's maybe a bad example, but don't think everyone's bursting at the seams to get that.
We need to generate this enthusiasm and this we will.
If you want to be successful and successes in everyone's own mind.
It is my way. I think it's what they think. But just to get them back on track and give them a job, make sure they understand money.
And I might be off peace, but I might as well. I would.
I would suggest that part of that goes back to the curriculum at school.
We do not teach life skills at school. We've been pushing the government for some time.
I think I think the curriculum could change a little bit. I've got four children, so I get a mortgage that.
Right. What about a basic level here?
So we've got to educate people on how do you get them or how do you get life insurance, how do you how do you do it?
Will all these things are just life skills that we don't teach?
OK, I suppose I'd like to go back to the place issue, though, because this is, after all, what we are trying to focus on.
And I'd like to come back to this, this issue of.
So you have you have a town with which will still have school in place when you know you're right.
A variety of reasons. The high street probably doesn't bustle.
It doesn't have the same, but it does have employers, you know, it has employers and some of those could become considerably more productive.
They could become bigger. They could grow. And for them, there is a real challenge.
And you know, we I think I had some good ideas about large industries, large businesses sharing up to date training stuff and some good ideas about.
Institutional collaboration, but I want to really come back to this because it also relates to the very depressing statistic I'd put up,
which is from a variety of of US government sources, which is that on the whole, British employers do not spend much on training.
And I think your point about risk sharing was actually absolutely right.
The only way you sort of generate this really on a large scale, is by actually creating a different environment,
an environment in which you bring employers together more actively and give them
some reason to come together more actively in a way which sparks people off.
Which means that you discover that actually you might want to take an apprentice in a given area,
which means that the local college would actually be able to have enough of them to put on a course because it would actually be economically viable,
or that several of them actually can see a way of wanting to make contact with, for example, just this down the road and has some regular stuff.
How do you actually get that going? And it does seem to me that the colleges have to be somewhere in the centre of it.
I mean, we do have this in this inherited institutional framework. And how might we do that?
Because I think you're you're your bidding idea will get some good institutional stuff,
but it's actually more sort of how how in a way do we change the the the incentives, the risk sharing, the behaviour more generally?
I didn't give you warning of this, and since I don't have the answer,
but I would like to suggest in the levelling up context that if we could do that again,
if we could create the sorts of incentives that brought businesses together in the first place to create and fund these institutions,
we would actually, on the skills side, be making a major step forward and we wouldn't be falling into the trap that Ford Motor Company did.
And it was the best of intentions of sort of offering people training only.
It was just training sort of in a vacuum. Yes. I mean, look, I'm I'm the short answer to your question is, I don't know.
And I think the longer answer.
Would go something like this. I'd buy your historical analysis.
I don't disagree with much of any of it.
The question is whether we are trying to recreate something which we have lost or whether we need to create something which which is new.
And I think in that sense, the historical says, might might slightly mislead us.
That world has probably gone so.
So something different needs to happen.
It is true that UK employers invest, do not invest in training that cut employees in other countries, do invest more in training.
And I have never entirely understood that I used tax compulsion, tax credits or whether it's something that is cultural, culturally different.
I don't know the answer to that. And I'd like to understand it because it points to a salt, salt, salt, sort of.
I do think that there is a slight tendency in this to somewhat over generalise about skills.
Skills can be very specific skills. It's whether it's me fixing my laboratory or your children getting a mortgage.
You know they are. They are quite specific and they look different in different contexts.
And that's why I do come back to energise the local initiative.
I did make a mistake early when I talked about incentivising colleges.
I should have said employers as well. I see you've got to engage that.
And that was that was that was an oversight. But I think you can then begin to move things.
And the most successful bits of the global economy are those which have found specialist niches.
So we can all talk about technology around Boston or technology in Silicon Valley.
But there's absolutely no reason why you couldn't see a niche developing different niche around Grimsby or around Great Yarmouth.
What would that be? I don't know. Do I think that the employers and skills providers would have a better place to me?
Yes, I do. If. Just so I'm.
Give them a view, and an education for me is all about passing knowledge from one to another and all across the land.
You've got schools, colleges, so you've got a facility to do that.
If I've ever asked anyone for help on educational coaching, I don't I don't think anyone's ever said no.
So you've got this massive population of either newly retired or an hour at a time and people who are highly skilled,
fanny, well educated, who are only too happy to pass that education on to others.
There's something there, but latent talent available, especially in some of the smaller,
more rural areas where by by opening up some of these other facilities, I'm sure people would share that knowledge base as very unstructured.
So it's maybe not helpful. But if somebody asked me to help I go to school and an afternoon or an evening,
I would be only too happy to go and do that to pass on what knowledge I've got to others.
And that's good back to this whole sharing part, which I think the pandemic has given us a real position, right?
And I think climate will just really accelerate that. Yeah.
And so we as a country, we could we could really think about how we open up this amazing talent pool we've got for the greater good for all.
It would take some organising, but with right will, there has to be a way.
A final question before I ask you this physically and virtually,
we've been talking about the particularly I have been talking about the fact that we sort of move from one
kind of society to another and that our system has in some cases adapted extremely well on and others has,
has, has not. And and so we have these particular shortages.
And we also are struggling to keep up with things that that move very fast.
If you were, for example, maybe I ask you.
Chris Veale tells us what, but if he was sort of thinking about, you know, 20 years from now,
if I want to sort of stop worrying now about where I'm pretty sure we're going to have too little capacity apart from climate?
Yeah, why would you put your money knowing that you will be wrong in the detail?
Where would you put your money in the broad?
Well, I know you said, apart from climate, but I do think that that's going to become an overwhelming issue,
which is going to permeate almost all of the parts of the globe.
There's not going to be a thing around climate. It is the water in which we're going to be swimming for the rest of my life.
So I wouldn't accept climate.
I think digital where it so it's it's if we just think about the pace of change in digital technologies over the last 20 years.
You know, look ahead if it is very, very difficult to see that.
And that also, I think becomes Zambians know artificial intelligence, which I'm putting under my heading of digital,
is going to move increasingly through finance, through manufacturing.
So those all those are probably two, two massive ones.
I think there's a really big question around the the issues that will flow from an
ageing society and it is possible to think about that in terms of social care.
But I think as well this whole sets of issues around design and delivery for ageing societies that as we get older,
if we want to maintain an independent system. So for me, the big drivers are going to be climate, digital and ageing.
Yes. I mean, I'm like, where would you put your bets? My heart tells me manufacturing, because as a country, you have to make things here.
You have to make things that I love a production line and it comes off the end.
However, I'm a great believer in keeping these debates as simple as we can.
So what do we need? Maybe if you think about just what you need to get through life, you need food.
You need help. So I completely agree with that because it's an ageing population, so you need help and you need a roof over your head.
We live on an island. There's never going to be enough homes in the UK.
You've got 28 million homes are going to need to be retrofitted before 2050.
So if I can buy a reincarnated now, I'd be a heat pump manufacturer or I'd be a plumber or an electrician because it's all going to have to get done.
We are the combustion engines at the end of its natural life.
You are going to be driving electric cars, whether you like or not. Personally, I quite like it.
I don't have one yet, but I will get one. But you need an infrastructure for that, so I'd be building the infrastructure.
And then the other thing you've got to think about is power.
And I know it would be we don't want to talk about climate, but the whole axis of power is changing.
If you if you think about aviation,
sustainable aviation fuel can now be manufactured with no go to scale it because people don't want to give up flying,
but they don't want to pollute the planet. So I so I just think power is going to be a massive change over the next two years, hydrogen,
etc. And I think it's exciting because it's going to be quite demanding on resources as well as as well, but certainly also a big one as well.
Now the thing I would sort of note is that there's a couple of cases where what we're talking about is higher development typically for that.
But you know, honestly, what it also says is that a lot of that is stuff you do everywhere.
Which I think, again, comes back to this question of how we think about motivating people,
make it easier for them to to stay because the vast bulk of jobs related to this are actually going to be everywhere in the country.
And I mean, I I'm actually also quite keen on manufacturing.
Just never, ever, ever is going to employ many people again. It just isn't my privilege as being on the stage.
We've got an audience here and an audience online. It's just about time to time.
So we just I think we have just about time to open up to questions.
Online questions are perfectly fine. I'm going to abuse my position on stage to ask the first question, really.
And I want to start with a little anecdote about myself because it picks up an enormous saying
about a vast pool of people who are willing to provide advice and mentoring the young people.
And I was I love my parents.
Both left school at the age of 12, so I was the first generation of getting a chance to go to university from Sheffield.
So I was very much a part of a pioneer of trying to,
and I reached a point where I had a terribly important decision to take and I knew I wasn't equipped to take it.
And so I needed somebody who was a middle class person who could give me advice, and I thought, Who could I ask?
And I could think of only one middle class person that I interacted with regularly.
And that was my dentist. And so I asked my dentist for mentoring advice, and I have to say he was completely useless.
So we can do better in by putting in people who are a little bit better equipped to mentor,
but I think there's still a huge gulf in that mentoring role.
And then I wanted to draw both of you because both of you were pioneers in different ways.
Chris has pioneered the the the the use of a university to actually train people in the range of locally pertinent skills and engage with local firms.
And you even have pioneered recruitment in a provincial city.
And both of you, as far as I can see, have learnt by to an extent a process of trial and error.
And that seems to me a perfectly acceptable way to learn is get going and try things, and not everything will work for you.
It would just, you learn by doing. And there hasn't been enough doing.
There's been a the Obama problem of a rolling seminar discussing policy, but not enough actually doing things to learn from from experiment.
And finally, we could learn from success.
And the idea that there's no success outside London is very clearly false even gave the example of where do they go to for it skills?
Sheffield why? Because Sheffield has got eight hundred IT firms.
It's a major I.T. cluster, and so there are enormous clusters of new schools all around the country, but unrecognised.
And so one. Learn from that.
Cluster in Sheffield. There may be many other clusters that can be harnessed and the new unrecognised.
And finally, we can learn from success in colleges of further education.
Chris said there are 400 of them. Barnsley College.
Barnsley College is in the top 10. Nationally.
As a distinctive thing about Barnsley College is the Barnsley doesn't have a university,
and so the local government really has focussed on making Barnsley College good because they now have the choice and it seems to have worked.
So could we learn from the success of Barnsley College in for the other three hundred nineteen that are not as good?
And so this is just kind of the whole thing of.
I think what I'd like to do is take two or three questions, as well as what is following up on that and the fact that both he and Sandra.
Hold on. We need to like say, OK, thank you for the very stimulating discussions this evening.
And it raised many questions in my mind. I'll just ask one.
There was a lot of discussion about changes in the workforce, how fast things change in view of how fast things change.
What does the panel think about the post-16 curriculum?
Do you feel it's it's it's narrow in England relative to other countries?
And how would you change that? I mean, is that something for vocational or is it something for academic as well?
And the same question about apprenticeships or apprenticeships in England to narrow.
Let's end. But that as well, I would like to take it there and there.
And then once we had those three questions plus Paul, then thank you very much.
I'm it's impossible to argue with the data that Baroness presented regarding the system being out of kilter,
obviously, and the need for domestic upskilling in some form.
But I want to know with respect to this idea of do we just want to recreate the past or should we be looking?
Should we be looking to a new future with with that thought in mind,
I'm wondering with your respective hats on to what extent you all think immigration should play a larger part in satisfying long term,
in particular labour market demand?
I'm mindful of the fact that immigration keeps being presented as a veiled option rather than an immutable necessity, perhaps.
So I'm wondering whether immigration is part of the solution here, if indeed it's the case that as in Janesville,
I think it was all the upskilling in the world in a town might not be enough to actually stimulate local economies.
And it's one of those. Hello.
My question has got to do with unused apprenticeship levy.
I think there's about a billion that companies are not able to use for their own staff.
Does anyone know what happens to that money?
Because you see the decline in provision for further education, you're wondering why apprenticeship levy this unused is not being used for that.
I can tell you that that's a specific empirical question.
And I felt so that like, yeah, let's start by answering that one that wasn't going to huge detail.
The levy is basically it is really a levy. It's a tax, it's a tax on large companies and it goes into it goes into the into the Treasury.
And the amount that is not used by companies,
which has been going down is then goes goes into the Treasury pot and then makes some
allocation to pay for apprenticeship training and SMEs in small and medium firms.
You're right that they said that there is over the last few years, it hasn't all been spent.
You know, it's it's a slightly complicated system because basically it's described as a levy.
It's really a tax, but you don't pay it if you actually use it.
Tried an apprentice.
The treasurer would say that they worked on predictions and that they intended you that it was expected that they would use it all.
But the amount that is unspent has that is unspent has been declining as the amount is spent by
levy payers because those are one of the reasons that apprenticeship numbers have fallen well.
There are two major reasons why include one not so good numbers fell because there
was a big apprenticeship reform and the government stop supporting very short,
very low quality apprenticeships a few years ago. So that brought the numbers down.
But the other problem, which I think is an interesting one, which I don't have an answer,
is that the levy payers in particular have been tending to increase the the level of the apprentices that they take on.
They will often there are more and more high level apprentices, and they cost more because it goes on for long that large number of years.
So the amount of the levy that has been unpaid has actually been falling.
And so far Treasury has not, as has continued to treat it as though it was a sort of hypothecated pot.
So what happens is that if they don't chop it up over and above the levy because they work on the basis that that pays for everything,
then then that's it. But there is, alas, not a nice pot sitting of a billion pounds, which one could put out.
It's so it's it runs into all the usual fights over mainstream government expenditure, alas.
So I'm not what I can give you a straight answer of a couple of words that I'm really sorry, even even just listening.
How complicated a response that is. Yes, I know it's OK is tells you everything I would tell you about the cost of it.
I think he needs an overhaul. I don't think it's really good value for money because it's not going to the heart of the problem.
The opening words Well, it's a complicated system. It's a complicated system.
What we need is straightforward. Get people into apprenticeships, put the money behind it.
We'd be delighted to put the money behind it rather than trying to fudge it, which is roughly what we're doing.
What I want is the best way. I think it needs an overhaul. The absolutely the answer, the answer, answer, sort of let's do it.
When everything goes on. On the other questions and film responses before, do you want to go first?
OK, I'll rattle through them quickly. Sandra starts it off of speed of change.
The speed of change is incredible.
Just like I worry that will light people up and I hire lots of young smart people to keep me up to date with technology.
I am a dangerous amateur on its own clean technology. I'm really trying to self educate myself.
Do you think the education system is too narrow? Yeah.
The more I see it now and the closer I get to, I think it can just do with expanding a little bit.
But I think it's really difficult and I don't have the answer. Do I think apprenticeships up to now?
No. I think they're very wide and very varied. I just think we should use it more.
And that was a good introduction. Now, immigration. I'm I'm an open capitalist economy guy.
You know, I would I would have the doors open. I think you've got to be careful with some of the rules.
It's and I get all that. But if you want a growing economy, I think I think you've got to be more open than perhaps we are at the.
Think of a them. Emerging markets are going to agree, I absolutely agree on immigration.
My reading of the data is that there's very little evidence that immigration depressed demand for scale or demand or wages.
What it tended to do is to try to grow the economy.
Now the caveats on this is that there may be particular geographical locations where that was experienced differently,
but from a national perspective, I'm with you on that.
On Page 16, Alison, I have had to engage exchanges on ideas before.
There is some path dependency and crudely words to remember about post-16 education in countries as Byler constructed as a
basis for university entry and the system that we've got means that we can have three year degrees of four year degrees.
I think that the post-16 curriculum is too narrow. It probably does need to be subject based on the disagreement with that, but it is too narrow.
It forces early specialisation, it closes down choices.
I you know where I sit worried that T levels are probably going to reinforce trum lining rather than okay, opening up choice.
And that feels to me to be a bad thing is not the way most of the rest of the world is going, and I don't think we've picked your questions.
There's an interesting question about if colleges and what they do in areas where they are the sole provider of of post-16 training.
And you're right. And the interesting question is this do we think I think I'm reasonably conservative about this?
Do we think that we've basically got institutional structure that could deliver if it was incentivised properly?
I think I'll quit because I think the answer might be yes. Or do we think that we need some new types of institution?
I think that we've proved we got an institutional structure which is not appropriately incentivised, but is a broadly appropriate structure.
We had some more questions that those gentlemen can we take some from online? You taking some from the Aether, right?
Okay, so there's quite a few that. And Andy asks,
how do we begin to address the adult skills issue as 80 per cent of the UK workforce in 2013 are already behind as in post education and upskilling?
And someone an applicant is asked that the panel have any suggestions on what we can do to innovate online learning,
given that most of the working population is burned out from statutory regulated learning.
And the last one, what do you think about the effect of AI on the future available jobs and impact on training providers and trainees?
You could be like you can say, OK, these are all extremely good questions, I'm trying, I think I'll take it in reverse.
I think the air question is a really tough one and it falls into the category that can we predict future skills with certainty?
And I'm not sure we can say what to what do I think is going to be the long term impact of A.I.?
I have no real idea. And I think this is a sort of grope forward, establish broad principles rather than specifics.
I think if you try to over predict that you will over and therefore specify that that's not a very helpful answer.
And how to incentivise online learning a lot of lack of something that ends and I thought was absolutely right,
and it's both something that we need to respect, but it's also a challenge.
I think that there's some suppressed demand for upskilling those people who don't necessarily want to.
And we should respect that. But it's also the consequence of the problem that economies are locked into this low skill, low productivity equilibrium.
And unless we can create economic incentives in which and this is the Janesville lesson,
everybody's goal, the hope that the unemployed food workers needed to upskill.
But there was no local demand for them to use those skills, so they became disenchanted, disengaged in many cases of their relationships fall apart.
So really sad story.
So to have to do how to how to encourage innovation online, many people pick up this when they need, when they see the need for it.
Most people are rational actors. Me and my broken laboratory and I know I would generalise it from experience of war in my bathroom.
But but I think in that sense, it is in the demand. We'll be there when there is a need, when there is a need for it.
The age of the adult skills problem, I think, is absolutely right,
and it is that the really people call me for some of the problem that know is the need where many people see there's a gap,
but that it is a much bigger and more challenging problem than the supply of new workers.
We could we can address the supply of new workers with some qualifications reform through some institution incentivization.
But that big chunk of people, most of the people who are going to be in the workforce in twenty twenty eight
are already in the workforce and their jobs are being reconstructed around them.
That's a daily challenge for all of us. I will give you all the time.
I would like to spotlight I for a sake. So I think artificial intelligence in the next ten years or even the next twenty years,
next ten years is going to be significant because we are going to move into a world of hyper
personalisation and everyone wants when it comes to technology are made to measure suit.
So it's just made for you and this is the way it's going to go now.
I worry about that because there's a massive unintended consequences of that as well,
because you may take people out of the economy as much as you take people or bring people into the economy,
and we have to be very aware of that before we go. The reason that is exciting is, is it is just enormous data getting configured in a certain way.
The one area we don't know and I I'm sure there's better brainpower in this room than me,
who maybe do have a good view of this is that what are the future behaviours going to drive?
So if somebody said to me 10 years ago,
delivery only sort of takeaway companies for food were going to be massive and what made them one of the after the I would have laughed.
But customer behaviours have changed. And so the next ten years is us trying to second guess customer behaviours,
and I don't know what they're going to be at the moment, but I'm going to play a huge part of them.
So exciting, but with quite a few worries as well. All right, these.
Time for maybe two more questions. I thank you for this great panel discussion, let so, so much.
I wanted to ask about Steve.
And when we talk about creating jobs for people, it kind of creates a sense of esteem of being at Oxford University creates a steam,
but maybe going to a lack of further education or another university may not create as much as steam, so it creates this disparity within people.
So is wondering how you think about the future of accreditation for different institutions and how people, you know,
the messaging that goes out that if you go to assess and if you go down a session path,
which is not quite clear yet for people that don't go to university, how do you build that in the community?
Because it's not just about the job, it's about what that means to that person and the community that you.
Well, first of all, thank you for using the word this time I was trying to think of the right word.
I think it steams up very good word.
I would use the word pride, and I think a lot of people in small communities have got real pride when I was growing up,
had real pride in my community. You play for the local football team in central Ukraine.
This. How do you energise people is is quite a challenge.
I don't have the answer to how how you do that, but I think it's.
Did I say it's maybe how you brought up where you brought up the environment around you, this caring, loving environment,
et cetera, and I think people who come from that background have got a huge advantage as they go into further education.
I wouldn't underestimate that for a second.
I I'm somebody who I've got to know is a good friend in Manchester who does a huge amount of walks in the community.
I mean, I've been out with him and seeing what it's like on the other side of that, I'm trying to get people energised and pride is so, so difficult.
So I've thought of a brilliant and sort of a late thought for this team because I think it's really important.
Thank you so much for a great talk. I have a question related to how we see the skills crisis related to income inequality because I think
a lot of what you were saying was does this need for more technical education and for apprenticeships?
Then on the other side, my first thought is, are we funnelling people into jobs that don't necessarily pay very well?
And will that to some extent exacerbate income inequality?
Both of those two final questions are just absolutely huge and open, really, really challenging, really challenging questions, questions.
I mean, the the right.
So the short answer to your question is that if it's really hard to predict skills needs in the economy,
it's even harder to predict long term wage developments in the economy.
So where that leads me and I'm going incredibly fast on this because I could probably talk for the next two hours on this,
and I don't think I'd be terribly popular with anybody if I did. Is that you got to create opportunities that we have people make.
Decisions that look good, that's in the short term that turn out to be bad bets.
You got to create opportunities for those names to be revisited.
And one of the major challenges is driven. Income and regional inequality in this country is that we didn't do that well when manufacturing
industry collapsed and we left significant communities and populations high and dry,
which has generated a whole range of social, economic, political and cultural problems that we're now wrestling with.
So it's interesting that questions about how many coal mines there are left in France.
And the answer is none.
They also closed all their mines, but they invested a lot more money in ensuring that communities had other routes out of deindustrialisation.
They also have a significantly higher unemployment rate than we do in a truly messed up youth labour market.
To me, it is so.
So if you want to look at this system from the point of view of the users, the skills, users accept that some of them are going to make bad choices.
We all make bad choices in life and you create a system that allows the allows
people sensitive to reverse out of the Cul-De-Sac and get back onto the road.
That that's that's important. I think.
Used up our time, so let me draw to a close with these last two questions about steam and inequality.
And the answer, I think, was steam is that we need more.
Ian Stewart, who became the head of one of the biggest banks in the world through night school and and has been very private.
If we had a thousand people around you being generated each year and we were celebrating that the balance of esteem would very rapidly shift.
So that's that's that's an esteemed coin. And finally, total inequality.
There was a very interesting survey just a few months ago in Britain about what aspects of inequality really, really mattered.
And in fact, it was done at King's and the.
And the result was surprising to the researchers, though not surprising to anybody who lived in the real world,
which means that there was only one thing in the whole country that people really came together to agree about inequality.
And that was that we had to reduce spatial inequality.
That what you what opportunities you had to earn a good living should not depend upon where in Britain you were born.
And at the moment, if you were born in London, you've got a 72 percent higher income chance then than in Britain outside the southeast.
And so what? We really got agreement on consensus in Britain,
and we're certainly finding that there's not much consensus, but is to tackle that spatial inequality.
And that's why we've got this course of of of of discussions on levelling up to gradually build.
And I wanted to close with a sentiment that I think was best articulated, probably by by Chris,
that the skills, the demand for skills very much depends upon the job opportunities to use those skills.
And so that the skills.
Equipping people with better skills has to go hand in hand with growing the jobs that had generated predominantly by SMEs in the country.
And that's why very shortly we've got a very important session on how to get better finance to sneeze, which is a huge task.
So hand in hand, this series of discussions on levelling up will gradually cover the waterfront of the interventions,
where all these complementary interventions will gradually build up to a much more spatially equal society.
And on that, I really do want to thank Baroness Wolf.
So Christopher Husbands and Ian Stewart, it's notable that the head of the biggest bank is the only person without a title.
And if we wanted to level up the scheme, we might want to do something about that comment is all for us.
Thank you very much indeed for a superb discussion. I think a very good question.
Quite.