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Overview
of basic skills in the workplace, covering policy, research
and practice
Skills for work news
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Business
and literacy - includes research on workplace
learning, initiatives and resources
Literacy Today articles
- Workplace Basic Skills
Network Fiona Frank, coordination manager of the
Network describes the Government's Building Basic
Skills in the Workplace initiative. (Literacy Today,
December 2000)
See also
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Union learning reps have helped 67,000 people into training
by July of 2005, the Trades Union Congress says. The number
on courses paid for through the £15 million-a-year union
learning fund increased by 5,000 or 9 %. The number of learning
reps, who advise employees on training needs, liaise with
training providers and negotiate time off for colleagues to
study, has risen by 50 % to 12,000.
A "union academy" is the next step to help the
TUC meet its targets of increasing the numbers of learning
reps to 22,000 and helping 250,000 people into training each
year. The academy is expected to operate in a similar way
to Open University.
(TES, 29 July 2005)
Ministers have provided £14 million for projects to
increase the numbers taking advantage of the trade union learning
fund. The fund, which has attracted £40m of investment
since its 1998 launch, now runs 450 courses for workers signed
up by shop-floor learning union reps. Education Secretary,
Charles Clarke said: "Projects have been successful in
reaching out to people who have been left out of learning
opportunities, such as shift or part-time workers."
The fund has provided computers for online learning at a
West Yorkshire biscuit factory, classrooms for Watford firefighters
and computer courses for council workers in Blackburn. More
than 7,000 learning reps advise employees in training needs,
liaise with training providers and negotiate time off for
colleagues to study. Since reps won new rights to carry out
their duties, the number of people signing up for courses
under the scheme has trebled to 25,000 a year.
(TES, 09.07.04)
Veronica Richards had always struggled with her severe dyslexia.
But after a successful month's placement at Marks and Spencer,
she was taken on permanently as a sales adviser.
"I'd been trapped inside this secret world of dyslexia
for too long," she says. "I had to face my problem
head on. I plucked up the courage to ask at my local library
about adult education courses and I started a basic skills
course at Westminster Adult Education Service. Taking those
first steps is the hard part, because there's so much fear
to overcome. Through college I was put in touch with a charity
called Project Employment, which teaches communication skills
and helps with filling in application forms. They told me
about a work placement programme at Marks and Spencer and,
after an interview, I started in the make-up section.
"Having this opportunity has let me show what I can
do, not what I can't. Until this job at Marks and Spencer,
I didn't feel I had a purpose. The studies help my confidence,
but being in work makes it all real."
(Marks and Spencer Magazine, July 04)
The Government's promise of free tuition for every adult to
achieve a level 2 qualification before 2010 will be piloted
in two regions from September 2004 and rolled out to other
regions by 2005.
The official target for 2010 is to cut by 40% the 6.7 million
adults in the workforce who lack a level 2 qualification -
an NVQ level or the equivalent of five grade Cs at GCSE. In
the population as a whole, there are currently 15 million
adults who lack this level of qualification.
Details of the level 2 strategy were unveiled at the Learning
Skills Development Agency's annual conference in London in
June, by Tim Down, deputy director of the Adult Learning Support
Unit at the Department for Education and Skills. He said the
two main problems were to get a coherent overall offer to
employers and individuals and market it successfully nationally
and locally. "The package will vary according to location,"
he said. "We cannot legislate a coherent total package
from the centre."
The first two pilots are in the North East and South East,
which have the lowest and highest proportion of skilled workers
respectively. All FE colleges will get funding from the DfES
to deliver the provision but work-based learning providers
will be eligible for funding later.
The issue of prior qualifications would be a difficult one,
Tim Down acknowledged. To assist colleges in deciding who
was eligible for free tuition the DfES will publish a list
of level 2 qualifications. The threshold for fee remission
would effectively be raised from basic skills to level 2 courses.
(Basic Skills Bulletin, July 2004)
Mike Campbell, director of policy and research at the Sector
Skills Development Agency, is enthusiastic about skills because
skills are the cornerstone of much of the economic and educational
strategy of the country.
His book, Learn to Succeed. The Case for a Skills Revolution,
makes a strong case for change. Britain ranks 12th out of
15 in the European Union, and 18th out of 30 Organisation
for Economic Co-operation and Development countries for gross
economic product. Productivity in the United States is 40%
above ours, and we lag behind France, Germany, the Netherlands,
Denmark and Ireland, amongst others.
And we have a relatively poorly skilled workforce. The case
for a skills revolution is compelling. The book argues that
raising skills levels is crucial to both economic success
and social inclusion, though it does not devote much space
to the latter. Neither does it reflect on the fact that US
productivity is so much higher than ours despite their literacy
rates being even worse than ours.
Professor Campbell looks at the skills we have got: workforce
qualifications, inequalities (30.7% of the economically inactive
have no qualification of any kind); participation in learning;
barriers to achievement; regional differences; skills shortages.
The tables and bar-charts produced here are excellent. He
gives us an equally cogent analysis of the skills that we
need in a changed economy and a changing world, with detailed
tables of skill trends by occupation and the types of work
skill changes.
There can be little doubt that Britain needs to improve the
levels of skills in its workforce. There is a strong relationship
between the qualifications people possess and their earnings,
evidenced here. The gaps will certainly grow. We probably
have no alternative to using "qualifications" as
a proxy for skills, though they are clearly not the same things.
What we very urgently need to do is to improve educational
opportunity and access, and levels of participation, and to
stop treating vocational qualifications as inferior to "academic"
ones. We will then have more people with skills, including
those required by plumbers.
Learn to succeed: the Case for a Skills Revolution,
by Mike Campbell; published by The Policy Press, ISBN 1-86134-269-1
£17.99
Review by Colin Flint
(TES, 16 January 2004)
The influential select committee of MPs is to carry out a
year-long investigation into the state of skills training
in Britain. It will scrutinize the resource implications of
Government policies which the committee chairman Barry Sheerman
fears could lead to "a bureaucratic nightmare" as
bad as that which ministers hope to end.
The review will start by looking a modern apprenticeships
and then look at how compatible the 14-19 reforms are with
the national skills strategy. A third task will be to look
at how all the myriad agencies - the Learning and Skills Council
Regional. Agencies and sector skills councils - join up.
(TES, 31 October 2003)
The Government's drive to improve vocational qualifications
is faltering, statistics on flagship programmes reveal. Only
one in four trainees who embark on modern apprenticeship schemes,
the centrepiece of the Government's drive to boost workplace
skills, goes on to gain the qualification. Some 74% of modern
apprenticeship trainees either drop out or fail to gain the
qualification.
And vocational A levels continue to be blighted by low take-up
and high failure rates, in a qualification that many observers
see as too academic.
(TES, 15 August 2003)
A shortage of specialist skills and the poor quality of applicants
are being blamed for a crisis in public-sector recruitment.
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development says recruitment
pressures have surged in the past 12 months, despite the economic
slowdown and resulting wave of redundancies. 84% of public sector
organisations also complain of difficulties in retaining staff.
More than 20% of recruiters in the North and South-west cite
a lack of formal qualifications as a problem.
(TES, 15 August 2003)
Parts of Britain are facing "catastrophic" levels
of "Skills poverty", according to a report by a
consultancy that advises the Government.
In some areas of severe industrial decline and high unemployment
such as South Yorkshire, the Black Country and Merseyside,
more than a third of people of working age lack even the basic
skills that would lift them out of low-skilled work, according
to a report by Local Futures, the specialists in local economies.
Top of the skills poverty league is Birmingham and Solihull,
where more than 39% of the working-age population have fewer
than four GCSEs at C grade or above or the vocational equivalent.
The report also finds that low skills is a problem throughout
the country. At least a fifth of the potential labour force
has a low level of qualifications or none at all in every
part of Britain, except for the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.
Scotland, whose education system has often been praised relative
to England's, in general scores quite well in the skills league.
Central London is the only part of Britain where more than
half the potential labour force has a university degree or
equivalent qualification. Bottom of the league is South Yorkshire
with a rate of 19%.
The report suggested that in the north and the Midlands the
graduate-hungry "knowledge economy" is "too
weak to prevent a brain drain" of graduates to London
and the south-east.
(Financial Times, 24 July 2003)
For more information visit www.localfutures.com/article.asp?aid=75
Failure to spend five minutes checking work for spelling
and grammar errors could jeopardise your chances of promotion.
A survey of employers by Office Angels reveals that 84% believe
excellent work is devalued by sloppy spelling and poor grammar.
The survey of 1500 employees and employers to find out the
impact of technology on literacy standards in the workplace
found that 77% of employers regard a high degree of literacy
as an essential skill and those employees who demonstrate
attention to detail are more likely to be on the fast track
to promotion.
Work peppered with sloppy spelling and poor grammar left
20% of employers fuming, while 53% perceived the employee
as lazy and unprofessional. 35% of managers admit they won't
read any further once they've spotted a number of literacy
errors. Despite this, 49% of employees say they frequently
don't check through their work, only relying on computer spell
check to spot and amend their mistakes.
Reliance on the computer has led many employees to make simple
spelling and grammar errors, as revealed in the employer's
top five list:
- Confusion over the application of similar words, such
as affect and effect.
- Misuse of apostrophes, for example its and it's.
- Use of American spellings.
- Wrong application of endings for plurals, for example
countrys instead of countries.
- Failure to capitalise names and places appropriately.
Despite these common mistakes, nearly two thirds 61% of employees
are embarrassed to ask for assistance as they see their lack
of knowledge as a weakness.
On a positive note, 42% of employees believe that the thesaurus
tool has helped to extend their vocabulary. For those people
who do have difficulties with spelling and grammar, they admit
that the spell check facility is a useful 'first step.'
(Office Angels/Evening Standard, 10 January 2001)
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