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• 23Mar2011

  Budget 2011

  Posted by George Dugdale

  Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has today released the Coalition Government’s latest budget, setting out a range of policies designed to stimulate growth in the UK economy.

  As part of the Budget the Chancellor announced 40,000 new apprenticeships, 80,000 new work placements for young people and 24 new Technical Colleges. These policy measures are designed to address rising unemployment among young people and record numbers of those who are not in education, employment or training (NEET).

  The National Literacy Trust welcomes the moves to reduce youth unemployment but as literacy is the building block of all essential workplace skills, it is vital that these opportunities contain a literacy focus. We know that of particular concern for employers are the standard of school leavers’ speaking and listening skills, so the newly announced work placements would be the ideal opportunity to concentrate on this issue.

  The full Budget report also announced that the Government would be following the recommendation of Frank Field MP and finding a new metric to measure child poverty. This mention of the review of social mobility carried out by Mr Field is a significant step for Government. The National Literacy Trust is interested to see the outcome of this particular review and would like to see more discussion of this report in major Government announcements.

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