Memorandum submitted by the Financial
Services Skills Council (FSSC)
INTRODUCTION
The Financial Services Skills Council (FSSC)
was established in 2004 to lead the skills and productivity drive
for the United Kingdom financial services industry. It is the
only body, apart from industry regulator the Financial Services
Authority, acting for the entire UK financial services industry,
and seeks to provide strategic leadership for training, skills
and education development in the industry in order to improve
productivity and performance.
The FSSC is focussed on representing the employers'
interests (employer-led) and directly influences the planning
and funding of education and training across the UK with relevant
Government, national and international organisations. The FSSC
promotes the concept of spending on skills training to meet the
strategic needs of the financial services industry, rather than
being driven by calls simply to comply with the requirement to
provide skills training. Further, the FSSC works to enhance the
profile of British qualifications in the global financial services
community.
The FSSC is part of the Skills for Business
Network, a cluster of Sector Skills Councils (SSCs) covering the
key industry sectors, and highlighted by Lord Leitch in his recent
HM Treasury Report on Skills as being important to the delivery
of future skills provision in the UK. SSCs are the access points
to public funding to match employers' investment, and actively
involve trade unions, professional bodies and other stakeholders.
The FSSC has also memoranda of understanding with professional
associations including the Alliance for Finance, Investors in
People UK and the Financial Services Authority.
Over the past 10 years, heightened competition
for global markets and the advent of offshoring trends have increased
the pressure on cost reduction and productivity, and the sector
has faced many changes; structurally, legislatively and technologically.
With no sign of these changes abating, it has never been more
important to be prepared for the needs of an increasingly global
dimension to the UK economy in the future; this must entail the
creation of a greater skills base in the UK.
Since the Government published its Education
and Skills White Paper in February 2005, in which it set out its
vision for the future of 14-19 education, the FSSC has been intimately
involved in the progress of reforms.
The Financial Services Skills Council was nominated
to lead the development of the Business, Administration and Finance
Specialised Diploma learning content.[5]
The aim is that by recruiting individuals with a specialised Diploma,
UK financial services employers will be confident that each person
has the relevant knowledge and skills to make a positive contribution
to a key UK industry. This will help employers to retain a UK
workforce rather than having to seek overseas talent.
TEACHER AND
LECTURER TRAINING
The FSSC believe that schools have been slow
to fully embrace the demands the introduction of the Diploma will
make on teachers. There are concerns that the teacher training
on offer may be "too little—too late". For the
Diploma to be successful teachers and lecturers need to have a
deep and thorough knowledge of the subjects being taught. The
FSSC is concerned that teachers will not be fully prepared to
deliver the new Diplomas, especially the Business, Administration
and Finance Specialised Diploma, and may thus undermine their
potential success with both students and potential employers.
In order to allay this problem of implementation
the FSSC proposes that employers work with providers, perhaps
through Education and Business Partnerships on projects that will
provide teachers with first hand work experience of topics included
in Diplomas.
CO-ORDINATION
BETWEEN SCHOOLS
AND COLLEGES
The FSSC suggests that schools and colleges
work much more closely with each other in order to deliver Diplomas
within their district. This will require a strengthening of existing
relationships, through greater communication and sharing of information
on delivery methods.
The new network of national skills academies
may offer useful opportunities to develop both these relationships
and Diploma content. As a minimum, Skills Academies offer a ready-made
forum for sector-specific employer engagement. Where Skills Academies
do not exist, Sector Skills Councils can fulfil aspects of this
role.
Other issues that may emerge from closer coordination
will be the pooling and use of resources. The FSSC hopes that
the number of providers in a district able to offer Diplomas will
grow, with more specialist schools, existing colleges and city
academies willing to run the Diplomas as the lines develop. This
may actually help to overcome the problem of resource distribution.
Already the FSSC has found some very good examples
of strong coordination between education providers. These are
being used to promote changes in how education is delivered, with
particular emphasis on the mobile pupil.
The FSSC believes that Local Authorities (with
Learning and Skills Councils where relevant) should be fully responsible
for ensuring the provision of Diplomas within a district. In this
role both bodies must be a pivotal in the coordination, provision
and delivery of the Diplomas as they are rolled out. There is
also, of course, a role here for Sector Skills Councils in bridge-building
between providers and employers.
The FSSC has for some time detected a great
deal of interest in Diploma development from head teachers. This
interest does not, however, appear to have been replicated thus
far by college principals. The FSSC also has concerns that the
interest manifested by headteachers in Diploma delivery has not
been passed on to teachers. This should be rectified, as early
and intense teacher involvement will be critical in the front-line
delivery of all Diplomas.
CONCLUSION
The FSSC hopes that the inquiry will give significant
drive to the specialised Diploma agenda in order that crucial
policy decisions are made to enable faster progress of Diploma
implementation.
This submission has briefly outlined several
areas in which we feel implementation methods could be improved;
principally, through greater coordination between colleges and
schools, and the effective pooling of resources. We recommend
that the review look closely at the issue of teacher training,
to ensure that all teachers involved in instruction for Diplomas
have extensive, detailed and accurate knowledge of their subject.
As is the case with the wider skills provision
agenda, the FSSC promotes greater employer engagement with education
at 14-19 stage, in order that more young people are prepared for
employment in a manner beneficial both to themselves and their
prospective employers.
The FSSC looks forward to viewing the results
of the 14-19 specialised Diplomas inquiry. We would be happy to
provide further information on our practice and research for the
Education and Skills Committee if it would be considered helpful.
January 2007
5 Our partners in this development are the Council
for Administration and Skillsmart Retail-the Sector Skills Council
for the retail industry. Back
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