SECTOR SKILLS COUNCILS
34. Sector Skills Councils are viewed by Government
as one key mechanism for making skills training more 'demand-led'
by capturing and articulating employer needs. The DfES told us:
"SSCs [sector skills councils] provide a voice
for employers to have their say in identifying skills priorities
and the training and qualifications needed for their sector. […]
[Sector Skills] agreements are a key mechanism for articulating
skills demand and underpin the move to a more demand-led system
of education and training as set out in the Skills Strategy".[29]
35. The Leitch Report report recommended increasing
the influence of SSCs-for example, through giving them the power
to determine which vocational qualifications should attract funding.
However, the evidence on performance to date is mixed, and it
is clear from our evidence that their remit, role and reach is
still developing. A more fundamental concern is the capacity of
Sector Skills Councils, as small organisations covering large,
internally complex sectors, to go beyond a 'lowest common denominator'
approach to representing employer needs. Chris Humphries of City
and Guilds summed this up by identifying the risk as one of SSCs
responding to heterogeneity of demand with "a homogeneous
set of solutions".[30]
36. Sector Skills
Councils face real challenges in representing the views and needs
of very diverse sectors, and of small and medium-sized employers
in particular. As such, they are unlikely to serve as an alternative
to direct engagement between providers and businesses at the local
level; this must be the subject of continued and coherent support
from Government. We received some evidence that Sector Skills
Councils were sometimes struggling to maintain engagement locally
and regionally. If they are to have credibility with employers,
Sector Skills Councils must be appropriately resourced to do their
jobs rather than having to spend significant amounts of time on
peripheral revenue-raising activities. This is especially true
as they take on the extra responsibilities which Leitch proposed
for them.
37. We see an
inherent risk that requiring Sector Skills Councils to sign off
vocational qualifications could actually act to make the system
more bureaucratic and consequently less responsive to employer
needs. The Government should lay out how this process is likely
to work in practice, and the timescales involved. We also urge
the new Commission for Employment and Skills to keep this area
under review.
38. Inevitably
the decision to focus on a small range of key issues in this report
has meant that other issues, on which we received considerable
amounts of evidence, have not been addressed in the depth they
would have been had the inquiry come to its natural conclusion.
We recommend that the Innovation, Universities and Skills Committee
continues on our inquiry, taking concluding oral evidence as necessary,
and producing a report focusing on issues not covered in depth
to date, including: Apprenticeships, including adult apprenticeships;
up-skilling and re-skilling of adults in general; the regional
dimensions of skills policy; in-house company training schemes;
funding of skills provision; and policy on the development of
management skills.
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