Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240-249)
MS MARIANE
CAVALLI, MR
GRAHAM MOORE
OBE AND MR
JOHN STONE
26 MARCH 2007
Q240 Jeff Ennis: Have the other witnesses
anything to say on that?
Mr Moore: As a point of competition,
usually they have to refer to three providers and you always assume
that one of the other two providers has got the business, but
actually, if you contact the other providers, you will discover
that most of them are having the same experience as you are. I
think most small businesses are coerced into having a training
needs analysis, if you like; somebody rings them up and says "We
want to come and help you," but most of those firms, on mature
reflection, do not bother to take up the offer. I think that is
what is happening too often; so you are getting the tick on the
broker's box but you are not getting the result that you want.
Q241 Jeff Ennis: What do we need
to change to make sure that does not happen in future, Graham?
Mr Moore: You want a much tighter
supply-chain relationship, like you would have in any other situation.
As training organisations, we are there to work with the people
who want to use our services, and if we have been in the business
for many years and are in the locality and are well known, our
reputation will be known and either we will be respected or we
will not, and if we are respected they will come to us and if
we are not they will go to somebody else.
Q242 Jeff Ennis: We have not got
a complete loop, as it were, from the college to the broker back
to the college; basically, that is what we are saying, are we
not?
Mr Stone: Working within a model,
a long-established relationship between an employer and a provider
is seen as a bad thing, because they do not have the ability to
go somewhere else. There is an argument there, but also there
is an argument for saying that people do need to work together
over an extended period of time to get to the route for what they
want from the relationship.
Mr Moore: There is a fundamental
problem, which is that, by and large, SMEs do not take up training.
We have struggled with that over the years and now brokers are
struggling with the same problem, and you might say it is unfair
to criticise them for failing at doing something we had great
difficulty doing. All of us can make strides with large companies
because the large companies are organised, but, small companies,
we have not cracked it yet; we have not cracked it, brokers have
not cracked it, whether Sector Skills Councils can crack it I
do not know, but the nation has still got a serious problem there
to solve.
Q243 Chairman: Does the private sector
do better than you?
Mr Moore: Sometimes it does, but
again in a very selective fashion. Health and Safety training,
management training, and so on, they will go in and do a good
job in a particular field. It does not galvanise a company necessarily
to look at the breadth of their workforce, the four or five people
who perhaps want to go on to a technical qualification; it is
expensive. Think of the cost of going into a company for one person
who wants a specific area of training, and the funding model you
would need to support that; we do not have a funding model which
well supports that at the moment.
Q244 Helen Jones: Just to go back
to something we were talking about earlier, is this reluctance
amongst companies to pay for Level 3 training a result of the
free Level 2 training on offer, or has it always been there; is
it any different now from what it used to be?
Mr Moore: I do not think it is
a lot worse. There has always been a pyramid, with quite a good
bottom but too narrow upper reaches. People come in at Level 4
through the degree route, they go academic university into companies,
but, by and large, not into small and medium companies; most of
them go into big companies or the public sector. Actually developing
the workforce from the ground up is not something which we are
that good at, beyond Level 2. I think employers have this mindset.
"If you come straight from school into employment, you are
not going to be in a top job perhaps, so we won't bother with
the extra training. Maybe, as employers, we're not ambitious enough
at developing our workforce, we're not thinking about it."
That is why I say leadership and management. If the Government
is going to put money in somewhere, and I am speaking with a Regional
Skills Partnership hat on now, leadership and management of the
small and medium companies is where you start. You have got to
convince those people leading those companies that there is real
sense in working with their force and developing it, and then
I think you will get the follow-through.
Ms Cavalli: I think it goes back
as well to a point which was made earlier. They do not want necessarily
and need a full Level 3 qualification; they need to upskill various
aspects of different employees' skills to a Level 3 level, they
do not need to put them on a one-year Level 3 course. This brings
back into play again the need for us to look at the Qualifications
Framework, modularised provision and the ability for us to give
them credit for what they have learned.
Q245 Helen Jones: This is a question
perhaps for Mariane or Graham, about the role of the LSC in all
this. What does the LSC bring to the party, if anything?
Mr Moore: It brings money to the
party, which is quite helpful. I also have a hat as, until very
recently, a Learning and Skills Council Board member, in Staffordshire,
and they do look at what the needs are. There are a number of
organisations, LSC is one, local government is another, the RDAs
another, which look at what is the pattern of demand. We were
hearing, in London, that they are not funding creative; they have
taken a decision that creative industries are lower down their
priorities. You may or may not agree with that but somebody is
saying "Money is scarce; we have to put it in particular
directions." Whether you think that is a necessary role or
not, it is something the LSC tries to do with its local development
plans.
Q246 Helen Jones: Perhaps Mariane
can answer this: how good are they at assessing the demands? Because
of this system, it depends upon them getting those predictions
right, does it not; do they get them right?
Ms Cavalli: Clearly the LSC has
assessed demand at a national level. The LSC has made the decision
that what will be funded will be PSA target-bearing. The LSC provides
national plans but they do not easily translate into a regional
framework at all. Graham said the LSC brings money, which obviously
is helpful, but I think what we struggle with at the moment is
that we have got a sub-regional structure which exists currently,
with decisions being made on a regional basis within the context
of priorities which are set at a national level. In London, I
can speak only for London and talk about the fact that we are
not quite sure what the role is of the sub-regional LSC offices,
except we know that is the route through which we talk to the
region, there are a number of people employed as partnership managers,
but it feels to us that if the LSC were lighter, in terms of its
local structures and employees, we would still be able to achieve
the same thing at a regional level. The bit we do not get through
the LSC is the possibility of any local flexibilities, which we
appear to have lost with that very, very top-down, central planning
and almost micro-management approach, to which I know the submission
of the AoC has made reference for the Committee.
Q247 Helen Jones: You are asking
for a different structure which allows us to plan more at the
sub-regional level?
Ms Cavalli: I am asking myself
what is the value which is added by a national, regional and sub-regional
structure, and I think I and my colleagues feel that we have got
a structure which is heavy, which is resource-hungry and does
not add the value it might do, given the cost.
Q248 Helen Jones: That brings me
on to my next question, because we have got this whole raft of
intermediary bodies involved in this; we have got Sector Skills
Councils, LSCs, RDAs, and does that simply make life more complicated,
or does it allow us to plan better? Is there any evidence that
having all those people involved gives us better planning, or
does it just make it difficult for colleges and other training
providers to navigate their way through all this maze?
Ms Cavalli: I think it makes us
think we know more than we know. We know that the Sector Skills
Councils know what they know, but also we know that small employers
and small businesses do not necessarily think the Sector Skills
Councils know what it is; really they need to know. The LDAs and
the RDAs obviously have got a huge amount of local intelligence,
but currently there are variances in the mechanisms for bringing
together that information with that of the regional LSC. I hope,
in London, the regional Skills and Employment Board will have
some responsibility for pooling that information, but I would
say, obviously, again there are regional differences. What we
have got is a large number of organisations with a huge amount
of information, but if the funding for skills is just going to
fall down the PSA target-bearing route you may as well not have
it.
Mr Stone: One of the central conclusions
of Leitch was "the centralised planning of skills does not
work" and I think every generation has to rediscover this
for itself, and here we are, talking about a whole plethora of
planning bodies at regional and national and local level. I think
the implication of Leitch, and indeed some of the responses, is
that the LSC, and indeed others, is moving more into a regulatory
role and I think making demand led work, building up need from
individuals and employers, and, while they are removing this fig-leaf,
that we can, in some mystical and magical sense, predict what
things are going to be like in the future, which we cannot do.
I remember going to a presentation at the LDA from the GLA Forecasting
Unit, which was preceded with the words "This is a forecast,
therefore it will be wrong." I think they were very wise
words.
Q249 Chairman: Thank you very much
for what has been an excellent session. Will you please remain
in touch with the Inquiry and the making of this report. If you
feel frustrated, as I am sure you do, that you did not get a chance
to say some of the things you wanted to say, will you communicate
with us, because we want to make this an excellent report and
we need your help? We have engaged with you in this very brief
hour and 15 minutes; we want to carry on the dialogue.
Mr Moore: I have some DVDs here,
engagement between further education and employers, which you
might like. It is 15 minutes, if anybody wants them. I will leave
those behind.
Chairman: We are grateful for those.
Thank you very much.
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