Memorandum submitted by OCR
SUMMARY
This evidence is set out in three sections,
the first deals primarily with the role of Sector Skills Councils,
the second looks at the relationship between qualifications, skills
and the ambitions of the Leitch review, and the final offers some
brief conclusions about how government might best contribute to
the skills agenda.
SECTION 1: THE
ROLE OF
SECTOR SKILLS
COUNCILS
1.1 For well over a decade now, public policy
for nationally recognised skills-based qualifications has been
predicated on three assumptions:
— that employers can articulate and
agree on their immediate and future skills needs;
— that these needs can be successfully
captured and interpreted by sector-based bodies; and
— and that such sector-based bodies
are capable of designing qualifications.
1.2 After a series of failures based on
these assumptions, and with the Leitch review suggesting that
we should attempt the same solution all over again, yet expect
a different outcome, we feel that the time has come to challenge
the current orthodoxy among policy-makers.
1.3 In the 21st Century, employers can no
longer be divided into tidy sectoral groups, whatever the desires
of Whitehall. This issue needs proper interrogation. How many
employers genuinely recognise themselves as fitting into the arbitrary
"footprints" of the current sector maps? Mergers and
acquisition, globalisation, the impact of the internet and other
technological changes, and the trend towards career mobility are
breaking down recognised sectoral boundaries.
1.4 Many of the fastest-growing skills needs
in the economy are those which cross many traditional employment
sectors, such as numeracy, literacy, project management and teamwork,
yet because these needs fall outside a sectoral footprint, they
receive less attention than they warrant.
1.5 The sector-based model claims to be
responsive to employers' needs, yet, by their nature, the currently
proposed Sector Qualification Strategies are more reminiscent
of a Soviet-style planned economy than a modern, international
marketplace. After more than two years of wrangling about their
purpose and format, the qualification "strategies" have
yet to be written, let alone used as the basis to develop qualifications.
The data on which their development began is, by now, already
obsolete.
1.6 SSCs are primarily creatures of governments'
centralising urges. Largely dependent on government sponsorship,
they are locked into a process of vying for funding. There is
a conflict of interest in a body that seeks public funding to
identify a need and then receives further funding to substantiate
and meet that need. Leitch's recommendation that SSCs should make
decisions about which qualifications should be accredited and
publicly funded will create the spectacle of SSCs vying for authority
with existing regulators and funding bodies. This will divert
even more public spending from front-line education and training
to inter-agency negotiations and leave the whole skills sector
even further off the pace of economic change.
1.7 The bureaucracy that underpins the nature
of sector skills councils is not only evidenced in the lack of
progress in developing sector qualifications strategies. The development
of new national occupational standards, one of their core functions,
has also ground to a halt. The whole UK-wide vocational qualifications
reform programme is in danger of silting up because of this, and
qualifications developers are being forced to find ways of circumnavigating
the entire infrastructure.
1.8 The litany of failures by SSCs and their
forebears provides convincing evidence of the problem: apprenticeships
with dismal completion rates; the long list of qualifications
with uptake in single figures that they insisted were needed;
and, notably, the introduction of a completely undeliverable IT
User NVQ that damaged the reputation of NVQs in the sector to
the extent that the replacement NVQ could not even be called an
NVQ.
1.9 Some of the most innovative and well-funded
SSCs have, by their own admission, had no impact on the uptake
of training and qualifications in their sector. Indeed, SSCs have
been identified in the current work of awarding bodies, QCA and
the Department to rationalise qualifications as the major creators
of low uptake qualifications that nobody wants and nobody needs.
1.10 Meanwhile, billions of pounds of well-valued
training funded entirely by employers remains completely unrecognised
by SSCs. The existence of a vibrant market in training and qualifications,
sitting outside and far outweighing the publicly regulated one,
is testament to the failures of the SSC-led system.
SECTION 2: QUALIFICATIONS,
SKILLS AND
LEITCH
2.1 Both SSCs and Leitch place a great deal
of emphasis on using qualifications as the indicator of the skills
base of the country. Unsurprisingly, OCR places huge value on
qualifications, which open doors for individuals and help employers
with their recruitment decisions. But qualifications cannot simply
be used as a proxy measure for all learning. Not all highly qualified
people are in employment that uses their skills, and, conversely,
some of our highest performing and celebrated entrepreneurs have
little or no formal education.
2.2 In placing so much emphasis on qualifications
as the measure, both Leitch and the Government appears to overlook
the varied and sophisticated ways in which many, even most, employers
measure and develop the skills of their employees. In a dynamic
and competitive economy, employers are spending huge resources
on developing training programmes, buying in advisors and consultants
to develop their businesses, employing psychometric testing and
behavioural analysis, adopting their own targets and appraisal
systems etc.
2.3 The workplace increasingly demands that
we all adapt and learn on an almost daily basis, it is intrinsic
to the nature of modern work. Government might seek to take credit
for creating the environment where staff development is such a
high profile and enterprising activity and use it to counter some
of the less flattering OECD comparisons. Nor should we necessarily
be disappointed if employers choose to reject accreditation and
qualifications as the cornerstone of their staff development programmes.
2.4 A potentially dangerous feature of Leitch
is its seemingly dreary, utilitarian view of skills. It adopts
the worst practices of teachers who tell their pupils to study
hard or be doomed to a life of economic inactivity. The reality
is that, whatever subsidies and veiled threats a government uses,
it will have little direct impact on the behaviour of the majority
of employers. It can help to nurture the environment, but it can't
get down into the detail of deciding what is best for each and
every employer.
2.5 The phrase "demand led" is
increasingly uttered by those in the system with ironic tones.
Presumably, the system aspires to responsiveness by providing
the learning and skills demanded by employers, but in a system
dominated by national PSA targets and subsidies, and where the
menu of choices is deliberately rationalised, it feels more like
a "command led" approach.
SECTION 3: CONCLUSIONS
3.1 So what is the concern of government
in increasing skills, where has it been successful and where could
it have greatest impact? It is of prime importance that, within
the state education system, young people are provided with a broad
and engaging curriculum which develops a range of skills, including
interpersonal skills as well as academic excellence.
3.2 Government support could reach a far
wider audience if it concentrated on "cross cutting"
skills and expertise, rather than a flawed sector based approach.
All businesses have need of good managers, productive IT skills,
customer service, health and safety, administrative functions
etc. It is here where the greatest impact can be achieved. In
a similar vein, some research and activity based on developing
the "soft skills' needed to adapt and thrive in the modern
workplace would be of great value.
3.3 Finally, government has a social responsibility
to ensure that those adults lacking skills are given encouragement
and new opportunities—in this context the level 2 targets
and the Skills for Life programme make perfect sense. It is fitting
that employers who take on adults or young people with a view
to developing them from a low skills base should receive support
and subsidies. It is also arguable that skills brokers, targeting
poorly resourced small enterprises, can help them to make the
big leap forward in developing their businesses, and investing
in a brighter future for their staff.
SECTION 4: INTRODUCING
GREG WATSON
AND OCR
6.1 Greg Watson became Chief Executive of
OCR in May 2004. He joined OCR just after its formation in 1998
and spent three years as its first Marketing and Sales director
before becoming Managing Director and Deputy Chief Executive in
2001. He is a graduate in Modern and Mediaeval Languages from
Queen's College Cambridge.
6.3 OCR is a leading awarding body, with
over 550 staff, offering every type of qualification from industry-based
NVQs, through to GCSEs and A/AS levels in schools. Recognising
achievement is our core business and we employ a full and dynamic
range of approaches to assessment to meet a full variety of needs.
With over 13,000 diverse organisations throughout the UK approved
to offer our qualifications, millions of successful candidates
have been awarded our certificates.
6.4 OCR has a strong track record in managing
major contracts and projects forming strategic alliances and providing
large scale assessment and support services linked to education
and vocational training. It is part of Cambridge Assessment, a
powerful group of assessment bodies owned by the University of
Cambridge.
May 2007
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