FE Colleges creating sustainable employment

The UK has a problem with youth unemployment. The figures stubbornly refuse to shift much, and, what is more, recent data from the Office for National Statistics show that young people are significantly more likely, where they are employed, to be on so-called ‘zero-hours contracts’ than their older counterparts. So the issue is that many young people do not have the skills to gain sustainable employment.

By September 2015, it will be compulsory for all young people to be in education or training until the age of 18. FE Colleges take over a million and a half young people every year and enable them to achieve meaningful vocational qualifications, by taking a different approach to that adopted by many schools and focusing on skills. More students – at 14 and 16 – following vocational programmes has to be part of the answer.

Colleges are ready and willing to take on learners at the age of 14 – but many schools are reluctant to let pupils go, for fear of damaging their GCSE performance. Working together to see the 14-19 phase as one single part of our education system, making sure that proper guidance is available to all young people, removing the focus on judging by the attainment of qualifications alone and focusing the curriculum on skills rather than knowledge could go a long way towards ensuring our sustainable employment problem does not persist.

Much of current government policy – the creation of Traineeships, reform to vocational qualifications and the boost to Apprenticeships – is very welcome, but, as colleagues in FE Colleges across the country will know, by the age of 16 it is a very hard job indeed to re-engage the disengaged.

And the fact that – almost uniquely in OECD countries – we fund our 16 and 17 year-olds at a lower rate than their younger peers (and our 18 year-olds even less again) does not help. Addressing the inequalities – both in educational opportunity for those pre-16 and in terms of funding for those in the 16-19 age range – must be a priority for the next government.

What of the over-18s? DWP’s ‘job first’ approach – largely focused on reducing benefit claimants and delivered almost in isolation from other elements of BIS-driven skills policy – is unhelpful for these young adults.

The solution for these young people is not a new national programme – it must lie in allowing local leaders – of both the education and business communities – to come together and devise programmes that will work for their area and provide the skills young people need. An extension of the Traineeship, or study programme model, for 18-24 year-olds would be most welcome.

It has to be better for young people to develop skills that may lead to sustainable employment than to sit at home – but they will need some financial support to do this. Some of the current thinking which sees FE and HE as all part of the same system could be helpful here – with the same entitlement to loans and maintenance support – or perhaps we could use underspends on the FE loans budget to provide maintenance to those over 18 on skills development programmes?

Whatever the solution, FE colleges are the institutions best placed to develop the skills in question. Those needing degree-level skills are well-catered for in our system. We are talking here about unemployed young people who would be better off in the long run getting solid skills at basic levels than chasing jobs that don’t exist or rotating through work opportunities which are not sustainable.