Last week the Government published its Green Paper on the Industrial Strategy. A Green Paper is for consultation, to gather views and ideas before a more worked up version (known as White Paper) is published later. This Green Paper, Invest 2035, sets out a draft Industrial Strategy which the Government describes as a “10-year plan to deliver the certainty and stability businesses need to invest in the high growth sectors that will drive our growth mission”.
As that suggests, most of the paper is aimed at businesses. The Green Paper is also important to organisations like the WEA, however, because it also talks about the UK’s skills needs:
As the WEA develops its “learning for work” offers, the emerging Industrial Strategy will be a key touchstone. It identifies priority sectors where specific skills needs are required. More generally it notes how essential skills like literacy and numeracy are needed to support the whole workforce.
Also in development at the same time is Skills England which will be the strategic body for workforce skills and which will help set skills priorities for the whole country. That body is recruiting right now and will be arranging consultation meetings in the near future to help shape its direction.
Most crucially, the Chancellor’s Budget takes place on the 30 October, closely followed by a Comprehensive Spending Review in the spring. Those two events will set out the current and future spending envelopes which we will all be working within. All the indications are that there will be considerable pressure on departmental budgets.
Though we recognise the economic pressures we also believe that they can only be alleviated by investment in learning and skills. We hope to see an industrial strategy which is fully inclusive, including supporting those who are furthest from the workforce, who have low/no qualifications, and who may need support with essential literacy, numeracy and digital skills. Growth and productivity relies on tackling skills inequality as much as investment in high-tech sectors.
We will be responding to the Green Paper consultation and participating in the discussions on Skills England. Alongside learning for work, we will also be encouraging Government to support approaches which deliver “learning for life” & “learning which builds communities”, ideally by expanding the remit of Skills England. A national lifelong learning strategy would help to bring all of the social and economic benefits of learning together. We will continue to press for adult learning within reach for all.
