Skills in the UK

lionking

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lionking
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This could possibly go in the Finance section, but as a number of our Brit friends post here I thought it would be a better place.

I just attended a conference where one of the keynote speakers was a senior person with the UK Commission for Employment and Skills. She spoke about the UK's objective of getting into the top 8 OECD nations as far as skills (basic, trade and professional) are concerned by 2020. Currently it's about 12, but her projections, even without factoring the almost certain cut in funding for this sector, is that this this ranking will, in fact, go down, leading to reduced productivity, higher inflation, rising deficits etc.

I'm wondering if this is an issue at all in the UK.

Oh, in case anyone is wondering, Norway topped the chart. (And I should add that this is not an exercise in pommy-bashing as Australia is neck and neck with the UK, but with better future prospects).
 
I don't quite understand her point. This is a relative skills ranking first of all, so its connection to (say) inflation rate is mysterious to say the least. Ditto 'productivity'. In my last line of work in the UK I was required, along with all my colleagues, to acquire a vocational qualification (NVQ) as part of a drive to achieve 80% qualified status for staff in the group. This reduced our 'productivity' for the period of study (it being a distraction from doing actual work) and certainly wouldn't have improved it when qualified. It was a formal exercise, essentially getting a box ticked to make the school look good to inspectors.

You could arbitrarily award every employee in the UK with a professional or vocational qualification, have the UK soar up that league table, and not affect its real economic performance one iota as far as I can see.
 
GlennB said:
I don't quite understand her point. This is a relative skills ranking first of all, so its connection to (say) inflation rate is mysterious to say the least. Ditto 'productivity'. In my last line of work in the UK I was required, along with all my colleagues, to acquire a vocational qualification (NVQ) as part of a drive to achieve 80% qualified status for staff in the group. This reduced our 'productivity' for the period of study (it being a distraction from doing actual work) and certainly wouldn't have improved it when qualified. It was a formal exercise, essentially getting a box ticked to make the school look good to inspectors.

You could arbitrarily award every employee in the UK with a professional or vocational qualification, have the UK soar up that league table, and not affect its real economic performance one iota as far as I can see.
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The point she was making, and I agree with it, is that if there are skills shortages, those with the requisite skills will bid up their wages, adding to inflation, interest rates and so on. I'm not an economist, but it made sense to me.
 
lionking said:
The point she was making, and I agree with it, is that if there are skills shortages, those with the requisite skills will bid up their wages, adding to inflation, interest rates and so on. I'm not an economist, but it made sense to me.
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What account does this take of free movement of labour in the EU?

All those Brit plumbers in the late 1990s early 2000s finally thinking there was a skills shortage in their industry as kids were encouraged to go to university and they'd be in the money, only to watch the Poles (amongst others) come in a whip the rug from under them and keep wages low.

She also wants to speak to the higher ups in Institution of Civil Engineers (UK). The first sniff of a skills shortage and they're to the barricades demanding that employers are enabled to import cheaper engineers from overseas.

Bidding up wages? Not here.
 
In the 3-4 years prior to the recession, there was a shortage of qualified architectural staff; almost complete employment and significant upwards pressure on wages. I'd never seen anything like it.

Underlying this, however, were some very strange things. When I studied at university (undergrad 1986-90), there were 30 in my year and we were the largest in memory. By the early 2000s, however, there were up to 100 students in each year and I understand that this was repeated in the other 5 architecture schools.

Now this produced huge numbers of young architects but now, in a recession, we've got far, far, far more than we're ever going to need in a small country - even once the economy returns to normal. We've got a highly trained labour pool who frankly just aren't going to find work.

My concerns are therefore not whether we're most qualified, or where we are on the lsit, but rather whether it's the right qualifications. That I have my doubts about.
 
I'm not sure what the Civils courses been like in the last few years, but there have always been arguments that there are too many Consultancies for the amount of work available and that there needed to be some 'consolidation'.

Well right now, particularly in the water sector (due to the way it procures work) and in transport/highways (since its mainly Local Authorities, Central Government or Regional Development Agencies which spent big) there have been major lay-offs, some firms have even gone through two or three rounds of redundancies.

In theory this could lead to a skills shortage and wage pressure if/when the economy picks up (similar to the situation when I entered the industry in 1995). However, as I said in my previous post, those in positions of influence prefer to represent employers rather than the rank and file who pay their subs and would rather see cheap engineers imported in than Civil Engineering lose its tradition of being the worst paid of the engineering disciplines.
 
Although MICE members are paid better than architects IIRC, so don't expect any sympathy there.
 
Architect said:
In the 3-4 years prior to the recession, there was a shortage of qualified architectural staff; almost complete employment and significant upwards pressure on wages. I'd never seen anything like it.

Underlying this, however, were some very strange things. When I studied at university (undergrad 1986-90), there were 30 in my year and we were the largest in memory. By the early 2000s, however, there were up to 100 students in each year and I understand that this was repeated in the other 5 architecture schools.

Now this produced huge numbers of young architects but now, in a recession, we've got far, far, far more than we're ever going to need in a small country - even once the economy returns to normal. We've got a highly trained labour pool who frankly just aren't going to find work.

My concerns are therefore not whether we're most qualified, or where we are on the lsit, but rather whether it's the right qualifications. That I have my doubts about.
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That happens all the time;there is a shortage in a area, everybody see that and trains to get into that area, and then there is a overproduciton and a surplus.
 
Architect said:
Although MICE members are paid better than architects IIRC, so don't expect any sympathy there.
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Wow..are you sure? Do you mean the Fellows or does it include plain old Members?


Ah, but don't we all do for the satisfaction of a job well done anyway (so I'm told)?

We're our own worst enemies.
 
dudalb said:
That happens all the time;there is a shortage in a area, everybody see that and trains to get into that area, and then there is a overproduciton and a surplus.
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There are only 3000 architects in Scotland, and 6 archtiecture schools. It doesn't take a genious to work out that churning out 600 graduates a year is unsustainable compared to 180-odds just a few years before (even allowing for the fact that not all will go on to qualify).
 
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