Johnson, Boris

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 Departments Worldwide How government works Get involvedConsultations Statistics News and communicationsSpeechPM's skills speech: 29 September2020Prime Minister Boris Johnson made a speech on theLifetime Skills Guarantee.From:Published 29 September 2020Prime Minister's Office, 10 Downing Street and The Rt Hon BorisJohnson MPDelivered on: 29 September 2020 (Transcript of the speech, exactly asit was delivered)There are many reasons to – for me I should say – to come here toExeter College – the outstanding Further Education College in Devon.You have a total of 462 courses – some which I tried this morning –from particle physics to cake decorating.And you offer your students an extraordinary chance to skillthemselves in everything from football coaching to specialist Devoncookery, industrial robotics, heavy vehicle manufacture and design.And I am thrilled that you offer philosophy, and languages, and evenclassical civilisation – but this is the home of the practical, the hands-on, disciplines that are not only academically and intellectuallychallenging but which are also of immediate practical usefulness andrelevance to the world we live in.And I don’t just mean useful for individual jobs and livelihoods.All of us in this country need you to have those practical skills – weneed those practical skills collectively, as a society and as aneconomy - more than ever.And so today I want to set out how this government will offer aLifetime Skills Guarantee to help people train and retrain– at anystage in their lives – and enable us not just to come through this crisis,but to come back stronger, and build back better.Our economy has been shaken by COVID, and in the hand-to-mouthscrabblings of the pandemic the shortcomings of our labour market –and our educational system – have been painfully apparent.In the last few months I have been touring labs where people, many ofthem young, are working flat out on testing samples – testing for thedisease, testing for the efficacy of potential vaccines, testing thetests.And it is hard work. It requires endless patience, and good hand-eyecoordination.It also requires an excellent grounding in lab techniques and in thescience – and every time I have been fascinated to find that a sizeableproportion of the technicians are from overseas.And though I welcome that, because it is one of the glories of oureducation system that it attracts so many people from around theworld, we have to face the fact – that at this moment when we needthem so much, there is a shortage of UK-trained lab technicians, justas there is a shortage of so many crucial skills.We are short of skilled construction workers, and skilled mechanics,and skilled engineers, and we are short of hundreds of thousands of ITexperts.And it is not as though the market does not require these skills. Themarket will pay richly.The problem is one of supply – and somehow our post-18 educationalsystem is not working in such a way as to endow people with thoseskills.And look I don’t for a second want to blame our universities. I love ouruniversities, and it is one of this country’s great achievementsmassively to have expanded higher education.But we also need to recognise that a significant and growing minorityof young people leave university and work in a non-graduate job, andend up wondering whether they did the right thing.Was it sensible to rack up that debt on that degree? Were they evergiven the choice to look at the more practical options, the courses –just as stimulating - that lead more directly to well-paid jobs?We seem on the one hand to have too few of the right skills for thejobs our economy creates, and on the other hand too many graduateswith degrees which don’t get them the jobs that they want.And the truth is we’re not giving anywhere near enough of the rightkind of training or support to the fifty per cent of young people whodon’t want to go to university, and so we’re depriving them of thechance to find their vocation and develop a fulfilling, well-paid career.And so the result is business isn’t happy; the economy is under-productive; and many working adults are stuck in jobs without muchfuture when they are hungry for new opportunities.So it is time for change, and for radical change.Let us begin by admitting that part of the problem is that not every FEcollege is as superb as Exeter College.We need to invest in skills, and we need to invest in FE.That is why we are putting £1.5 billion into upgrading and improvingcolleges across the country, fixing the leaky ceilings, bringing forward£200 million this year.The facilities here are awesome. I tried them myself this morning. Andimproving all FE is part of our levelling up agenda to ensure that thesame quality applies everywhere.And as everybody knows, you can’t acquire skills in the classroomalone. You need to learn on the job, to build up the muscle memoryand not just the theoretical understanding.So I can announce today that we will be expanding apprenticeships,reforming the system so that unspent funds can be used more easilyto support apprenticeships not just in big companies, but in the SMEswhere there is so much potential for job creation.And we want many more of these apprenticeships to be portable – soyou can take them from company to company.Suppose you are in a small start-up making videos for Youtube, andthe project ends – so you’ve got to move to another such smallcompany. Under our plans, you will be able to take thatapprenticeship to your new employer and it won’t die with the end ofthe contract.But if we are going to reform our post-18 education, we must go muchfurther. We’ve got to end the pointless, nonsensical gulf that has beenfixed for generations – more than 100 years – between the so-calledacademic and the so-called practical varieties of education.It’s absurd to talk about skills in this limited way. Everything isultimately a skill – a way of doing something faster, better, moreefficiently, more accurately, more confidently, whether it is carving, orpainting, or brick laying, or writing, or drawing, or mathematics, Greekphilosophy; every single study can be improved not just by practicebut by teaching.So now is the time to end this bogus distinction between FE and HE.We are going to change the funding model so that it is just as easy toget a student loan to do a year of electrical engineering at an FEcollege – or do two years of electrical engineering – as it is to get aloan to do a three year degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics.The Augar review highlighted the complexity of the funding system,the bias that propels young people into universities and away fromtechnical education. It is time to end that bias.We will give FE colleges access to the main student finance system,so that they are better able to compete with universities; not for everyFE course, but for a specific list of valuable and mainly technicalcourses to be agreed with employers.And in the coming years, as part of our Lifetime Skills Guarantee, wewill move to a system where every student will have a flexible lifelongloan entitlement to four years of post-18 education – and suddenly,with that four year entitlement, and with the same fundingmechanism, you bring universities and FE closer together; you levelup between them, and a new vista of choice opens up.I want every student with the aptitude and the desire to go touniversity to get the support they need, but I also want all youngpeople to be given a real choice in life, and not to feel there is only oneroute to success.At the moment many young people feel they have to go for the degreeoption. They feel they have only one chance to study, and to borrow.They might as well go for the maximum, and get a degree.Under our plans you could go for a one-year technical qualificationand launch yourself at life – or you could do that, and then go touniversity later on. You have the choice.And it will be easier for older people to borrow to do courses locally -and to study and train part-time – to acquire the skills that cantransform their lives.And of course we need this nimbleness now, this flexibility to acquirenew skills, because COVID has massively accelerated changes thatwere already happening in the UK economy, whether in retail or inrestaurant chains.And while the government is building on our furlough scheme,And we’re devising ever more imaginative ways to safeguard jobs andlivelihoods, including the Winter Economy Plan, which Rishi Sunak theChancellor announced last week,Alas as Rishi said, we cannot save every job.But what we can do is give everybody, give people the skills to findand create new and better jobs.Of the workforce in 2030, ten years from now, the vast majority arealready in jobs right now. But a huge number of them are going tohave to change jobs – to change skills – and at the moment, if you’reover 23, the state provides virtually no free training to help you.In fact we have seen a haemorrhage, in the last 20 years, in adulteducation – a million fewer than there were.We are going to change that right now. We are expanding the digitalboot camps – where you can learn IT, whatever your age, replicatingour highly successful training camps in Manchester and Birminghamin four more locations.Above all, from next April, we will introduce a new funding promise. Aspart of our Lifetime Skills Guarantee, we will now fund technicalcourses for adults equivalent to A level, all of which teach skills thatare highly in demand.They’ll give anyone who left school without an A-Level, or equivalent,the qualifications they need when they need them, when they needthem, helping people to change jobs and find work in the burgeoningnew sectors that this country is creating.So suppose you work in retail or hospitality, and you think you aregoing to need to find a new job. And before COVID people werealready shopping more online, and already sending out for food. Butthe crisis has compressed that revolution.So let’s imagine that you are 30 years old, and you left school withoutA levels, and you are thinking you could find a job – you were in retailor hospitality – you could find a job in the wind farm sector in the northeast, or in space technology in Newquay, or in construction here inExeter, or retrofitting homes so as to reduce carbon.You might see a job for yourself on one of the vast engineering andinfrastructure projects that this government is leading: a surveyor or arail technician. You might want to work in adult care. Crucial sector forour country.You have a huge range of options – in theory – but you need thattechnical knowhow, you need that A-level equivalent qualification;and we will fund it. We will give you the skills you need.The British economy is in the process of huge and rapid change,driven by the internet and the possibilities of remote communication.But as old types of employment fall away, new opportunities areopening up with dizzying speed – vast new sectors in which thiscountry already leads or can lead the world.And over the last few centuries there is no other country that hasshown the same adaptability, the same ingenuity in matching thedemands of new technology.But for the last few decades, alas, we have been hamstrung as acountryby a lack of investment in infrastructure, in science,by our antiquated planning systemand by our failures in technical education.And this Government is putting that rightWe’re making unprecedented investments in infrastructure - anddoubling the investment in science and technology from £11 billion to£22 billion a year by 2024.We’re changing the planning rules so that it’s easier to provide homesfor young families and for businesses to grow and invest.And we’re transforming the foundations of the skills system soeveryone has the chance to train and retrain.And this combination of reforms will tackle the fundamental problemsin our economy of productivity and growthhelping the country to invent new industries and contribute tohumanity’s great challenges, from fighting pandemics to achievingnet zero carbon emissions.Above all, it will make this country, our United Kingdom richer and itwill make our country fairer.So my message today is that at every stage in your life, thisgovernment will help you get the skills you need.Through our Lifetime Skills Guarantee,we’ll upgrade Further Education colleges across the country withhuge capital investment;we’ll expand apprenticeships, making it easier to get a high qualityapprenticeship, and connect them better to local employers whoknow where the jobs of the future are going to emerge;we’ll fund free technical courses for adults equivalent to A level, andextend our digital boot camps;we’ll expand and transform the funding system so it’s as easy to get aloan for a higher technical course as for a university degree, and we’llenable FE colleges to access funding on the same terms as our mostfamous universities;and we’ll give everyone a flexible lifelong loan entitlement to fouryears of post-18 education — so adults will be able to retrain with highlevel technical courses, instead of being trapped in unemployment.And this long-term plan – learning from what has worked around theworld – will finally enable our amazing country to close the gap withother countries that in this one respect have had – or thought theyhad – the edge on us when it comes to skills and technical education.They thought they had the edge on us for 100 years. Well we have thetalent. We have the potential. All we need to do is give people thechance.And yes we face a once a century pandemic but now is the time to fix aproblem that has plagued this country for decades.Now is the time to end the pointless, snooty, and frankly vacuousdistinction between the practical and the academic.And now is the time to give everybody – with this Lifetime SkillsGuarantee – give people of all ages the means and the confidence toswitch and get the skills they need.And now is the time for all of us to begin to build back better.Published 29 September 2020Explore the topicEducation, training and skillsCoronavirus (COVID-19)Coronavirus (COVID-19): guidance and supportThe UK has left the EUCheck the new rules for January 2021BenefitsBirths, deaths, marriages and careBusiness and self-employedChildcare and parentingCitizenship and living in the UKCrime, justice and the lawDisabled peopleDriving and transportEducation and learningEmploying peopleEnvironment and countrysideHousing and local servicesMoney and taxPassports, travel and living abroadVisas and immigrationWorking, jobs and pensionsServices and information Departments and policyHow government worksDepartmentsWorldwideServicesGuidance and regulationNews and communicationsResearch and statisticsPolicy papers and consultationsTransparency and freedom ofinformation releasesCoronavirus (COVID-19)Is this page useful? 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Speech : Prime Minister Boris Johnson : Lifetime Skills Guarantee, 29 September 2020

https://dera.ioe.ac.uk//36494/1/PM%27s%20skills%20speech_%2029%20September%202020%20-%20GOV.UK.pdf

Speech : Prime Minister Boris Johnson : Lifetime Skills Guarantee, 29 September 2020

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