Bosses send school-leavers back to class

MANY UK employers are still being forced to lay on remedial lessons for school-leavers in reading, writing and maths, according to new research.
By The Newsroom
Published 11th Jun 2012, 07:00 BST

And they are not just lacking in the “three Rs” – nearly two thirds of business leaders are concerned that young people are not developing vital skills such as self-management at school.

The latest CBI/Pearson Education and Skills Survey shows that in the past year, over two in five employers (42 per cent) organised remedial training for at least some of the young people joining them from school or college.

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The most common extra training for school-leavers is in IT, but around a fifth of all employers are putting on classes in numeracy or literacy, with some providing extra help in more than one area.

The report, based on a survey of 542 UK firms employing around 1.6 million people, reveals that in the past five years, concerns over weaknesses in workers’ basic skills have deepened.

“It is probably not so much that levels of attainment have declined as that the levels of skill needed tend to escalate with the growing complexity of the workplace,” it says.