How this skills revolution can kickstart our recovery – Peter Dickinson

This week, the Government’s £2bn Kickstart programme, offering young people on Universal Credit six-month work placements, has been criticised, mired in bureaucracy. Forecasts are that unemployment will soar to 2.6 million this year.

So, how does our economy survive and ultimately, bounce back?

I grew up in the 1960s. Industry underpinned a town’s identity: steel, coal, chemicals.

Schools directed pupils to these behemoths of industry to provide a stream of staff for heavy duty chemical or steel production.

If a student had a flair for numbers, they would be encouraged to apply for work in accounts. Good with their hands? There was always a need for machine operators. Creative? How about technical design work in steel fabrication? Industry of course has changed, as has education.

But lessons can be learnt. Back then, teaching covered the regular curriculum, but we had no doubt where our future lay in terms of employment.

The main message from the school centred around a production line of 16-year-olds getting ready for industry.

For most of us, it was out of the question to aim for a university degree.

At the end of the 1990s, Tony Blair said anyone who wanted a university degree should have the right to attain one.

He set a target of 50 per cent of students achieving that level of education.

Up until recently, it seemed the aspiration that everyone had to have 
one, regardless of their vocation or ambition. The average debt of a university graduate, before they even start work, is £40,000.

So, it was refreshing to hear last week that Euan Blair, the former PM’s son, raised £200m of investment for his company Multiverse to help young people who would prefer an apprenticeship to a degree.

Euan’s success illustrates the very real need to fill the gap between the world of education and work. He believes it is time to move away from the mantra that a university education is the only route to success.

Times of course change. Heavy industry in Yorkshire no longer dominates schools, towns and jobs.

After the sticking plaster of Kickstart programmes, connecting schools and academia with industry and business is the only long-term fix.

We should be helping all students from 13-years-old to understand their options can include becoming a future leader by starting early in industry or business.

That is joining an apprenticeship scheme at 16 to earn and learn, to find their mark earlier.

There used to be technical schools for students, let’s bring them back.

There are countless role models who quit education for hands-on experience from Soichiro Honda, the founder of Honda, to Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg.

In a pandemic-era, entrepreneurial drive, resilience, new ideas and initiative in business will be more important than degree results.

We need to create an eco-system to foster innovation and invention in the real world. Academia needs to align to business and industry like never before.

Businesses should be encouraged further to work with local education establishments to provide students – not just out of work young adults – with work experience.

By connecting the two early in a student’s life, they start to see other avenues that might suit them better than university.

And if in the future, the student and the employer wish to achieve a degree, then the student attends university with industry experience behind them and a retainer from their employer, negating the need for high levels of student debt.

Leaving school at 16 does not mean the end of learning, it should be the beginning.

Peter Dickinson, MD of Harrogate Business Advisors, is an official training provider on the Higher Performing Workplaces (HPW) programme with West Yorkshire Consortium of Colleges.

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