PBR: Employers to tackle skills shortage

Employers will have to take more responsibility for ensuring staff are suitably skilled to handle the jobs they do by allowing employees to take the required time out of the work environment, says the Chancellor Gordon Brown.

The Chancellor has said after 2010 a new statutory entitlement to skills training may be required.

He says: “There is an urgent need to make progress now and by consensus - so the Secretary for Education is today appointing the former Director-General of the CBI, Sir Digby Jones to advance an agenda of: employees taking more responsibility to train; employers taking more responsibility to offer time off, with in return more say over what training is provided; and government taking more responsibility to reform and invest in training provision at work, in colleges and online.”

Meanwhile the Chancellor has also announced the introduction of an 'earn to learn' programme for people to gain graduate qualifications while still working part time and new 'summer universities' as well as work experience and coaching to motivate young people to stay on in education after sixteen. Support for 16 and 17 year olds who are not in education or employment, to help them into training and then into work has also been extended.

And the Chancellor says the Treasury intendeds to launch a consultation into the possible provision of £2,000 bursaries for “looked after children” to encourage them to go to university; and also on a new path for entry to university in which students will volunteer in return for a reduction in tuition fees.

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