Policy and Curriculum

POLICY WATCH
2009/13
2 March 2009

The UK Commission report on

employability skills

Employers expect them, Government is promoting them and many people are
talking about them. They are hard to define, even harder to bottle but
employability skills are perhaps more important in these difficult economic times
than ever before. The problem is that despite the fact that they’ve been around
for a long time in guises such as key skills and common skills, employers still
complain that not enough people have them. Now in the first of a what will be a
series of reports on employability skills, the UK Commission for Employment and
Skills (UKCES) has come up with some case study practice on how employability
skills can be effectively developed.

So just what are employability skills and why are they so important?

The specifics may be hard to pin down but there are some pretty standard
ingredients. To prove the point, this Report looks at 20 different definitions of
employability skills from the CBI’s seminal list of 20 years ago, to Lord Dearing’s
list for HE 10 years later to the more recent listing in Lord Leitch’s Skills Review
and plenty in between. There are some obvious common threads. Virtually all
include communication, numeracy and IT along with problem solving, team work
and self management. A few have customer service, planning and flexibility or
what can best be described as a ‘can do’ approach; a couple include something on
creativity and health and safety while one has ‘ability to receive constructive
feedback.’ “Some,” as the Report points out “command more acceptance than
others.” Other people might want to include ‘applying new technology’ or ‘project
management’ both of which have appeared on such lists in the past but on the
basis that these are the sorts of skills that anyone needs to do almost any job these
days, this is as good a list as it gets.

The Report pulls them together into a common template. The foundation block is
‘a positive approach,’ the sort of thing that hardly merits agonised description
because you know it when you see it but is defined here as “being ready to
participate, make suggestions, accept new ideas and constructive criticism, and
take responsibility for outcomes.” This supports what are now called the three
functional skills of literacy, numeracy and IT which in turn are applied through four
personal skills: self management which includes anything from getting in on time to
knowing where to go for help; thinking and solving problems; working together and
communicating ; and understanding the business, knowing how it ticks, who its
customers are and how to help it perform effectively.

If that’s what employability skills are, why are they so important? Why are they in
the words of this Report, “the burning platform?” The answer is all around. It is in
Report after Report, the LSC’s National Employers Skills Surveys, the CBI/Edexcel
Skills Survey, the LSN’s ‘Employability Skills Explored’ and the Council for Industry
and HE Report on ‘Graduate Employability’ to quote a few from over the last year.
It is in profile after profile from job applications, to UCAS application forms to the
recent OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies
(PIACC.) And starkly it is everywhere in current media headlines about the state of
the labour market. In every case, be it current Report, job profile or newspaper
headline the message is the same: employability skills matter. They are “the
lubricant of our increasingly complex and interconnected workplace.”

If they are so important, the obvious question is why are they not central to
everything we do in education and training? There are perhaps four reasons. First,
the English curriculum is built on a subject and/or sector basis, it’s difficult to
accommodate things that don’t fit into such boxes. Just use the word skill or the
phrase ‘cross curricular theme’ and the headlines grow red with rage; witness
reactions to recent changes at Key Stage 3 or latterly the primary curriculum.
Second, employability skills are hard to measure and for a curriculum that relies on
measurement to inform progress and practice, this is a problem; if we can’t
measure it, we don’t value it. Third, we’re not very clear where such skills are best
developed: at home, in the workplace, in the classroom? Passed around from one
to another through wringing hands, ownership is lost and value displaced. Fourth,
despite valiant individual efforts, we don’t do it very well; we often give it to the
rawest teacher, we do it in a hut round the back and timetable it for a Friday pm.

Thankfully this Report is very clear about how we can improve things. It identifies
two aims and three steps towards achieving them. The two aims are first: for
“every school, college, university and training provider to treat the employability
of their learners as part of their core business.” And second, to have in place “a
unified and coherent policy, assessment and funding framework that empowers
teaching and training professionals to develop employability.” In other words put
in place the system to make it happen; one is contingent on the other.

As for the three steps, these are in many ways obvious but backed up here by case
study evidence to help those who say ‘I know, but it can’t be done here.’

First, get employers on board. “the direct link with an employer keeps training
fresh and improves the likelihood that it will steer the learner in the right
direction.” There are four rungs to this. Doing a bit of background research first so
as to understand where local employers are coming from; listening to them so as to
be able to understand their needs and constraints; putting forward a win-win
proposition along the lines of ‘if these are the skills you need we can help provide
them for you;’ and nurturing the relationship on a regular basis.

Second, develop a supportive institutional culture; getting employability to be

seen as part of an institution’s vision, leadership, time and budget. This can be a
very hard step and one might add courage and sweat as core ingredients but the
case studies cited prove that if you can get all the ducks lined up, it does work.

Third, get the programme design and delivery right. Again a number of features
stand out here. They include making learning more real, contextualising learning
around structured activities; exploiting the benefits of work experience – the CBI’s
‘Time well spent’ Report of a couple of years ago is useful here; and building in
opportunities for reflection and personal development.

These things are of course easier to say than do which is why the Commission is
intending to do some follow up work on how policy and funding can help. But the
message here is clear: this is a lubricant we all need.
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of writing and is offered in good faith. No liability is accepted for decisions made on the basis of information given.

Employability Skills March 09