Sector skills councils ‘fail to deliver value for money’
With the future of the 23 SSCs again in doubt as government priorities change, Bill Jermey, executive chairman of the MTC, told FoodManufacture.co.uk that the days of some SSCs were numbered.
“SSCs were an initiative started by the previous Labour government and they have not proved to be successful,” said Jermey. “I think many SSCs will not survive. The only ones that will stay are things like engineering and construction … and I don’t think generally SSCs have been good value for money.”
It is important to treat training as an investment with a return on capital and SSCs have not done that, said Jermey. “Training was very much grant-driven and ticking boxes as far as main [company] Boards were concerned; ticking boxes as far as British Retail Consortium accreditation was concerned and as far as their customers were concerned.”
National Skills Academy
Jermey’s comments come as Jack Matthews, chairman of Improve and the National Skills Academy, announced he was leaving the organisation. His responsibilities will transfer as from April 30 to Justine Fosh as executive director and Stephen Chambers as finance director. Both will report to Paul Wilkinson in his capacity as chairman.
With SSCs now facing changes to their focus, purpose and activities, Matthews said he felt that it was an appropriate time to hand over to his team to take the company to its next stage of development and delivery.
Wilkinson said: “The NSA and Improve are entering an exciting new phase of operation and commercial focus and I am confident we will continue to provide leadership on skills issues on behalf of all employers in the food and drink industry.”
The UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES) – the government body that provides funding and operates closely with the SSCs, is changing its remit to focus on employer-led training initiatives. At an HR Forum organised by our sister magazine Food Manufacture at the NEC last month, Abi Smith, a senior manager – research and technical at UKCES, explained her organisation’s new focus on helping to deliver employer ownership of skills.
Despite the industry coming up with match funding for the £1.7M government grant from UKCES to support Improve’s recent employer-led schemes to raise skills, it has over the years sometimes struggled to get the financial backing it sought from industry.
Bureacracy
Jermey said this was because companies were reluctant to fund schemes that benefitted their competitors. “My view is the SSCs are an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy and there are too many layers of bureaucracy in the training world,” he added. “Government money is going into funding bureaucracy.”
Commenting on the BBC Panorama TV programme last Monday [April 2], which exposed some apprentice training schemes run by third-party providers that brought income for the companies but failed to deliver real benefit to the students, Jermey said: “That has been the history of government training and initiatives over the years – to line people’s pockets. There is more money that goes into funding bureaucracy than goes really into training.”
“Now that grants aren’t available – apart from apprenticeships – they really need to start seeing training for what it should be rather than just as a box-ticking exercise. We’re [MTC] working with people who are doing just that and are seeing returns.”
Jermey claimed that all the MTC’s income of about £600,000 a year is derived from “commercial activities”. “We have to earn our keep; no-one gives us any money to exist.”
