‘Levelling up’ needs a truly flexible skills system – Commission

With rapidly declining education participation rates among British adults and skills shortages, a high-level commission on lifelong education called this week for a “truly flexible” modular skills system that enables people to accumulate and transfer credits easily over time. “If there is one policy to deliver ‘levelling up’, it is adult learning and skills,” said Chris Skidmore, former universities minister and chair of the commission.

The Lifelong Education Commission, set up by the think tank ResPublica with the aim of removing barriers to lifelong learning in the United Kingdom, launched its first report on Monday 4 October on the sidelines of the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester.

It calls for stronger partnerships between further and higher education “to provide integrated pathways to higher level skills; and alignment with industry and online providers to enable better coordination between schools, colleges, universities and employers”.

Funding via lifelong learning loans should be applied to different modules of learning. Existing qualifications must be ‘unbundled’ into smaller units of, for instance, 30 to 60 credits, and micro-credentials should be offered as part of credit units.

A commission statement said that if the government failed to make it easier for adults to acquire new skills, it would struggle to deliver on its pledge to ‘level up’ the country – a political agenda intended to ameliorate social deprivation and regional inequalities.

Skidmore said rapid whole-system reform was needed to boost the life chances of adults. “Acquiring new skills is something we all do throughout our lives. Yet the formal process for acquiring them is incredibly constrained.

“There are too few opportunities to return to learning for those who have left it. And those willing to retrain or re-skill can barely see the wood for the trees; the pathways are so complex.”

The Pathway to Lifelong Education: Reforming the UK’s skills system, produced for Birkbeck, University of London, is the first of eight reports from the commission that will be published over the next two years. (See the list of commissioners below.)

The context

The commission points out that the proportion of adults in learning has been “declining rapidly with participation rates currently at their lowest ever level”. Only 10% of adults aged 18-65 hold a Level 4 to 5 technical qualification – equivalent to first year of university – compared to 20% in Germany and 34% in Canada.

Adult participation in learning has dropped, particularly among part-time students, and fewer working people are reskilling or upskilling. Only 4% of young people achieve a qualification at the higher technical level by the age of 25.

“Part-time study in higher education has fallen by 54% over the past decade, with a steep drop-off following the introduction of the 2012 funding reforms in England. The number of adult learners in further education has also fallen by more than half since 2005, with the take-up of vocational training in the UK below the European average,” says the report.

Employment rates and earnings remain higher for graduates than non-graduates, although some higher-level apprentices can now earn as much or more than the average graduate up to five years after graduation.

“Many who are currently choosing some subject areas in higher education could be better off acquiring technical qualifications for roles that have persistent skill shortages.”

The decline in adult learning is happening at the same time as major structural changes to the labour market, which will require workers to upskill and-or reskill in greater numbers to remain employable. Businesses complain of skills gaps and skills shortages that are holding back the UK’s productivity and competitiveness, and economic growth.

There is a highly unequal distribution of skills and qualifications, with areas of low skills corresponding to the least productive parts of the country. “Tackling regional and local skill shortages therefore goes to the heart of the levelling up agenda in England,” says the report.

“Spatially blind interventions to raise aggregate skill levels risk exacerbating the divergence between regional productivity by increasing mobility towards the strongest places. To this end, policy should be place-specific and explicitly work on localised skills gaps and shortages.”

There is a Skills and Post-16 Education Bill weaving its way through parliament. “It intends to provide a more flexible skills system that can respond to employer need, rebalance available options, and allow greater modularisation of higher learning and clearer routes between further education and higher education,” the commission says.

“The Lifelong Loan Entitlement will be at the heart of this transformation, providing every adult with access to a flexible loan – equivalent to four years of post-18 education, to be used at any point during their lives.”

More needs to be done to incentivise employer investment in skills training. The commission argues that the Apprenticeship Levy – paid by employers at a rate of 0.5% of their annual pay bill – could be used to cover a wider range of high quality, relevant training including short modular courses.

Pathways to lifelong learning

The commission’s primary vision is to develop a place-based approach to adult learning; create sustainable and equitable partnerships between higher and further education; and set out an agenda with maximum flexibility to empower learners to recognise the capacity of lifelong learning to change their lives.

“A truly flexible skills system will need to allow people to build up learning over time through different modes and levels of participation that best suit the needs of the individual.”

All higher learning will need to be modular and credit-bearing to enable learners to accumulate and potentially transfer credits between institutions and build up qualifications over time. “This is an important response to the ever-shortening shelf-life of knowledge and skills in the digital age,” says the report.

Presently, there is no standardised way of building up credit across different institutions, with higher education institutions all making separate decisions about what to accept.

Micro-credentials could be a viable supplement to conventional qualifications, providing a way for individuals to ‘stack’ learning in flexible ways that can lead to a qualification over time. This would require unbundling existing qualifications into smaller elements to form standalone courses that can be assembled into qualifications.

“Ensuring that both employees and employers trust in the value of new modules of learning will be a key policy challenge,” says the report.

It will be necessary to improve careers information, advice and guidance.

There is a strong case for strengthening partnerships between higher education and further education to provide integrated pathways to higher-level skills, says the report.

“Complementary alignment with industry and wider providers, including online providers, should also be explored to enable better coordination at the local and subregional level between schools, colleges, universities and employers.

“These relationships between local partners and regulatory organisations will be vital in creating local learning ecosystems.”

Recommendations

The report’s executive summary outlines 10 main recommendations:

1- All citizens will be able to access the loan entitlement regardless of prior qualifications or how they choose to study, including: modular or full qualifications; part-time or full-time; via face-to-face or distance learning.

2- The Lifelong Loan Entitlement should allow funding to be applied to different modules of learning to enable existing qualifications to be ‘unbundled’ into smaller units – for example, 30 to 60 credits – and micro-credentials to be stacked as part of larger units.

3- A more ambitious reform would be to create a unified credit-based funding system that does not distinguish between different modes of study and provides equal access and support for learners regardless of how they learn or where learning takes place.

4- Alongside the loan entitlement, government should consider means-tested maintenance grants to provide support with living costs and encourage adult learners to access higher technical qualifications, particularly those learners for whom debt is seen as a barrier to reskilling.

5- Government should: design a networked system that can guarantee higher education autonomy while enabling transfer and accumulation of credit; reform the regulatory framework to simplify the jurisdiction between qualification bodies; and consider Scotland’s ‘articulation agreements’, which provide clearer routes between further and higher education.

6- A single integrated careers service is required for all citizens at all stages of their working life, providing specialist advice and available everywhere. Continued professional development should be regulated and supported for careers advisers.

7- Retain part-time student premium funding and make part-time learning an explicit priority for the teaching grant to incentivise lifelong education and training.

8- Remove the remaining restrictions on ‘Equivalent or Lower Qualifications’ so that funding can support people who want to study for a second higher education qualification in a different discipline.

9- Government should explore options, including a flexible skills levy and tax credits, to incentivise employer investment in skills training.

10- In addition to employers and educational institutions, Mayoral Combined Authorities in England with devolved responsibilities for adult skills should play a central role in local skills plans. Almost all functions exercised by the Department for Education could be devolved.

Commission co-founder and ResPublica Director, Phillip Blond, commented: “This is the antithesis of a rapid, one-shot policy paper approach. The commissioners are committed to a more patient exploration of current shortcomings in the system that are preventing higher numbers of adult learners from acquiring new skills.”

Independent commissioners

The commissioners of the Lifelong Education Commission are:

• Chris Skidmore, MP

• Professor Tim Blackman, vice-chancellor of the Open University

• Douglas Blackstock, chief executive of the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education

• Professor Keith Ridgway, executive chair of National Manufacturing Institute Scotland

• Dr Diana Beech, CEO of London Higher

• Andy Forbes, chair of UCAS Media

• Johnny Rich, chief executive of EPC

• Dr Joe Marshall, chief executive of the National Centre for Universities and Busines

• Professor Sue Rigby, vice-chancellor of Bath Spa University

• Professor Dave Phoenix, vice-chancellor of London Southbank University

• Jonathan Simons, Director of Public First

• Baroness Wilcox of Newport.