From education, education, education to skills, skills, skills!

Editorial by Julian Webb (UKCLE Director) from the Autumn 2007 issue of Directions on the government’s skills strategy for England.

This editorial focuses on an issue that has implications not just for legal education, but for the whole of English higher education. On 18 July the new Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) published World class skills (Cm 7181), its response to the Leitch Review. At its core Leitch set ambitious targets for adult education and training as a key lever to boost UK productivity levels and bring the UK into the ‘premier league’ of skilled workforces. These targets intend that by 2020 95% of UK adults will have achieved ‘basic skills’, more than 90% will have achieved at least level 2 and over 40% will have achieved at least level 4 – equivalent to completing the first year of an undergraduate degree.

The Leitch Review has been widely recognised as an important contribution to the interface between education and employment policy, but its analysis and prognosis has also met with a fair degree of scepticism from both academics and employers. Disconcertingly for the critics, aside from some quibbling over dates and targets, World class skills shows that the government has almost entirely accepted Leitch’s assessment of the role of education in the economy, and its solutions.

While higher education is not the primary focus of either Leitch or the DIUS proposals (indeed, there are only a dozen substantive references to ‘universities’ in this 79 page document), it would be unwise to assume that there will be no consequences for degree level and vocational higher education.

Among the key relevant proposals are:

• setting a revised target for participation in higher education to the extent that 36% of adults will be educated to level 4 and above by 2014 (currently the figure is about 29%)
• developing a new funding model that is “co-financed with employers, achieves sustained growth in employer-based student places and introduces the principle of employer demand-led funding”
• the announcement of 5,000 additional university places for 2008-09 to be jointly funded by HEFCE and industry, with a strong focus on collaborative and work-based learning, with a further 5,000 additional entrants in each year up to 2010-11 expected
• establishing a new Commission for Employment and Skills and re-licensing sector skills councils (SSCs), giving them an enhanced role in coordinating demand-led vocational education; SSCs and higher education institutions will be encouraged to extend their collaborative work
• a key role is also identified for DIUS itself, working with the Higher Education Regulation Review Group and the Gateways to Professions Collaborative Forum, in brokering partnerships between the professional bodies, SSCs and higher education institutions

So, what are the implications for universities, and their law schools in particular? Views, inevitably, will be mixed. Some will see this as further evidence that the barbarians are not just at the gates, but have been invited in, offered tea and biscuits and encouraged to make themselves at home. Others may regard it, more positively, as a significant opportunity to reinforce the relevance of higher education to the knowledge economy, whilst possibly generating new funding streams for universities.

Whatever one’s view, it is clear that this post-Leitch vision signals another shift in focus and a re-ordering of the power relations that shape the world of higher education. The focus for both further and higher education is plainly directed towards what is rather euphemistically called ‘demand-led’ education. This phrase is used at various points to equate to both learner- and employer-‘led’ provision, though on balance World class skills primarily emphasises the role of employers. As it observes (para 3.56):

All HE institutions need to grow their capacity to engage on a large scale with employers, in ways adapted to their different profiles and missions. Those activities should share equal status with research and academic activities. ‘Business facing’ should be a description with which any higher education institution feels comfortable.

While there is some recognition here that employer engagement is not a ‘one size fits all’ matter, the message to higher education is clear – don’t assume that a bit of knowledge transfer and a few references to generic and transferable skills will be enough – you need to take employers seriously as a key stakeholder.

Some of the policy implications of this need to be recognised. First, World class skills potentially puts a lot of faith in the rationality of markets, and the ability of a demand-led approach to deliver. Whether these proposals will in fact provide the skills outcomes the economy apparently needs is a moot point. The success of the Leitch policy will depend substantially on both employers’ willingness to pay and higher education’s willingness to deliver, and their collective ability to identify where and how changes to and increases in higher level learning will make a difference.

Fortuitously, from the government’s point of view, this proposal coincides with demographic changes that will see a substantial decline in the 18-20 population by 2020. Universities therefore are well aware of the need to develop new markets. It is, however, also worth observing here that the crude market case for a change of focus is not as obvious as it appears. The delivery of higher level skills and more work-based learning clearly remains one avenue of expansion, and one worth an estimated £5 billion at that. But projections seem to suggest that the biggest dip in the birth rate will affect those social groups who are already under-represented in higher education. This is obviously double edged for universities – it may mean that the recruitment downturn will be smaller in respect of their traditional markets than the bare statistics suggest, but equally that widening participation is likely to become less effective as the numbers of 18-20 year olds coming through continues to decline.

Institutions are likely to face some important decisions about where they position themselves in relation to the workplace market, and the employment skills agenda may well serve to increase the fractionalisation of the university sector. In this context a group of organisations we have not yet heard a great deal about in higher education will also become increasingly important – the sector skills councils, including Skills for Justice, the SSC for the ‘justice sector’.

Essentially employer-led organisations, SSCs act as brokers between employers and training providers. They have been empowered to create and control the National Occupational Standards that contain the knowledge and skills outcomes prescribed, at various levels of achievement, for a growing range of occupations. These standards are increasingly seen to be at the core of the national qualifications and credit framework. SSCs cannot directly impinge on the autonomy of universities to develop and validate their own awards, which sit outside that framework, but they can ‘endorse’ (ie recognise) higher education programmes which satisfy their professional and occupational standards. They also have money and market information, and can claim to speak on behalf of the world of work. They are therefore powerful players.

However, the employer bodies will play into the hands of the critics if they seek to impose an unimaginative, atomistic, neo-NVQ approach to higher level skills. Equally, whilst we should not ignore the extent to which the employment agenda could represent a fundamental structural challenge to the disciplines and the construction of higher education as a distinct and distinctive branch of learning, it would be unwise of universities not to engage (critically) with this agenda.

No one will benefit if any such programmes offer little that really constitutes ‘higher’ learning. This is not an inevitable outcome, of course. In the law context, for example, the best clinical legal education courses demonstrate some of the ways in which the world of work can be properly conceived of and presented as a complex, problem rich, multi-disciplinary learning environment. In these sorts of settings students can learn occupationally useful skills, put academic knowledge and skills to use, and engage critically with questions concerning how law works in the ‘real world’.

Given what is at stake, it is important that the law schools, the professions, academic associations and individuals are prepared to engage critically but constructively with the key stakeholders in shaping this possible future. We cannot afford to ignore the writing that is clearly on the wall.

Last Modified: 9 July 2010