On June 23 2009 the Guild held one of their evening seminars for Freemen looking at different aspects of education. The subject was Employer based qualifications and the seminar was led by Richard Beamish who is the Chief Executive of Asset Skills Sector Skills Council. Yvonne Burne opened the evening and welcomed the speaker. He started with an introduction to his own background in education and training and then outlined the work of Asset Skills.

Asset Skills Council is one of 25 Sector Skills Councils (SSCs) established by the present Government. It is the Sector Skills Council for facilities management, housing, property, planning, cleaning and parking. SSCs are employer led and are licensed by Government to improve the skills of the UK workforce to boost productivity and competitiveness. They work with business, public and professional bodies and learning providers to ensure employers have the training available to meet their current and future skills requirements. The breadth of occupations covered can make it difficult for employers to deal with an SSC but for the Government communications can be easier.

The Asset Skills Council, like other SSCs, has three core activities:

They are a UK wide organisation with employer led boards in each of the home countries. It is recognised that solutions on training need to be tailored to individual employer needs and thus will vary by country and region. They also lead the network of Sector Skills Councils on promoting schemes to improve general workplace or "employability" skills across all industries. The qualifications covered by Asset Skills include NVQs but also include others, such as professional body qualifications for chartered surveyors. There are about 100,000 employers in this industry sector and about 82% of the employers have less than 5 employees. There are gender and ethnicity imbalances across many of the occupations in this sector.

In 2006 Lord Leitch published his report "Prosperity for all in the Global Economy: World Class Skills" which focused on the UK's long term skills needs and set out ambitious goals for 2020 if the UK was to remain a competitive economy. It concluded that the UK must urgently raise achievements at all levels of skills. The SSCs were found to vary in their effectiveness in their sector. Each SSC is now going through a process of being relicensed.

Employers tend to complain that schools, colleges and universities do not prepare people for the world of work and the whole education structure can be a mystery to them. However, this comment was being made in reports in the 1870s. It has been shown that embedded learning, where the individual's employment and interests are linked to the learning environment, works the best. However, it is difficult to take a separate approach for each individual and also for each employer.

Some employers such as McDonalds have developed their own qualification. However, one major problem for Government if several employers have their own qualification is that it is then difficult to compare standards. The solution appears to be to have a common core and then employers tailor parts/ modules to their specific needs.

The challenges facing the SSCs at this point of time may be summarised as:

There was a lively discussion covering a number of points.

There is a disjunction in Government so that different reports e.g. Leitch, Lambert and Sainsbury tackle similar topics but use different expressions and vocabulary. It would be helpful if there could be more consistency of expression. One example of this is the concept 'sustainability' which can mean sustainable communities or low carbon solutions to different bodies. It appears that Peter Mandelson in the new department covering business, innovation and skills is keen to merge organisations where possible to help develop more joined up thinking.

It could be questioned whether the UK ever learns lessons in terms of education and training for future employability. It is appearing to be some form of Holy Grail as different initiatives are tried and then new ones come in. One of the issues is that there are so many professional bodies which makes it difficult to get a more consistent approach. As we get closer to the next election a number of ideas come out. It would be helpful to have a simpler system.

In City and Guilds courses employers were represented on the panels developing the curriculum and yet there was a tension as many employers said that these were not what they needed. Richard Beamish responded by saying that employers or union representatives make up the Board of each SSC. However, occupational standards can be developed but they may not be deliverable.

There is a concern that with future spending cuts from Government the budgets for the SSCs for activities outside the core might be cut. The original aim was for the SSCs to get industry funding but this has not happened and would only be possible if the Government imposed training levies as used to be the case several decades ago.

There is a tension between consistency nationally in the outputs from the SSCs and the importance of meeting local needs. However, this tension exists in many initiatives such as the Higher Education Centres for Knowledge Exchange.

The new 14-19 Diplomas are receiving criticism yet it is important that young people are introduced to concepts of the world of work. Previous initiatives such as GNVQs and CPVE have disappeared mainly because it was difficult to train adequate numbers of teachers. This could be a problem with the 14-19 Diplomas. Another problem will be the availability of work experience as we are asking a lot of employers with this demand in addition to their need to train their own staff.

In times of recession training can disappear from employers' budgets. It is particularly hard in small firms and some employers are not interested in qualifications. It is difficult to know if it is attitude or practicality that stops further training.

There may be a tension in universities between working with employers and attracting foreign students. Universities have to be careful how they position themselves as most foreign students want a traditional UK higher education experience and not an employer focused qualification. Many big countries now work across Europe and do not want different standards in different countries. The most important thing for HE is that there is rigor in the courses and students are encouraged to think for themselves.

The evening ended with a vote of thanks given by Val Hiscock.