UK Inquiry Tracker

Developing workforce skills for a strong economy

Public Accounts Committee Closed Inquiry

Opened: 6 Sep 2022 Closed: 24 Feb 2023 Parliament page

In July 2022 the NAO reported that the UK “faces a major challenge in ensuring it has a sufficiently skilled workforce”, with the head of the NAO, the Comptroller and Auditor General, concluding that “There is a risk that, despite government’s greater activity and good intent, its approach may be … Read more In July 2022 the NAO reported that the UK “faces a major challenge in ensuring it has a sufficiently skilled workforce”, with the head of the NAO, the Comptroller and Auditor General, concluding that “There is a risk that, despite government’s greater activity and good intent, its approach may be no more successful than previous attempts to provide the country with the skills it needs.” A skilled workforce is critical to the country’s economic success and to achieving other government aims such as “levelling up”. Economic and societal changes are making the skills challenge more acute - the UK’s exit from the EU has reduced the supply of workers from member states and potentially increased the need for the country to train its own workers. The Government’s commitment to achieve ‘net zero’ greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 will create new skilled jobs and around one in five existing jobs is likely to be affected by the transition. But the NAO found that participation in government-funded further education and skills training has declined significantly, particularly in disadvantaged areas. The number of adult learners fell by 48% over the last decade, from 3.2 million in 2010/11 to 1.6 million in 2020/21. From 2015/16 to 2020/21, the number of participants aged 19 and over in England’s 20% most disadvantaged areas dropped by 39%, compared with a 29% drop overall. Largely because of the drop in learners, there was a 46% fall in the Skills Index – government’s measure of the impact of the further education system on productivity – from 2012/13 to 2020/21. The 2022 white paper Levelling Up the United Kingdom set out the government’s plans to address regional and local inequalities, but according to the NAO report “its aims go only some way towards addressing the decline in participation in skills training”. By 2030, the government wants 200,000 more people in England to successfully complete high-quality skills training annually, including 80,000 more people in the lowest skilled areas. Achieving this would only partly reverse the fall of around 280,000 learners in the 20% most disadvantaged areas since 2015/16. The Committee will question senior officials at the Departments for Education. If you have evidence on these findings and issues to inform PAC’s questioning of the departments, please submit it through the tab below by 6pm on Monday 10 October 2022. Show less

6 Recommendations

22 Conclusions

1 Report

1 Oral session

1 Event

Activity timeline 4 events

24 Feb
2023

Report published

Treasury minutes: Government response to the Committee of Public Accounts on the Thirtieth report from Session 2022-23

14 Dec
2022

Report published

Thirtieth Report - Developing workforce skills for a strong economy

17 Oct
2022

Oral evidence

Developing workforce skills for a strong economy

17 Oct
2022

Formal meeting (oral evidence session) · The Grimond Room, Portcullis House

Developing workforce skills for a strong economy

Oral evidence sessions 1 session

17 Oct 2022

View on parliament.uk

Developing workforce skills for a strong economy

Carl Creswell · Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Paul Kett · Department for Education Susan Acland-Hood · The Department for Education

Reports 1 report · click to expand

Title	HC No.	Published	Items	Response
Thirtieth Report - Developing workforce skills for a strong econ…	HC 685	14 Dec 2022	28	Responded

Recommendations & Conclusions

3 results

2 Recommendation Rejected

Thirtieth Report - Developing work…

DfE has not made clear what level of performance would constitute success for its skills...

DfE has not made clear what level of performance would constitute success for its skills programmes. DfE ultimately relies on measuring learners’ subsequent earnings as a proxy for the value of government-funded skills training and the extent to which that … Read more

Government Response

The government disagrees with the Committee’s recommendation that DfE should set out what level of improvement in the FE Skills Index it is aiming to achieve and by when.

HM Treasury

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11 Conclusion Rejected

Thirtieth Report - Developing work…

DfE emphasised the importance of the FE Skills Index as its key measure of the...

DfE emphasised the importance of the FE Skills Index as its key measure of the impact of the FE system on productivity. The Index works by estimating the ‘value added’ for all adult learners and apprentices in England who have … Read more

Government Response

The department advises against using the FE Skills Index as a sole indicator to measure performance and believes that stipulating an arbitrary target level of improvement for this index would not be a valuable measure of performance and could create issues about achievability.

HM Treasury

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13 Conclusion Rejected

Thirtieth Report - Developing work…

We asked DfE, given the data available to it, whether it planned to adopt a...

We asked DfE, given the data available to it, whether it planned to adopt a system- level metric to determine the success of its skills programmes, and what might this look like or when it could be expected. DfE asserted … Read more

Government Response

The government disagrees with the recommendation to adopt a system-level metric to determine the success of its skills programs, arguing that a single metric would not provide a complete picture.

HM Treasury

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Government Response AI assessment · 25 of 6 classified

Accepted 9

Acknowledged 12

Not Addressed 1

Rejected 3

Total 6 recs + 22 conclusions