Guest editorial

Citation

(2001), "Guest editorial", Education + Training, Vol. 43 No. 7. https://doi.org/10.1108/et.2001.00443gaa.001

Guest editorial

In an era when an airline booking between London and Glasgow can be carried out as easily in Bombay as in Basingstoke, and when the world's routine manufacturing jobs are increasingly being performed in low-cost developing countries, today's developed economies can prosper only on the basis of the skills and knowledge of their workforce. Against this background, the British Government this year published a White Paper on enterprise, skills and innovation, Opportunity for All in a World of Change. It established the Government's intention to:

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  enable students to learn in ways which encourage them to be more creative and enterprising;

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  reduce the number of adults with literacy and numeracy problems by 750,000 by 2004, and spend an extra £150 million on literacy and numeracy training;

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  invest £100 million to develop vocational specialisms in colleges and more resources in reformed Modern Apprenticeships, and rationalize vocational qualifications;

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  train up to 10,000 more people a year in information and communication technology through new advanced learning programmes, and widen the pool of recruitment into information and communication technology, by moving 5,000 unemployed people into information and communication technology jobs over the next three years; and

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  ensure that employers invest in the skills and talents of all by setting clear and auditable targets for training, investing $45 million in a smaller, stronger network of national training organizations and helping small firms to collaborate on training.

This special issue of Education + Training looks at ways of keeping the workforce up to date and adaptable, and so capable of achieving the Government's aims. It contains a number of précised articles exploring the relationship between employers and the world of education. It pays particular attention to the ways in which business – particularly UK business – is using education. Usual issues of Education + Training contain substantive, reflective, research-based articles which have been subject to peer review. This special issue, in contrast, is case-study oriented, containing vignettes of best practice.

"Modern Apprenticeships at Perkins Engines" examines the operation of the UK's Modern Apprenticeship scheme at Perkins Engines, of Peterborough, which was among the first employers to join the programme after its introduction. Wicks and Scholfield, the authors, highlight the successful experiences of 16-year-old Theresa Nightingale and 18-year-old Andrea Lenaghan at the engine maker – a company which actively encourages women to follow a career in engineering. One problem in attracting Britain's brightest and best into engineering is that designing, engineering and manufacturing are not perceived as being creative. Yet, as entrepreneurial engineer and designer James Dyson reminded his audience at the Welsh National Convention on Excellence in Engineering and Technology, everybody in industry creates things all day long. While the vocational route has traditionally been perceived as inferior to academic learning, the Government is fighting hard to promote parity of esteem and get employers and young people to buy into the Modern Apprenticeship scheme. The success of Theresa and Andrea should help to generate more support not only for Modern Apprenticeships in general, but also for the idea that women can succeed in engineering careers.

Just as it remains unfashionable for women to enter engineering, so graduates tend to gravitate towards larger, blue-chip firms when beginning their careers. Yet small firms can offer, in a relatively short time, a breadth of experience and depth of responsibility which it would take years to accumulate in a bigger company. In "Undergraduates take the first STEP to success", Fry describes the Shell Technology Enterprise Programme (STEP), an undergraduate work-placement programme which provides technological and information-technology solutions to business and manufacturing process problems, while enabling graduates to pursue careers in small and medium-size enterprises. Students are inevitably left to their own devices for much of the placement. They are, after all, in the company for only eight weeks, and executives in small and medium-size firms are frequently under great pressure. While Fry provides examples of students who have thrived in such an environment, there may be others who would benefit from greater support than many small and medium-size companies can provide.

The problems associated with large numbers of graduates competing for a relatively small number of jobs with major organizations are highlighted in "Abbey National achieves big cut in graduate-recruitment costs", which describes a computerized system being used by the bank to select its 80 graduate trainees from the 2,500 who apply annually for the programme. The bank uses Jobsift, an Internet-based screening tool developed specifically to counter selection and associated problems inherent in volume recruitment campaigns. Abbey National claims that, rather than concentrating on rejecting unsuitable candidates, it can now focus on those who are most likely to be successful. It has been estimated that, over the next ten years, 100 million CVs will be circulating on the Internet. While this opens a worldwide pool of potential recruits to major companies, it could also cause an intolerable burden of work for the recruiter. He or she will increasingly rely on tools such as Jobsift to carry out the initial sifting process. The fairness of these tools will come under increasing scrutiny in the years ahead.

Another innovative scheme to help major employers to select employees is described by Oxtoby et al. "Thorn lights path for school leavers and jobless" describes the training courses run by Thorn Lighting at Spennymoor, County Durham, for unemployed school leavers and adults, partly as a service to the local community and partly as the early stages of Thorn's recruitment process. The article shows how the courses, which last between three and ten days, introduce trainees to the company and its practices, and help to meet the firm's possible future needs for temporary, short-term labour. If short-term employees are still with the company after a year, they are normally confirmed as permanent employees. Trainees are presented with a certificate of achievement on completion of the course. This has become widely respected by other employers in the area, so helping trainees who are not subsequently employed by Thorn to find work elsewhere.

Meanwhile, new light is shed on conventional work placements in "McVitie's helps to forge closer links between education and business". The article examines a pilot teacher-placement project which aimed to improve the understanding and development of key skills within schools and the workplace. During teacher Jane Bester's ten-day placement at the biscuit maker's Harlesden production plant in north London, she was able to observe for herself where the key-skills learning opportunities lay. She then reviewed her school's existing work-placement programme and developed it into a solid ten-day work-experience model, with key-skills development and learning opportunities mapped on to every element of the placement. Her experiences also provided Jane with up-to-date knowledge to feed back into teaching materials for GNVQ students. According to a spokesman for Head Teachers and Industry, which managed the project: "It refreshes the parts that other continuous professional development experiences do not."

Also on the theme of the continuous professional development of education staff, "Investors in People benefits Luton University" describes the University of Luton's successful quest to gain Investors in People accreditation. The article argues that some staff were initially sceptical about the relevance of the scheme, designed primarily for hierarchical organizations, in a university setting. Nevertheless, Investors in People accreditation has given employees the chance to improve their personal development, performance and job satisfaction. It has also prepared them to adapt to changing needs and circumstances, to monitor the quality of what they do and to take greater personal responsibility within the institution.

Attention then turns to the use of new technology in education and training. "Nordic cleans up – with help from online training" shows how the Northern Colleges Network, a consortium of 15 further-education colleges in north-east England, is providing a local company, Nordic Ltd, with online training and support via the Internet. Working closely with Nordic's local centre, Darlington College of Technology, a training-needs analysis was carried out, leading to Nordic becoming a pioneer in the Northern Colleges Network project for the development of online training. The article demonstrates that Nordic employees benefit from being able to study at their own pace, at a time to suit them and their working patterns. In addition to the online elements of the programme, individuals also have access to tutorial support – either in person, by videoconferencing link or by e-mail.

Online training really comes into its own in sparsely populated areas where conventional communication can be difficult. "A bridge to Forfar – and elsewhere in Scotland" describes the Scottish Learning Network, set up by Scottish Enterprise as part of the University for Industry initiative. The article explains that the network, administered by 13 of Scotland's local enterprise companies and supported by the European Social Fund, aims to provide some 500 learning centres and learning-access points across Scotland. These are being set up at sites as diverse as village halls and football clubs, in an attempt to make learning materials widely accessible to everyone in a community.

A final group of articles examines the effectiveness of business schools in preparing managers for the world of work. Liz Amos, adviser to the Council for Excellence in Management and Leadership, told an NEBS management research conference in Nottingham that the output of management graduates from British business schools has increased by 200 per cent in the last decade, but they are not producing the right skills to help companies to be internationally competitive and economically run. The Council for Excellence finds that leadership skills are most in demand but are likely to be the most difficult to develop through the formal qualification systems. The soft "people" skills are generally thought to be most often lacking among scientists and technologists because many of the characteristics which make a good scientist or technologist are not those which help to make a good leader. "Making scientists into leaders at Parke-Davis research" highlights how that company's pharmaceutical research and development division has overcome this problem in collaboration with the University of Michigan Executive Education Centre in the USA.

"Exel programme grows managers of the future" describes a 15-month training scheme involving the supply-chain management company and the School of Management at the University of Bradford, UK, which ensures that trainees gain wide experience of different disciplines, business sectors and even international markets – so helping them to forge relationships across a wide range of business activity.

"Competence-based management development in the NHS" examines how a hospital trust and university in the north of England implemented a one-year competence-based management-development programme for supervisors and middle managers, leading to a National Vocational Qualification at Level 4. The programme, which appealed mainly to ward sisters and departmental managers, covered the management of information, resources, activities and, most importantly, of people.

Few in a modern economy work in isolation. It is vital to success that employees get on with each other. The relationships we have with other people at work are directly connected to the results we get. The three initiatives highlighted here, in placing such a heavy emphasis on people skills, acknowledge that central fact. Geraldine Cowper, author of an Industrial Society pack on developing interpersonal skills, comments: "Developing people skills in the knowledge economy is not a nice add-on but essential to ensuring success at work. In team-based, communication-led organizations – which are now most organizations – those who lack interpersonal skills will not get on and will harm the efforts of those around them." That is surely a key lesson for the British Government as it strives to bring about the step change in skills development which is essential for the UK's economic success.