Writing in the Telegraph, Rachel Truman follows up on an earlier article we published in September (‘To give the UK economy a fighting chance we need world-class skills’ - see our Education Archive for September) with a further publicity drive on behalf of The Skills Taskforce for Global Britain.
The purpose of the taskforce is to benchmark UK skills against an international standard and thereby put pressure on government to ensure those leaving school, college and university are equipped with the skills to meet the challenges and requirements of investors looking to do business in Britain.
"Chairing the initiative is John Cridland, former director general of the CBI and chairman of the Home Group; 12 industry, education and training leaders are on the board.
Cridland says: “We’re looking to find out how good we are at providing the quality and quantity of skills needed to attract international investment – but also how far skills figure in the agreements that are reached when we’re looking at bringing big investments into the UK.
It is looking at whether the UK’s skills systems can respond quickly enough to the needs of investors to help secure and retain their interest. And whether the UK’s regions and nations are doing enough to market their technical skills to global investors.
The taskforce has already identified shortcomings in a number of areas:
"Cridland says the insights drawn from WorldSkills UK’s international skills benchmarking clearly show that the UK could be performing better in technical education. This is particularly the case around skills needed in engineering, advanced manufacturing, clean tech, digital and life sciences."
The full article can be read here with a link to the original beneath it:
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