Thread by @BenChu_

Does Boris Johnson’s adult skills "revolution" really add up?

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A thread…1/21

...The rhetoric is certainly there from the PM.

And we hear about legislation for a “lifetime skills guarantee” in the Queen’s Speech and assume the action is following.

But is it?...2/21

gov.uk/government/new…

...First, it’s worth stressing why this matters.

The OECD estimates around 9m adults in England have low basic skills, with 5 million of them in work...3/21

oecd-ilibrary.org/education/rais…

...OECD research has also pointed to an alarmingly weak level of basic skills among young adults in this country relative to other countries....4/21 oecd.org/unitedkingdom/…

...It’s pretty obvious that weak basic skills is one of the drivers of our relative national productivity weakness.

Work by @ProBonoEcon suggests we could raise our national productivity by around 1% by tackling low basic numeracy...5/21

probonoeconomics.com/Handlers/Downl…

...Low-skilled workers are also concentrated in small firms and are usually in lower wage and less secure jobs.

So it’s also a driver of our national inequality problem.

So if you want to level up Britain, you *have* to sort out adult skills...6/21

oecd.org/education/boos…

...So why have we got such a problem?

Part of the blame probably should be put on New Labour’s overriding focus on increasing the number of people going to university & relative neglect of the half of young people who did not...7/21

...Yet, more recently, the prime culprit has been the Coalition and the Conservatives after 2010, who presided over severe cuts to adult education services in the decade of austerity.

Spending on traditional adult education was cut in *half* in real terms...8/21

...& the total number of adult learners collapsed from 3.2m to 2.1m.

Note too that the cuts to further education were much more extreme than to other parts of the education system...9/21

...A new apprenticeship system introduced in 2017, funded by a levy on employers, was a disaster, leading to a fall in the number of apprenticeship starts and a decline in overall employer investment...10/

...The new system was supposed to create 3 million new apprenticeship starts between 2015 and 2020.

It’s produced just 2 million.

"Failed on every measure" is the verdict of @CIPD...11/21
cipd.co.uk/about/media/pr…

...So is the Johnson government putting all this right?

Experts are sceptical.

Ministers are introducing a new flexible loan scheme for adult learners - yet the overall spending envelope for adult skills implies *continued* austerity...12/21

...Rishi Sunak’s £2.5bn “National Skills Fund” for the current parliament, announced at the 2020 Budget, might sound impressive but it implies only around £625m extra per year for four years...13/21

...The @TheIFS estimates that this would only reverse about a *third* of the cuts to adult education spending since 2010...14/21 ifs.org.uk/publications/1…

...And we can see the *consequences* of that lack of funding.

The government has restored the entitlement to free A-level-equivalent courses for adults without qualifications at that level but this is restricted to courses in “high priority” subjects...15/21

...the independent 2019 Augar Review adviser scrapping the “equivalent or lower qualification” (ELQ) rules, which restricts access to public financing for study for those who already have some qualifications at a certain level...16/21
gov.uk/government/pub…...

...Yet the recent skills white paper only said the government would “consult further” on this.

Does that really amount to a "revolution"?

Bear in mind that the IFS estimates that scrapping the ELQ might cost around £300m per cohort...17/21

...“The government has kicked the can down the road” is the verdict of Ben Waltmann of the IFS.

The view of analysts is that this is, as it stands, only a pretty sketchy and financially under-powered adult skills reform programme...18/21

...A final note on why this this matters *politically*.

Adult skills have traditionally been neglected by politicians (of all stripes) because it's less sexy than big infrastructure projects & less popular than more money for public services such as health....19/21

...The economic pay-offs of this kind of spending is gradual and long term – with any productivity and prosperity benefits likely falling outside the normal political cycle...20/21

But that's what makes it such a key test of a government's seriousness.

Delivery on adult skills (and funding) will be perhaps the acid test of Boris Johnson’s oft-repeated claims to be levelling up the UK.

More for @indypremium 👇

ENDS

independent.co.uk/independentpre…