Tackling youth unemployment is proving to be a tough challenge and employers are becoming more vocal about the lack of employability skills among young people. Raising the Participation Age has arrived along with new 16-18 programmes to complement apprenticeships. What difference can these make to improve young people’s career prospects?
Key Themes
The Government is consulting on how it should be commissioning welfare to work provision in the future and on what the second version of the Work Programme should look like after 2015. What’s the right way forward and are we going to see a real step-change towards more integrated provision where skills training can help secure sustainable employment?
Following the apprenticeship funding consultation, the employer and provider survey results are coming out and the stakeholder submissions are going in. The Government is shortly to consult on apprenticeship frameworks. How closer are we to a set of reforms that will lead to more employers being engaged in the programme?
The Skills Funding Agency has had a busy year responding to the Government’s ‘Rigour and Responsiveness’ proposals. It is seeking to use funding to make provision more responsive, to intervene where provision is poor, to give employers and individuals the information to make the right choices and to make qualifications relevant and valued. And the Agency is trying to do this with a more simplified system while the world of work and the skills it demands are constantly changing. How much progress has been made?
