Call for a united push on training

Business and further and higher education must put their weight behind the development of new sector skills councils to bring training in Britain up to European standards, a conference heard last week.

The government hopes that the 26 new SSCs, which replace the national training organisations as the vehicle for developing professional training standards in a range of industry sectors, will become the focus for collaboration between education and employers to boost skills in the workforce.

But university and college leaders have said employers must work with further and higher education and invest in training themselves for the initiative to succeed.

SSCs have yet to take on enough higher education representatives to reassure the University Vocational Awards Council. A Uvac spokesman said:

"So far, there appears to be no formal mechanism for ensuring that there is a university or college representative on these new bodies. We need to change that to overcome the problems of the past."

At the conference in London, Leslie Wagner, Leeds Metropolitan University vice-chancellor and Uvac chair, said institutions and employers should collaborate more through the SSCs.

But he said employers might have to be "coerced" into supporting more training through regulations as well as persuaded by financial incentives. "We have a carrot in the form of the SSCs, which have some funding. But if employers are not supportive the government may have to do something more coercive."

Chris Hughes, chief executive of the Learning and Skills Development Agency, said the SSCs had to work to help Britain catch up with Europe. He said: "There is evidence that until now, there has been a negative relationship between our efforts on training and results. We need to get a move on."