Welfare reform on the Web (February 2007): Education - UK - training

Community education, lifelong learning and social inclusion. 2nd ed.

L. Tett

Edinburgh: Dunedin Academic Press, 2006 (Policy and practice in education)

In Scotland community education is provided both through a variety of local authority departments and a range of voluntary organisations and includes work with young people, community based learning, popular adult education and community work. The book illustrates the conceptual as well as the political debates about the role, purpose and practice of community education in Scotland. It explores a number of community education projects making the case for a model of lifelong learning focusing on democratic renewal.

Learning reps lead the way

Anon

Labour Research, vol.96, Jan. 2007, p.17-19

The government sponsored Leitch Review has said that union learning representatives will play an important part in improving the skills profile of the working population. The learning rep role is popular with new activists despite some experiencing difficulties with facility time. The learning and skills agenda is embedding itself into union structures and is widely expected to become a core union activity over time.

Prosperity for all in the global economy: world class skills: final report of the Leitch review of skills

Lord Leitch

London: TSO, 2006

This report sets out an ambitious goal for the UK to become a world leader in skills by 2020, benchmarked against the upper quartile of the OECD. The main recommendations are:

• Increasing skill attainments at all levels.
• Routing public funding of vocational skills through Train to Gain and Learner Accounts.
• Strengthening the employer voice on skills through creation of a new Commission for Employment and Skills, increasing employer engagement and investment in skills, and reforming Sector Skills Councils which will simplify and approve vocational training.
• Launching a new “pledge” for employers to voluntarily train more staff at work. If insufficient progress has been made by 2010, a statutory right for employees to access workplace training may be introduced.
• Increasing employer investment in higher level qualifications, especially in apprenticeships and and in degree and postgraduate level training.
• Raising people’s aspirations and awareness of the value of skills, and creating a new universal adult careers service to diagnose skill needs.
• Government to introduce compulsory education or workplace training up to the age of 18