Boris Johnson’s big skills announcement fails to meet the scale of the coronavirus crisis

Plagued by revolts in Westminster, Boris Johnson attempted to change the subject today by announcing a package to reform adult education. “At this moment, when we need them so much, there is a shortage of UK-trained lab technicians, just as there is a shortage of so many crucial skills,” he said in a speech at Exeter College. “And it’s not as though the market doesn’t require these skills. The market will pay richly. The problem is one of supply, and somehow our post-18 educational system is not working in such a way as to endow people with those skills.”

The government’s solution is to offer a “lifetime skills guarantee” encompassing three key planks. First, any adult who does not have an A-Level (or equivalent) qualification will be eligible for a free college course in order to train for a better job. At present this is only available to adults up to the age of 23.

Second, there will be a push to rapidly expand higher education loans, allowing them to be used for a wider range of vocational courses, with the government providing finance for shorter-term studies in areas such as coding. And third, “skills boot camps” – several of which are currently in trial stage – will be expanded across England.

Johnson was enthusiastic in announcing these measures – for once he was delivering good news – but some are questioning whether they’re effective or even that innovative. There are plenty of caveats. The expanded college courses will be funded by the current National Skills Fund and will be limited to very specific courses that are “shown to be valued by employers.”

Additionally, details of the funding for the new higher education loans have not been provided, and, despite ministers explicitly linking the plan to an anticipated rise in unemployment, the soonest any of the measures will be in place is April.

These have brought criticism from all corners. Kate Green, the shadow Education Secretary, accused Johnson of “reheating old policies” and noted that, by April, “many workers could have been out of work for nearly a year”. And Kirstie Donnelly, the chief executive of The City & Guilds Group – one of Britain’s leading training providers – said the measures “still seem narrow in their scope and don’t contain the creative thinking needed to address the vast skills and jobs challenges that lie ahead.”

Donnelly added: “If only those without an A-level qualification are eligible for this training, it completely overlooks huge swathes of the population who have been displaced from their industries this year and will need to completely retain and change their skill sets now.”

When asked about the funding gap, one Conservative backbencher told Reaction that the announcement seemed “overbaked”, adding that he didn’t expect the policies “to create as much as a ripple in terms of the supply-side reforms we need.”

Also fuelling the doubts is the government’s poor record of delivering new jobs schemes. The announcement of the Kickstart Scheme, an emergency training programme to deal with the rise in youth unemployment, was warmly welcomed in the summer by businesses eager to bring on new talent with Treasury support. But its implementation has been hampered in recent weeks by a complicated bureaucracy which has ostracised small firms.

Almost three months since it was announced in Rishi Sunak’s summer fiscal statement, the Kickstart Scheme has yet to employ a single person, and the first job advertisement isn’t expected until mid-November.

In discussing government programmes, it is easy to lose sight of the people whose lives they are intended to support. People such as Abdi Kamal, a 24-year-old from north London who lost his job in June due to the pandemic, are the most vulnerable to long-term unemployment as in the post-Covid economic environment.

Kamal deplores having to rely on welfare support and is eager to get back to work. But this morning’s promise of access to training was “a joke,” he told Reaction. “Will a two month course at Barnet College get me a career? Don’t think so.”