Expert Briefing: Key Labour Market and Skills Issues in Scotland (and beyond)

Professor Ewart Keep is widely acclaimed in UK policy and academic circles for his insightful analysis of education and training issues. His expertise was recognised most recently in his role as Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Education and Skills Committee in producing its report, Post-16 Skills, which was published in July 2007. Professor Keep’s expertise has also been recognised in Scotland with his ongoing role as Expert Adviser to the Scottish Funding Council Skills Committee. Ewart draws upon his wealth of knowledge and research experience to suggest some key issues for Scottish skills policy in the next decade.

He identifies three major obstacles which face those charged with policy formulation and research in the skills area:

1. The short-term pressure generated by targets, reforms and initiatives, which can divert attention from longer-term approaches.
2. The continuing emphasis on skills supply, to the detriment of a wider view of skills encompassing the demand for skills and the utilisation of existing skills in the workforce.
3. The narrow focus of much skills research in the UK - both in terms of learning lessons from other countries and from wider academic disciplines.

Professor Keep’s paper then highlights some important areas for discussion:

• The potential gap between the nature of employer demand and policy-makers’ desire for increasingly higher-skilled job opportunities for all.
• The recognition that employers are not all the same, suggesting that policy responses must be differentiated.
• The ongoing challenge of allocating finite public sector resources in the face of increasingly competing demands.
• The balance to be struck between skills for work and more general learning and education.
• The clarification which is required for any demand-led system - whose demand? Is it the demand from employers for skilled workers or the demand from individuals for better skills? Where might these coincide and where are there differences?

Professor Keep’s briefing covers a large amount of ground. It raises some key questions for Scottish researchers, policy makers and practitioners. It is a challenging, constructive contribution to the ongoing debate in Scotland from an acknowledged expert in the field.

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