West Midlands

West Midlands strives to overcome the skills deficit

Geoff Fletcher, Skills Policy Analyst, Advantage West Midlands

The West Midlands region is currently re-drafting its Regional Economic Strategy and is embedding the theme of world class skills throughout the document. Skills issues were the main area of concern highlighted by regional businesses, individuals and public sector bodies throughout an extensive consultation process.

This confirmed the view established by extensive research commissioned by partners within the West Midlands Regional Skills Partnership, a non-legal body that brings together business and the public sector funders and delivers skills and training to make strategic skills decisions.

The research has concluded that in terms of both the supply and demand for skills, the region's performance has improved significantly over recent years but has failed to narrow the gap between itself and the best performing regions. Overall the West Midlands is the most poorly performing region in England when it comes to skills.

Key facts include:

• The West Midlands has the highest number of people with no qualifications;
• Regional businesses invest less in training than their counterparts;
• The region has 70,000 less people with higher level skills working in the private sector than the English average;
• It is clear that the region faces a huge challenge, but it is a challenge the region must meet head-on if we are to rise to the challenges of further economic restructuring and further globalisation of trade.

The new economic strategy will tackle this challenge by taking an integrated approach; the vision of which is to ensure: "The West Midlands is a world class region in which to invest, work, learn, visit and live and is increasingly successful in creating wealth to benefit its entire people." This recognises from the outset the importance of skills as a key building block for economic, social and physical regeneration and prosperity.

The central importance of skills for raising productivity and reducing worklessness is emphasised throughout the whole strategy and is a key component of the three main themes "Business, People and Place".

I have set out below some of the key areas where skills are integrated into each section of the strategy.

Business

Stimulating employer investment in skills - current employer investment in skills is far too low as highlighted above. This area of work will engage businesses in the design and supply of training and skills development to ensure that they are more relevant to business processes. Key milestones will include an increase in the number of businesses involved in the design of qualifications and improving their performance through the new integrated skills and business support services.

Also of vital importance to the region is to increase the number of people with graduate level skills employed in the economy to develop and deliver higher value products and services.

Place

Developing sustainable communities - Successful, thriving and growing economies require a network of high quality, sustainable urban and rural communities which attract and retain a diverse, thriving and skilled workforce. Through this action we will promote the need to provide the physical spaces in which businesses can thrive and grow to help generate more highly skilled jobs. Importantly we will also ensure that the jobs created by the construction and operation of new developments are accessed by local people, appropriately trained. Local labour agreements will be a component of this.

People

The People section is totally dedicated to skills. The key themes are:

• The need to raise the ambitions and aspiration of both individuals and businesses for a more higher value, skilled economy;
• To remove the barriers individuals face to gain the skills needed for sustained employment;
• To ensure that the region has the highest quality leaders and managers who are able to inspire people, drive innovation, enterprise and productivity and make the most of the skills and talents of their workforce;
• To encourage employers to play their part in articulating the skills they need to improve their businesses now and in the future.

As you can see the West Midlands is taking this challenge seriously. To achieve a step change in the region's economy it is vital that the need to continuously improve skills is well understood by businesses and individuals. The above is just a small taste of some of the measures the West Midlands Economic strategy is proposing to cement the region as world class, with world class skills the fundamental core of this - world class skills are central to this ambition.

For more info contact:

Geoff Fletcher
Skills Policy Analyst
Advantage West Midlands
0121 380 3643
geoffreyfletcher@advantagewm.co.uk