So, this Skills Gap. What are the Skills and Where are the Gaps?
Recent reports from Lloyds bank and CompTIA both point the finger at this so called ‘skills gap’ that prevents them from recruiting suitable staff, with the latter report saying that respondents believe the IT skill shortcomings have increased over the last two years. Lloyds says that the number of companies who said they had experienced difficulty recruiting skilled labour in the last six months increased to a ten year high of 52% compared with 31% in January.
But as that same report says, “the most frustrating part of all is that only one in three organisations actually has a formal process in place to address the challenges of the skills gap”.
But it’s the Remoaners and their constant assertion that only be staying in the EU stroke Single Market stroke Customs Union with access to EU workers that we can possibly deal with this skills gap.
What they fail to recognise is that, if all these other countries have a glut of skilled people, it shows how utterly useless our successive Labour, Conservative and coalition governments have been at making sure our education and training systems are fit for the 21st Century.
Now, I have no doubt that our pupils, students and trainees work very hard at the tasks they are set. But there is still a skills gap, why?
We in the UK have a massive and growing education industry that churns out bucket loads of domestic and foreign students every year, with more qualifications than have ever before been achieved in these isles. But there is still a skills gap. Why?
The UK population is at its greatest ever size, full of highly qualified young people from across the globe and there’s still a skills gap. Why?
From Tony Blair’s ‘education, education, education’ to every government since saying they’re achieving more than ever before and we still have a skills gap. Why?
Is the real truth that both government and business understand this, but up until Brexit were just happy to open another box of qualified foreign workers, which gives them no incentive to train our own workers in higher skills? In other words, it seems that all they’ve done is outsource the skills training to other countries, whose taxpayers also foot the bill for it too.
Even if we had chosen to Remain in the EU, this would not be able to last indefinitely. And with Brexit in the offing we need to get real and realise that at some stage we will have to rely on homegrown skills and the longer we choose to ignore this truth the harder it will become to deal with it.
Politicians, educators and businesses need to get together to sort this out. They may claim that they already do, but the very fact that everyone keeps referring to a skills gap every other day in every report tells us otherwise.
Whose fault do you think the skills gap is, please leave a comment below.
Thank you.
