This report from the CIPD sets the context of longstanding megatrends impacting the UK’s world of work, arguing that skills development policy is the key policy lever needed in response. It compares and summarises current labour market and skills challenges across the four nations as well as employer approaches to training and provides an overview of key public policy developments. Skills and labour shortages continue to impact employers across all four nations and virtually all sectors of the economy. In addition to this, skills gaps, mismatches and underutilisation point to persistent inefficiencies between the labour market and the skills development system. The second half of the report focuses on apprenticeship systems which have seen the biggest evolution and divergence since 2017.
Policy-makers and researchers in the UK and its four constituent nations regularly seek to learn from the best-performing international examples in the relevant public policy area. Comparing our systems with those of our competitors is a useful exercise, as it can provide different perspectives in similar contexts.
This, however, has diverted attention from the differing approaches within an increasingly divergent and devolved UK. In skills policy, especially, there is a real lack of intra-UK research, compared with a broad range of internationally focused work. This report seeks to fill that gap.
The skills systems of the four UK nations have seen increasing divergence in recent years, especially after the introduction of the Apprenticeship Levy in 2017 and subsequent reforms.
The impact of this is twofold:
First, employers and people professionals who operate across more than one nation have to navigate an increasingly complex landscape. This frustration shines through in every forum or consultation on the topic.
Second, it provides an opportunity to compare very different approaches with their impact on outcomes. Sharing best practice and cross-national learning should be a key strength of devolution, not an afterthought.
This report sets the context of longstanding megatrends impacting the UK’s world of work (like industrial change or the ageing population), arguing that skills development policy is the key policy lever needed in response. It compares and summarises current labour market and skills challenges across the four nations as well as employer approaches to training, and provides an overview of key public policy developments.
The second half of the report focuses on our apprenticeship systems. These have seen the biggest evolution and divergence over the last six years and therefore offer a useful case study. Furthermore, evidence suggests that it is vocational education – and apprenticeships in particular – that needs to be boosted if we are to tackle skills gaps and mismatches across the UK.
The report concludes with a summary of the key themes emerging from our evidencegathering, points to several areas of best practice, highlights individual programmes in the four nations, and ends with a series of public policy recommendations that are transferrable to individual legislatures. Below is a brief summary of the report’s key findings and recommendations.