The Skills Shortage in Birmingham, UK

Skills Report
Birmingham Mail, 30^th May 2014

STUDENTS TO MISS OUT ON SKILLED JOBS – Beverly Nielsen, Birmingham City University (UK).

Students from Birmingham will miss out on an increasing number of top jobs in the city due to lack of skills, according to a new report. Managerial, Professional, and Technical jobs in the city are more likely to be taken up by young people elsewhere i.e. outside Birmingham.

The Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion (CESI) said the report “points to a skills crisis facing the UK’s regional city”. The report reveals that almost 50% of new students at the main colleges in Birmingham are studying low-level courses. It predicts that there will be skills shortages in Social Services, Health, Education, Manufacturing Design, Engineering, and Computing.

Adam Crews, Senior Research Associate at CESI found that the city is falling behind the rest of the West Midlands in terms of employment opportunities and economic activity. He also reported that subjects taught in the post-16 sector across the region, don’t prepare young people for well-paid employment or rather the young people choose options that don’t prepare them for well-paid employment.

Researchers found that half the courses taken in the city at colleges were at the basic level 2 and a third are short term. Total employment is set to rise by 5% between 2013 and 2022 particularly in the Managerial, Professional, and Technical sectors.

Key Challenges

1.  Birmingham has lost out on market progress in the region.
2. A growth in jobs that are in declining sectors and which attract low earnings.
3. Schools and colleges are failing to provide effective advice.
4. The further education sector is failing to address the mismatch between skills taught and the demands of the labour markets.
5. Looming shortages of graduates with business and management qualifications.

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FullEmploy was setup to reduce unemployment and the skills shortage and maintain them at low levels. However, I’m finding it difficult to get lists of skills required by industry. After emailing 6 companies close to where I live in Bartley Green, only 1 company replied and only to tell me that they will not be sending me a list of skills let alone setup a meeting with me. The other 5 companies didn't have the courtesy of replying. This stopped me from writing to the other 14 companies in the same business park let alone research another 10 nearby.

I need a change of tack. This time I’m going to approach the other 3 players in the plan: the Unemployed, Training Organisations, and the Skills Funding Agency who should pay for the training. I planned to start with the Unemployed to get commitment to the plan before I go to the others. The Training Organisations are split into 2 categories: Academic and Practical training.

Now that Birmingham City University had conducted research on behalf of CESI, we need to send it to all post-16 education establishments to make them aware of the problem. Maybe they’ll have better luck at persuading companies to handover skills required by industry. One point on the report says that schools and colleges are failing to provide effective advice to young people. How can they when companies are refusing to cooperate.

In the light of this report, I’m going to try again quoting excerpts from the report and offer to pay them reasonable expenses. After all, producing a list of jobs and the skills required to do them, will involve extra resources and time which has to be paid for.

I tried selling this idea to local Councillors but they said that they couldn't help as decisions are taken at Cabinet level. Besides, the cabinet operates within the remit imposed by Central Government vis-a-vis the austerity measures which require the public sector to reduce spending by 25% over 4 years between April 2011 and March 2015. The people will give their verdict in next year’s general election (2015).

First, I need to get hold of this report – it’s right up my street. I also need to publish my findings on the MPC News and the FullEmploy websites. Then I need to promote these websites widely and invite would-be employees who will be given shares in those companies. Employees have to be unemployed and living in the ward where they’ll work because FullEmploy will build an office in every logical ward that has a collective population of 25,000 people.

For background information read this.