Written evidence to be reported to the House
Education and Skills Bill
12:00 pm
Susan Anderson: That is something that we must be aware of. Certainly young people—I have already pointed to those who do not feel that college is for them—are gaining good employability skills. Some of those employability skills that our members have identified as so important are: self-management or just turning up on time, at the right time, day in, day out; team working; and customer care. You can get all those skills in a work situation. In fact, it is often the best way to gain those skills, which is why we think that work experience is so important.
Those are skills that you can get. They are the softer skills. One of the things that we would be looking to happen between now and when the Bill comes into effect is some way of accrediting those skills without young people having to go into college. Let us think about numbers and some of the things—for example, we could learn what has happened in terms of successful apprenticeships. It does not have to be people with clipboards following young people around, but in order to find some way of accrediting those skills that young people are getting in the workplace we would be very happy to work with the sector skills councils and the QCA. That would be one of the necessary steps to take place. We need to emphasise that young people are getting very valuable skills from training that is not necessarily off-the-job training. We must take account of that. We must not get to feel that it is not quite training if it is not off the job.