the lisbon agenda UK Response to enhancing skills is insufficient

AS and A Level Media Studies

Lisbon Agenda For 2005 – 2010

UK Response to enhancing skills is insufficient

By Yasmin Latif

BA Public services student, Position Paper for Politics Age of Global Competitiveness, Professor Paul Cammack

Date 09th November 2006

Contents

1. Introduction pg.3

2. UK Position pg.4

3. Comparison pg.8

4. Conclusion pg.10

5. Bibliography pg.11

Introduction

The Lisbon Agenda is a programme brought by the EU (A8, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia) to make Europe competitive in the economic and knowledge- driven world today by 2010. It was initiated in 2000 but due to failure of several related procedures was delayed and relaunched in 2005.

Specifically UK’s target set is for it to become competitive in the global economy, looking at where it’ll be in the investment in skills and strategies for employment. UK aims to create a balance of fiscal sustainability and funds for welfare allowing ageing population to be a part of this equation and making Britain a knowledge-driven society by giving more young people necessary education, training (skills) where the 25plus and 50 plus making either education or employment a realistic opportunity channelled through the emergence of innovation, technology, speed of learning, getting people off benefits.

I will be looking at what measures should be taken to tackle why UK isn’t meeting its own target already set of 80% of population being in employment, looking at New Deal as the main force in getting people equipped with skills, training or education needed for employment and why its lacking in meeting the fundamental principle of the programme brought, complying together with the National Reform Programme which came about to reform, review and evaluate the current policies to make UK more productive in the labour market and to the current economy to also make individuals less dependant upon the welfare state. New Deal was launched in 1998 to help people especially the youth to acquire the necessary skills, training and education (basic literacy and numeracy skills) with the intention of getting people off benefits and into the workforce. I Hope to show how far New Deal has done this. Looking at how New Deal lacks in implementing the fundamental reasoning of why it was initiated.

UK Position

Current UK employment rate is 71.6% though this figure isn’t transparent it still requires further insight into how many of the adults of this percentage who have acquired the skills necessary to be employable as a result of the reforms, specifically to the New Deal programme. And the speed with which they did so taking into account how many times they had joined the programme and achieved their goal of acquisition of array of necessary skills to be employable.

56.2% is the current rate of employment for ‘older people’. New Deal since ...

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UK Position

56.2% is the current rate of employment for ‘older people’. New Deal since its launch in 1998 helped 1.4 million people, of which 620,000 is not acclaimed for. Figures only show 560,000 young people helped into employment and 220,000 unemployed adults. But three groups remain disabled, lone parents and ‘older people’. 65.6% of women have been helped into employment, however it is difficult to relate this to New Deal as very few women had joined New Deal during 2001 in Scotland and UK especially had fewer females joining New Deal compared to males.

New Deal has had to have numerous reforms in view of increasing the labour force with productive and well adapted employees yet there is no evidence or any statistics in the Lisbon Agenda (for growth and jobs) report of long term unemployment for the last seven years and counting, it shows the figures for the last 30 years, but the figures are only for Northern Ireland it doesn’t show figures for the UK. Tony Blair in his labour conference speech this year (06) stressed ‘it’s not the last 10-30 years we need to look at but how competitive we’re going to be in the next 10 years’.

The reason for having the Lisbon Agenda was for Europe and more specifically for Britain to be the most competitive knowledge-driven economy globally.

According to labour market trends 2001, key findings of New Deal 25 plus (for June 2006) were that the extent of satisfaction varied according to labour market and New Deal status at the time of the survey interview (1). [That is if the labour market demand was high New Deal would be more likely to work but if we were to concentrate on scrapping a programme or amending it without focusing on current trends and high supply of the labour market we wouldn’t be meeting the individual needs.] New Deal isn’t ‘personally tailored to individual needs’ as it sets out to be. And though there is a move to increase the labour force, growth of jobs New Deal isn’t doing enough to equip the claimants to be applicable and approachable to the growing labour market. UK realises there is a link between inefficiency of the labour market and ethnic minority being unemployed however 89% of the white population are joining New Deal only 11% are from ethnic minority background (Source ‘Evaluation of Targeted Initiatives, published 03Nov06)(2).

According to figures from Department for Employment and Learning provided by Targeted Initiatives teams in July 2006 outcomes of New Deal in Northern Ireland are that out of 657 only 219 participants of New Deal entered employment that’s significantly less than half(3). The figures don’t show how many entered employment as a result of completing the 50 weeks on New Deal, as an estimate from the attached figures only 159 out of 657 entered employment as a result of completing course with New Deal. How then is my question to New Deal, have the reforms been effective?

UK’s main targets are to increase number of people in higher education by 50% for 18-30 alongside to cut down on the number of people who don’t complete their education. To increase number of adults with skills required for employment to progress to higher levels of training this is to be done by improving basic skill levels in Literacy and numeracy of 2.25 million adults between 2001-2010. For there to be 1 million adults in the workforce with level 2 qualification between 2003-2006.

EU assessment commissioner for UK national reform programme stresses that UK isn’t doing enough to address skills challenges.

Strengths as of 2005 What UK needs to reinforce further:

- Young person’s more opportunities, guidance available, training and education.

- Increase in what positive things they are doing in achieving the high employment rate.

- The ability to identify weaknesses, though piloting solutions isn’t in all cases relevant especially in relation to New Deal.

Weaknesses as of 2005 What UK needs to reform further:

- Quality of ‘tailored support’ to individual needs and of the training.

- Speed with which it is achieved.

- New Deal isn’t doing enough for the demographic challenges UK faces as New Deal budget (quantity) as to where it should be used and focused upon isn’t met.

- Figures given aren’t categorised in age groups it would help if it was, in having a clearer picture.

- New Deal needs to work on improving the number of people in its programme to get into employment during the first time they are in the programme to ensure a healthy cycle of productive workers, public services expenditure and productive growth in labour market.

- New Deal data needs to be more transparent in showing how many people from deprived areas, ethnic minority, females and adults of what ages came into employment as effect from the programme itself.

-Integration of structural reforms to skills strategy in relation to employment and training including New Deal needs to be fully implemented and so evident.

Comparison

Denmark’s rate of employment is the highest in the EU with 75.7% in 2004, it’s the highest compared to the UK aswell by 4.1% and unemployment is 5.4% in 2004 is one of the lowest in the EU, however UK’s rate is 4.7% which is 0.7% lower than Denmark. We see that one of the reasons why Denmark has a higher rate of employment compared to UK is that its labour market is seen to be “characterised by high degrees of adaptability of workers through mechanisms and measures reviewed and reinforced on a continued basis through involvement of social partners”(4) this motto isn’t reflected in the figures for the New Deal programme though it is put in theory in the structural reforms of the programme, that is where UK is underperforming in the quality with which it integrates the programmes and puts into practise the ‘individually tailored to support one’s needs’ theme of it.

Denmark also focuses on investing in human capital looking ahead of how they could maintain fiscal sustainability better in the future they do focus on getting the unemployed back into work quickly which is why I believe it is the key challenge for UK but not yet comprehended fully anyway by the commissioner.

UK reform programme hasn’t at all mentioned the timescale of, in how long they will achieve is briefly outlined in New Deal programme but it isn’t implemented as you either see people leaving the programme for ‘other’ reasons other than ‘early employment’ and only some, very few attain employment but even that figure cannot fully speculate upon as figures aren’t fragmented into separate category for ‘employment through completion of New Deal programme’ ‘early employment through other means or non’ , we don’t see number of people who had started New Deal programme for the second or third time.

Denmark’s national reform programme outlines a key driver to improving its labour market it looks at ‘overhauling employment policies’ whereas UK doesn’t really look at repairing so much but reforming or forming new initiatives which don’t really provide what’s required to achieve a competitive labour force though its exceeded the Lisbon targets 3 times in a row.

Conclusion

UK reform programme isn’t tackling the demographic challenges nor the long term unemployment alongside this it isn’t dealing with the number of adults with intermediate to low skills. It doesn’t at all focus on what’s key here, the time in which an individual becomes equipped with the necessary skills and capability of being adaptable in the labour force to become employable.

The New Deal is lacking thorough integration and full implementation to what it sets out to do in all areas of the UK in the Lisbon agenda. UK’s target of achieving 80% employment rate isn’t possible with the current level of productivity in the New Deal programme.

Britain is lacking in the quality of training and skills programme to get people into the labour force. New Deal needs to be transparent in its findings and with budget (quantity) there needs to be a reflection to a standard of quality compromising the £3.6 billion spent on New Deal.

Denmark are organised and approaching their main challenges which is what UK needs to do to be organised in what it aims to achieve. There needs to be more concentration on training for the relevant skills for relevant sectors of employment according to Eurostat in 2003, they found ‘work-based training other than apprenticeships is relatively little used’ (5).

Bibliography

1. Source: Internet, Report on’ Evaluation of Targeted initiatives, published date, 3rd November 2006, reported for Employment and Learning.

2. Source: Internet, ‘Evaluation of Targeted Initiatives, published 3rdNovember 2006.

3. Source: same source as above.

4. Source: Lisbon Agenda document, EU Denmark Assessment.

5. Source: Internet, Eurostat document viewed titled, ‘Expenditure on training measures for the unemployed across the EU – Issue number 5/2006.