Jonathan Payne

The unbearable lightness of skill: the changing meaning of skill in UK policy discourses andsome implications for education and training

The paper traces how the meaning of ‘skill’ has broadened considerably since the 1950s through an examination of the relevant policy literature. It stresses the central role of both the Manpower Services Commission (MSC) and Further Education Unit (FEU) in re-defining ‘skill’ in the late 1970s and 1980s. Core (or key) skills, which have come to dominate contemporary education and training debates, are seen as an extension of this agenda. Recent usage of the term, skill, is found to be more applicable to a vision of a low skill economy than that of a high skill one, presenting policy makers with range of difficult problems with regard to vocational education and training (VET) policy. Im not against skills as such … so long as it really is skills were talking about. (Hart 1978:205) … nothing is more false than the claim that, for a given assertion, its use is its meaning. On the contrary, its use may depend upon its lack of meaning, its possession of wholly different and incompatible meanings in different contexts, and the fact that, at the same time, it as it were emits the impression of possessing a consistent meaning. (Gellner 1973:42)

Developing a Political Economy of Skill

Recent theoretical developments in the political economy of skill are making advances in our understanding of key dynamics in advanced capitalist economies, yet there is a failure to address a number of central issues. This paper will argue that without an integration of the labour process, the state and the agency of change there is little possibility of an effective and realistic evaluation of what a high-skills strategy for the UK would mean and what would be required to implement it.

‘Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’ interrogating new skill concepts in service work — the view from two UK call centres

A current theme within debates over interactive service work is that many routine service jobs are ‘skilled’ because they require workers to perform ‘emotion work’ and ‘articulation work’. Drawing upon workers’ views of their skills in two mass market call centres in the UK, the article questions the use and validity of these new skill concepts. It is argued that these concepts overplay the amount of task variation, discretion and control available to workers. Even more problematic is the tendency to equate skill with the ability to cope with badly designed jobs and stressful working conditions.The findings suggest that there is a need for a thorough debate about what is meant by a ‘skilled job’ in an expanding service-based economy.

Sector skills councils and employer engagement – delivering the ‘employer-led’ skills agenda in England

UK Sector Skills Councils (SSCs) are seen as critical to policymakers’ aspirations to develop an education and training (E&T) system that is both ‘demand‐driven’ and ‘employer‐led’ and where employers ‘play their part’ in national upskilling. However, the concept of employer leadership remains deeply problematic in the English context, with some commentators arguing that the system is better viewed as government/target‐led. More recently, the Leitch Review of Skills has offered employers a new training contract or ‘something for something deal’. If this deal is to succeed, much will depend upon the ability of SSCs to engage employers in their sectors and build commitment to the Leitch agenda. The article outlines previous attempts to develop effective sectoral bodies in the UK and asks why this has proven so problematic. Drawing upon interviews with representatives of seven SSCs, it then explores SSC employer engagement strategies together with the main challenges they confront.

On the 'Political Economy of Skill': Assessing the Possibilities for a Viable High Skills Project in the United Kingdom

Against the backdrop of an internationa l policy discourse stressing the centrality of skills, education and learning to national economic and social wellbeing, the current UK Labour government has committed itself to building a high skill, high value added economy and a culture of lifelong learning. Ultimately, this means taking Britain out of its ‘low skills, low quality equilibrium’ and tackling an economy that has been seen to compete largely on the basis of weak investment, low wages, long working hours and an undertrained workforce relative to many of its major competitors. Education and training now form the very cornerstone of New Labour’s so-called ‘Third Way’, with a raft of policy initiatives already on stream designed to help individuals secure stable incomes, maintain ‘employability’ and escape ‘social exclusion’ in a new ‘globalised’ knowledge-driven economy. However, as under their Conservative predecessors, UK vocational education and training (VET) policy continues to be premised on the belief that boosting the supply of skills, largely through an expansion of the post-compulsory education system, will be sufx8e cient to crack the problem. If anything, the scale of policy ambition and belief in what skills can do for the country, the x8e rm and the individual grows ever more ambitious. Skills, knowledge, education, training and learning have come to be seen as the answer to a vast array of economic and social problems facing the UK, encompassing everything from weak competitiveness and low productivity to unemployment and community breakdown. At the same time, many commentators stress the limitations of the government’s approach. They argue that such narrowly focused initiatives neglect the problem of weak employer demand for, and usage of, skill in the UK economy in general, and fail to address a recurrent cycle of low skill, low wage and insecure job creation. By the same token, however, there has been only very limited exploration of what ‘tackling the demand side’ actually means in the UK,

The political economy of skill and the limits of educational policy

In the UK policy context, skills, education and learning are seen as a universal solution to a vast array of economic and social problems. In challenging this view, this paper argues that those educationalists calling for progressive reforms to the education system need to acknowledge the reality of the contemporary workplace and the institutional context of UK capitalism. When it comes to the question of how the UK might move towards a more inclusive high skills society, no matter where we start to look - be it the economy or a highly class-divided English education system - it all seems to add up badly. In challenging the current policy agenda, educationalists will need to insist that progressive educational reform cannot be separated from the struggle for broader political, social and economic change.

Goodbye to all that? a critical re-evaluation of the role of the high performance work organization within the UK skills debate

Over the last 20 years, policy makers and academics in the UK have been increasingly concerned with the question of how to tackle the country’s longstanding skills problem (see Keep and Mayhew, 1999). Today the lines of the UK skills debate seem fairly clearly drawn. On the one hand, policy makers insist that a high skills, high value-added economy can be achieved mainly through initiatives aimed at improving the supply of skills and qualifications (DfES, 2003). On the other, a number of academics contend that such an approach neglects deeply rooted structural weaknesses in the British economy that tend to depress employer demand for, and utilization of, skills (see Brown et al., 2001; Coffield, 1999; Keep and Mayhew, 1999). This latter group argues that many employers are competing on the basis of relatively low skill, standardized production strategies and price-based competition that require only a limited range of low-level skills from the bulk of the workforce. Consequently, progress towards a high skills economy will require a much broader range of policy interventions capable of addressing ‘demand-side’ issues, such as firms’ choice of competitive strategies as well as their approaches to work organization and people management. In seeking to address the mechanisms by which government might tackle the issue of work organization, some commentators have suggested the need for a more active role for public policy in helping to diffuse the model of the high performance work organization (HPWO) (Keep, 2000a, 2000b; Ashton and Sung, 2002). Although there are many other labels used, for example high commitment work systems and high involvement, we have adopted the terminology

Divergent skills policy trajectories in England and Scotland after Leitch

The UK Labour government has consistently argued that boosting the supply of skilled, qualified labour is ‘the key’ to national economic success and social justice, a position recently endorsed by the Leitch Review of Skills. However, while the argument that skills have an important role to play is widely accepted, Leitchs assertion that ‘skills are the most important lever’ remains contentious. Political devolution means that while the UK government retains control over skills policy in England, this is not the case in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland where education and training is a matter for their respective parliaments and assemblies. Indeed, there are interesting differences of approach emerging in terms of how the ‘skills problem’ is understood and the forms of policy interventions that are needed. While English policy-makers have embraced the Leitch agenda and are focused narrowly on boosting skills supply and matching overseas levels of qualification stocks, their Scottish counterparts are stressing the need for skills to be utilised effectively at work and are seeking to integrate skills policy within a wider business improvement, innovation and economic development agenda. This article examines these contrasting approaches, together with the main challenges they confront. It argues that there is an opportunity for Scotland to lead the way in developing a more integrative approach to skills policy that addresses key issues of skill demand and usage. However, translating this new policy position into practical policy interventions will require a process of policy learning. In the longer term, there is the potential for Scotlands approach to challenge the assumptions upon which English policy is based.

Skills in context: what can the UK learn from Australia's skill ecosystem projects?

For over two decades, UK skills policy has focused on boosting the supply of skilled or qualified labour. Despite significant progress on this front, British productivity continues to lag behind that of major competitors, while policy makers increasingly confront the challenge of ensuring that skills are utilised effectively in the workplace. With policy in this area relatively underdeveloped in the UK, this article considers the lessons that might be drawn from Australias recent experiment with skill ecosystem projects, which are explicitly aimed at helping organisations to enhance their capacity to develop and deploy skills.

What is the ‘high skills society’? Some reflections on current academic and policy debates in the UK

The UK government has committed itself to building a high skills future for the UK. However, despite widespread use of terms such as the ‘knowledge economy’, ‘the high skills society’ and ‘the learning society’, there remains much confusion as to the kind of economy or society different commentators are actually aiming at. The paper seeks to add clarity to current debates by mapping the various visions to emerge from three key groupings: (i) government and ‘social actors’, (ii) those writing from an educationalist background and (iii) those coming from a broadly industrial relations tradition. By highlighting the confusion, tensions and contradictions that exist, it soon becomes clear that high skills are far from being the consensual policy option they initially appear. It is only by opening up these issues that we can appreciate the different aims that exist at the centre of the UK skills debate and begin to confront the real political choices available.