Skills and Education Briefing Report

Skills and Education: A problem for business recruitment?

This briefing, which took place on 12 December 2007, focused on the shortage of skills and education in the workplace. Employers spend a great deal of time and money on recruitment and training and this briefing will dicscuss the problems and effects this has on business when trying to recruit personnel.

Every year we hear of the rise in the number of students receiving top grades yet businesses constantly voice their concern about the low level of both skills and education that prospective employees bring to the workplace. This would therefore indicate that from middle school to university something has gone amiss on what employers actually require/want to what educational institutions actually teach.

The panel consisted of:

• Guest Chair, Eric Joyce MP, PPS to John Hutton MP as Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. Chair, All Party Parliamentary Education Group

• Bill Parsons Executive Vice-President - Human Resources, ARM Holdings PLC

• David Russell, Deputy Director for Post 19 Landscape Review, FE and Skills Directorate, Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS)

• Professor Andrew Wathey, Senior Vice-Principal, Royal Holloway University of London