UK 'skills gap' and social and economic exclusion — a prospective letter to Hereford Times?

Alan Winstanley ('True figures', Hereford Times printed Letters, November 28) argues that the UK can’t train enough nurses and/or high-tech sector employees. A UK General Election is a great time to ask political parties why they think that might be so, and how they and their party would address that matter if elected to represent us.

I would argue that a root problem is short-termist underfunding by successive UK governments in the training of home grown talent, as I argued on the BBC2 tv programme ‘Working Lunch’ broadcast on September 27, 2000. A Web Design training company worker had told me, “I agree with you: six weeks is inadequate for our training curriculum, but the government has told us to halve the training period from 12 weeks to 6 in order to double the throughput from the dole queue.”

The Centre for Economic & Social Inclusion argued on the same programme slot that there was considerable underinvestment in training to promote absolutely basic literacy skills. Four years later while volunteering in teaching [other] adults with learning difficulties very basic computing skills, I was commended for “endless patience with slower learners.”

Yet there was no paid future in that for me, as Learning & Skills Council prioritsed  NVQ Levels 2 and 3 — with no extra investment overall — so as to implement the London 2012 Olympics agenda. I, and the trainees I supported, and their Guardian/Channel4 Teacher of the Year Award Winning paid teacher, were let down yet again! (“Learning & Skills Council [existed] to help make England better skilled and more competitive.”(1))

It’s also been pointed out that our nurses are trained at their own expense,(2) and many rely on food banks (3) and Universal Credit top up. (4)

Basically, the First Past the Post (FPTP voting system favours the major political parties’ tax-evading funders [as ‘wealth creators’ for those parties] to invest more in their Research & Development. Government underfunding of public services leads to burnout while tech companies such as BT help resource think tank ‘charities’ such as Reform UK toward, say, the ‘digitising of public services’ creating greater social exclusion and extreme poverty as Universal Credit is ‘digital by default’.





Alan Wheatley

(NB: Hereford Times recommends that letters for publication be 250 words or less to stand a chance of publication, but I have had more wordy letters published there. The above text comes to 362 words excluding my byline.)

Notes

1. "The Learning & Skills Council exists to help make England better skilled and more competitive" was the 'description' or Mission Statement proclaimed on their former website.
2. uk nurses trained at own expense
3. uk nurses food banks
4. uk nurses "universal credit"