Every industry and sector in Britain has until the end of 2010 to improve investment in workplace training and qualifications. This is the government deadline for reviewing whether to reintroduce measures like payroll levies to increase private sector investment and to make the UK economy more competitive.

Investment in training and qualifications by businesses in the wood product manufacturing industries is limited because few sector-specific qualifications exist and the supply of training has almost disappeared. With government funds for workplace training being doubled this year but linked exclusively to vocational qualifications, the sector will face a major disadvantage unless the situation can be changed very quickly.

The 2010 target is being used by UKWoodchain to drive a strategy designed to reverse the decline by developing a quality-assured infrastructure containing what is needed to satisfy government investment requirements and employers’ expectations of staff.

National Occupational Standards

The foundations of the infrastructure are National Occupational Standards (NOS). These define the knowledge, understanding, skills and performance employers expect from qualified employees – so they are essential to the design of vocational qualifications and courses. Work started in 2006 on the development of standards for every job function in the sector and, subject to government funding, should be complete by summer next year.

After approval by employers and government, the standards will be converted into a range of nationally-recognised qualifications, so that workplace training programmes can be developed around them and government funds can be available to employers.

A template has been developed to enable people of any age to gain a nationally-recognised qualification at any stage – whether in secondary school, college, university or employment – and, in most cases, to go at a pace to suit personal circumstances. Praised recently by two senior ministers, the template focuses on three qualification programmes for existing staff and school-leavers:

  • a two-year foundation apprenticeship for 16-18-year-olds, providing an all-round familiarity with the sector and a qualification specialising in either production or trade aspects of working with wood;
  • a two-year graduate apprenticeship for 18-20-year-olds, increasing the specialisation in production or trade activities and a qualification providing access to a vocational degree programme;
  • a two-year foundation degree for experienced staff, graduate apprentices and selected sixth-form school-leavers, specialising in key areas of design, production and commerce and providing access to top-up honours programmes (an international version is being developed in partnership with the EU, NZ, Australia and Canada).

All three will be piloted in autumn with businesses that have won recognition as a learning company, signifying their ability to support workplace learning. It is hoped that the government will provide funding for a roll-out programme in 2008, making money available particularly for firms that want their employees’ experience and expertise to be accredited as qualifications.

Seventy per cent of the 2020 workforce has already left school and 40% is already aged over 25 years, so the concentration of effort and funds must be on existing staff. UKWoodchain is therefore discussing strategic partnership with a small number of government-approved awarding bodies for the accreditation of the competences of existing staff. It is also considering, with trade bodies, the possibility of establishing a new awarding body to lead the effort to get the sector on its way to being fully qualified by the government deadline of December 2010.

Graduate programmes

The decline of graduate programmes for sector specialists will gradually be reversed through the introduction of foundation degrees but is unlikely to show much improvement before the deadline. However, steps are being taken to make higher level study available to a wider audience, including existing staff, through e-learning. UKWoodchain appointed a learning technologies adviser, Professor Steve Molyneux, in 2006 and is collaborating with universities and sector bodies to identify how e-learning can be organised to best effect.

The future of learning is in online access and the future of qualifications is in modular, individually paced development, just as the future of the sector is in having a skilled and adaptable workforce. With all this in mind, UKWoodchain will launch The Knowledge Bank in 2008, providing internet access to detailed information on all NOS, qualifications programmes, businesses with learning company status and approved training providers, together with opportunities to try quality-assured online learning materials and to build their own potential career and qualification routes.

One thing will not change, however: employers’ needs, expressed mainly through trade bodies and learning companies, will be at the centre of all NOS, qualifications and programmes because this is the only way to achieve competitiveness and employability simultaneously. That’s the trick the UK must pull off very soon.