Leading training provider Working Links is calling for
employability skills to be taught in the classroom to help combat
rising youth unemployment.
The latest figures out today from the Office for National
Statistics (ONS) puts youth unemployment at just under one million
– the highest level since the early 1990s.
Working Links, which delivers programmes across Britain to help
get people back to work, has made a series of recommendations to
reduce the high level of 16-24-year-olds out of work and improve
the problem of long term unemployment.
Mike Lee, Working Links’ Director of Skills and Young People,
said: “In the current economic climate, young people are among the
most vulnerable to long term unemployment. With little or no track
record of employment, this group is at high risk of being out of
work, and faces greater challenges to entering the labour market
the longer they are jobless.
“Due to a variety of factors, an
increasing number of young people are finding themselves not in
education, employment or training. These young people are often
very bright, intelligent and articulate – but many just don’t have
the right skills to find work.
“To improve the situation there needs
to be more correlation between mainstream further and higher
education courses and the labour market. Young people are not
getting the messages about jobs and what employers want clearly
enough– the expert information that we have needs to be fed down
into schools, colleges and careers advisers.”
The organisation’s own research, taken from its Learning a
Living report*, shows that 68% of young people are
worried about their job prospects and also feel that they are not
getting enough advice from schools on vocational courses and
qualifications. Only 24% of school leavers
surveyed were given advice on Apprenticeships and vocational
training while 70% received information about
college courses.
Traditional views of what skills employers look for when hiring
young people were also challenged by the report. Of the employers
surveyed, 86% said they look for potential rather
than experience when hiring young people and cited soft skills such
as ‘a good attitude’ and ‘enthusiasm and motivation’ as key
qualities in a potential work ready candidate.
In response to the findings of the report, Working Links is
making the following policy recommendations to the government to
support the continued focus on Apprenticeships and vocational
training to help more young people into work. Working Links
recommends that the government should:
- Place a statutory obligation on
schools to teach employability skills through the mainstream
curriculum
- Place a legal duty on schools to
explain the full educational offer (including Apprenticeships)
available to young people of all abilities
- Improve efforts to promote
Apprenticeships to young people
- Fund more pre-Apprenticeship training
to expand access to apprenticeships
- Pilot a payment by results programme
for Apprenticeships within the Work Programme to help those
furthest from the labour market
- Ensure these measures are extended to
small businesses (47% of apprentices are employed by businesses
which employ fewer than 25 people)
- Do more to tackle the low levels of
literacy and numeracy which employers feel are an issue for some
young people – but not at the expense of the soft skills employers
value most.
Download our full report or view the
full
results.
* The Learning a Living research report was conducted in May
2011 by Reputation Inc on behalf of Working Links and comprises of
an online survey of 150 employers and 500 16 to 24 year olds who
were not in full time employment. A number of in-depth interviews
were also conducted with employers as well as academics and experts
in the field of youth unemployment and skills. The results of this
research, together with Working Links experience of working with
young people, the unemployed and employers, has helped shape this
report and the key policy recommendations to
government.