WIREDGOV

Blog posted by: Esme Winch, Managing Director, Tuesday 20 March 2018.

Last week, NCFE and Campaign for Learning were delighted to publish our second white paper of 2018 entitled ‘Shaping the new National Retraining Scheme’. Written by Dr Susan Pember, the paper assesses the current and emerging needs a National Retraining Scheme should address. These include longer working lives, rising automation, and the potential retraining needs of millions of atypical workers, especially the 15% of adults who are self-employed.

As Sue has identified, the National Retraining Scheme is an important innovation from the government which promises to ensure we maximise the skills and opportunities of our increasingly longer working adult skills base. We’ve started to see progress being made on the scoping around the scheme, and Sue’s paper should be essential reading for all parties engaging in this process. The paper sets out the level of the challenge ahead, as well as 10 recommendations to build a quality programme that will support all adults to their intended destination, regardless of their starting point.

We held a launch event for the paper at the Institute for Mechanical Engineering in London which was extremely well attended by a number of high profile policy experts, employers and providers, suggesting that there is a significant appetite in the sector to help to shape the scheme and ensure that the approach to lifelong learning is just that, embracing the importance of learning at all stages of life and experience.

We’re keen to maximise the opportunities this scheme presents, both for individuals and the wider economy. To do this we’re going to have to learn from the past to embrace proven success and best practice, but also to avoid mistakes that have come before.