Director of product development and learning technologies at City & Guilds, Kirstie Donnelly

Everyone has heard about the problems of youth unemployment. Despite a recent drop in unemployment figures, far too many of our young people are still languishing on the job scrapheap. Although they may have acquired skills, they are not the skills that employers need. Unfortunately, their education has not prepared them for the world of work.

What makes this situation worse is that these young people are failing to find work at a time when some industries are reporting chronic skills shortages. This is particularly true in engineering, where a lack of skilled workers, coupled with an ageing workforce, is creating a huge problem.

For too long, we have had an education system that champions A-levels as the only route to academic success. This has left the value of vocational education underplayed and contributed to skills shortages in sectors like engineering that we see today. At City & Guilds we believe that the best way to tackle this crisis is to change the way the curriculum is designed. It needs to allow young people more choice in the way that they learn and align their learning and qualifications more closely with the needs of employers.

That’s why are creating a technical alternative to A-levels, called the City & Guilds TechBac. We’ve talked to employers, colleges, universities and even the learners themselves about the challenges associated with current provision and what skills employers think are lacking among young people.

The employers that we spoke to were less worried about a lack of technical skills than the lack of ‘softer’ business skills that allow people to get on in the workplace. Technical skills can be taught on the job. One engineering employer told us that he was looking for candidates that have the ability to work effectively with colleagues when recruiting to fill technical roles. He said he was shocked at the lack of verbal and written communication skills among young people.

We are clear that good quality work experience needs to form a key part of our new offer. The employers we spoke to, particularly in the engineering sector, were in agreement with this and many advocated work experience placements of at least one month duration. One of the problems highlighted with the current vocational offer is that students spend all day in classrooms learning the theory behind a skill rather than actually mastering it. Crucially, work experience also gives young people a much better understanding of what it is like to have a job and helps to nurture the attitude towards work that employers say is missing.

From the discussions, we have identified four essential ingredients that are needed for a new technical offer to provide real benefits to learners and businesses:

• a high-level technical component developed with and for industry;
• an extended project for learners to demonstrate their skills in a real world setting;
• soft business skills such as communication, as well as embedded contextual maths and English;
• and a structured, relevant work placement.

Technical alternatives to A-levels are often seen as a barrier to progressing to university, but the City & Guilds TechBac will aim to offer a robust vocational programme of study that allows people to progress into further learning, higher education or employment. With the engineering sector experiencing such profound skills shortages, there is a real need to offer young people an alternative route to both academic and career success. This route needs to suit the needs of learners and support the growth of this important industry.