Why do only the most skilled tend to get trained in the UK? This question frames the Demos provocation paper 'Confronting the Skills Paradox' as it challenges the assumptions of the Leitch Review.

In January of this year, think tank Demos published 'Confronting the Skills Paradox'. Commissioned by City & Guilds, this provocation paper is the opening salvo in a campaign that will culminate next year with the publication of a report presenting a radical series of recommendations for education policy.

The paper analyses the strengths and weaknesses of the emerging consensus given expression by Lord Leitch in his recent review around education and skills policy for the future. 'Confronting the Skills Paradox' argues that important elements of this consensus need to be challenged if the UK is to fulfil the laudable ambitions outlined in the Leitch Review and succeed in harnessing the talents of the whole population.

Andrew Sich, Head of Corporate Affairs at City & Guilds, explains the rationale behind commissioning the survey: 'There wasn't a great deal of clarity about the Leitch Review at the time, and we thought it would be interesting to work with a think tank such as Demos - there can sometimes be a certain predictability about these reports that we wanted to avoid.

The paper focuses on a particularly important aspect of the skills agenda that hadn't been concentrated on, namely that training tends to only go to the most skiled.'

'The skills paradox as set out by Demos suggests that while maximising the talents of the whole population matters more than ever in creating economic and social success. Skills formation actually becomes a source of greater polarisation rather than an antidote to it.

The paradox, in this situatlon, Is that funding and investment in skill formation still follows a trickle-down principle, in which those already well endowed and enjoying privileged status within the education and employment system enjoy the highest levels of investment and subsidy both from the state and from employers.

The evldence bears this paradox out:

• Less than one third of adults with no qualifications participate in learning compared to 94 percent of those with at least level 4 qualifications.
  
• Only 52 percent of those with basic skills difficulties take part in learning compared to 83 percent of those without.
  
• People without qualifications are three times less likely to receive job-related training compared with those with qualifications.
  
• The 'Paying for Learning' study by Learning Skills Network found that the key characteristics of non-earners were that they tended to be older, in lower social classes, unemployed and qualified to a lower level.

If these statistics are to improve, attitudes about the role of education and the need for a highly-skilled workforce need to change.

There is currently strong agreement about deepening the links between learning and working, strengthening the employer voice over the content and accreditation of education, and focusing on the production of economically valuable skills.

The rationale for the education and training system Is a largely economic one, with beneficial social outcomes assumed to follow in its wake. According to Demos, however, sound economic theory does not always translate into social good.

One of underpinning principles of the Leitch Review is that there must be a sense of shared responsibility, involving employers boosting investment in intermediate and higher level skills, while Government takes on responsibiity for ensuring a adults achieve a basic platform of skills (in other words a first full level 2 quaification).

In return, it is argued, workers and learners need to pay their part as well.

Clearly a partnership approach, supported by a responsive training system, is best placed to tackle Britain's skill problem, but there is a danger in founding policy on a false assumption that there are no conflicts between the interests of employers and those of individual employees and wider society.

Confronting the Skills Paradox' challenges the assumption that the enlightened self interest of individual employers will deliver the social good that Government aspires to. 

'We question the notion that employers will take up the training even when it is free because it costs time and resources,' says Duncan O'Leary, researcher at Demos and co-author of the report. 'Training your staff is useful if you're expecting them to do something more, but not all companies want to advance their shelf stackers.

'If there isn't the job progression, workers will probably just take their new skills and go somewhere else which is hardly something that employers want to encourage. So there's this disparity between individual employers' and society's needs - the sum of all our individual choices will not produce the greater good.'

O'Leary explains that Leitch follows in a long line by assuming that laying out the evidence on the returns on qualifications will persuade both employers to invest and individuals to take up training opportunities. But the complexity of our everyday lives mitigates the choices that look inevitable in a macroeconomic model created in Whitehall.

'Small businesses are a clear example of this. Large businesses can give people time off, but small businesses will struggle with this issue.

If you're a five-man company, you can't lose 20 per cent of your workforce for a week in training,' says O'Leary, pointing out that this problem is exacerbated by the fact that, according to a report from the Cabinet Office, 50 per cent of workers with less than level 2 attainment work for firms with fewer than 50 employees'

Social and personal circumstance can affect the ability of many individuals to access training outside of work. Families are mentioned only three times in the Leitch Report, but most of us are part of one and many of us have caring responsibilities.

Seventy per cent of couples with dependent children are now both in work, and with an ageing population, many people are increasingly finding themselves having to care for their parents and children.

'We have the sandwich generation now whose commitments can mean that finance is not the only scarce resource preventing participation in education and training-time is too,' says O'Leary.

A further assumption in the direction of travel in skills policy is that rational economic self-interest will provide sufficient motivation for individuals to learn, as higher skills are demanded by employers in the UK.

Yet it is far from clear that entitlements alone will create motivation among individuals if there are wider reasons preventing people from learning. The evidence suggests that simply increasing the rhetoric about rational self interest will not re-engage people who may be facing a complex set of barriers.

At present, there is a significant group of people with no apparent desire for learning, who form a very hard-to-reach category for skills policy.

'We need to deal with the cultural issues some people see education as a necessary evil but others really enjoy it. US research paints two views of intelligence: one that it is fixed and the other that it is malleable. This will have a huge effect on whether you want to continue learning in employment,' says O'Leary.

While training to levels 3 and 4 may hold the eventual promise of financial return at an unspecified and uncertain point in the future, it may also seem a long way off for the 11.5 million adults currently lacking a level 2 qualification.

Education consultant Mick Fletcher argued in The Guardian that those choosing not to learn may well be acting entirely rationally on this basis.

'One reason why young people in England leave school earlier than in many other advanced countries must be because they can get a job. It may be a dead-end job but, if you see a degree as beyond you, and a level 2 as not adding much to your chances, going for it makes a sort of sense,' he says.

'This analysis could also help explain why the indigenous working class appears to value education less than many recent immigrants. It's not cultural antipathy; they just know the English labour market better.'

'There are two issues which overlap,' explains O'Leary. 'There is an economic concern, namely that with Britain competing globally, the importance of maximising every individual is crucial. We agree with Leitch on this.'

'The second issue is the polarisation, what is called the hour glass economy. This is where you have educated people doing jobs they enjoy versus low-paid people in routine and unskilled employment that they don't enjoy.'

'There's a lack of mobility between the two because how well you perform at school tends to determine the rest of your life. While Leitch recognises this second challenge, it has not come up with all the answers.'

So what is the solution? 'Confronting the Skills Paradox' does not pretend to be a magic bullet that will bring about economic gain and social inclusion in education.

It does, however, recommend that political leadership - not just economic analysis will be needed if as a nation we are going to be successful in creating a sense of agency and self determination for all individuals, rather than just training people to be more productive in their present roles.