Devil's Advocate: Polish up your skills

Skills and education are vital for the UK to compete with India and China. But, says Martin Brampton, children need to be provided with the generic learning and language skills needed to adapt to a fast-changing working life that now spans more than a generation.

Skilled jobs disappearing to the other side of the world are shaking complacency through many sectors of society. IT was in the vanguard, but now professions such as accountancy are vulnerable. Call centres seem to be shifting at breakneck speed. Change forces us to examine our situation.

Even those who question the importance of material goods allow that it is preferable to be well fed and housed, with the opportunity to pursue a rewarding life. As a relatively very prosperous country, we have no difficulty doing those things. But as we start to feel vulnerable to competition from countries such as India and China, we wonder what it is that puts us in this privileged position.

Given the complexity and technical sophistication of our society, the emphasis is often on skills and education. Unfortunately, the thinking around these issues is usually muddled. Nobody is really clear what is needed and political debate produces more heat than light.

An important digression is to point out that much of our prosperity stems from empire. A potted version of empire is that by military might Britain imposed terms of trade on much of the world such that Britain prospered. The history of the US is quite different, leaving it viscerally opposed to empire, but its current policies achieve the same effect. Military power is used to back political influence over trade policies that favour the US.

For now, I want to concentrate on skills and education in the context of the IT business. It may be an impossible goal to attempt to beat off all competition in this area, but we can safely assume that we need capabilities that compare with other countries. Although most sectors are similar, it is particularly obvious with IT that things change, and they change rapidly. So training is not something that we can complete and put behind us.

Yet most of the resource is put into exactly that kind of training. The government places enormous emphasis on university degrees, without offering any clear explanation of why that should be so. It claims that half of the population ought to have a degree. Why half? And what sort of degree?

It is no good trying to hand these choices over to employers. They are interested in filling their short-term requirements. Few employers plan far ahead, and these days they take no responsibility for the careers of their employees beyond immediate plans. It is often said that our children face a quite different situation from the one we found. That rather glosses over the fact that each individual usually has a working life spanning more than a generation.

So while employers do train staff, the fact is that the major investment in education is by the state. Not only is that so, the state chooses to make a substantial period of education compulsory. Since resources are devoted largely to provision in early life, it is absurd to suppose that the bulk of this can be devoted to the acquisition of immediately relevant skills.

Early life education has to provide generic skills, of which the only indisputable one is effective use of language. Beyond that, its most valuable achievement must be the development of learning skills. How to promote institutions that are effective in that respect is uncertain. Certainly, there is little reason to suppose that the voguish application of business principles to universities will achieve it.

Moreover, without a broad range of ongoing educational opportunities, the possession of learning skills is redundant. Much better provision is needed for adults throughout their working lives, and beyond. After all, education is not merely about economic activity. It is also about the kind of lives we choose to lead.

Who should pay for it all? The benefits of an educated population are widespread and impossible to track in detail. The obvious answer is therefore that those most economically privileged should pay; that is to say, taxation should be progressive. In a civilised society, those of us who are economically active must support our children and our retired parents. If individuals are to pay for their own education, where will this stop? Are children to be provided with loans so that they can pay to be taught to read?