Call for curriculum review to emphasise employment skills
New research from the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) calls on the government to use the curriculum and assessment review to explore how schools can place more emphasis on employment skills.
The report Building Foundations: The implications of research on childhood skill development for addressing future skills needs in England is the latest instalment of the NFER’s five-year ‘Skills Imperative 2035: Essential skills for tomorrow's workforce’ research programme, funded by the Nuffield Foundation. It urges the government to incentivise and support schools to develop six ‘Essential Employment Skills’ (EES) as part of a broad and balanced curriculum. These are communication; collaboration; problem-solving; organising, planning and prioritising work; creative thinking; and information literacy. This comes after previous NFER research projected workers will need to utilise EES more intensively in jobs by 2035, but that up to seven million workers could lack the required level of EES to carry out these roles.
The latest study is based on a hypothesis that children’s cognitive and behavioural skills are precursors for their EES in early adulthood. It indicates inequalities in cognitive and behavioural outcomes in young children become more entrenched and harder to impact as they get older. However, the report stresses that there remains considerable scope to influence young people’s outcomes at an older age, and that with the appropriate support, they can catch-up.
The report says that children’s extra-curricular engagement is positively associated with their behavioural and cognitive development between the ages of eight and 17, but it is well documented that children from disadvantaged backgrounds have less access to these opportunities. It calls on the government to do more to support disadvantaged young people to access extra-curricular activities more frequently between the ages of 7/8 and 16/17. Examples include providing additional funding to schools with disadvantaged intakes to extend the school day, or by introducing a national extra-curricular bursary scheme.
As well as recommending that the curriculum and assessment review explore whether and how more emphasis could be placed on the development of EES – alongside knowledge acquisition - as part of teaching core subjects within the curriculum, the report also suggests all schools should explicitly support the development of EES as a critical part of a good education. This would include socio-emotional skills, self-management skills, and cognitive skills.
Commenting on the report’s findings Jude Hillary, the NFER’s co-head of UK policy and practice, called on the government to adopt a ‘cradle to grave’ approach to skills development, saying the ‘consequence of inaction could see increasing numbers of young people leaving education without the skills and qualifications they need to enter growing occupations, which are predominantly professional occupations requiring higher skills, particularly EES. This will only add to the existing skills shortages in the UK and further constrain national efforts to stimulate growth.’
Also commenting Julie McCulloch, director of strategy and policy at the Association of School and College Leaders, said schools and collegese were already doing a lot to try to close skills gaps but: ‘they are operating within very constrained financial circumstances and severe staffing shortages. One way that the government could address skills gaps and fulfil its mission to break down barriers to opportunity, would be to extend the pupil premium to include 16–19-year-olds, and to target a higher level of pupil premium to support children and young people in persistent poverty. We also hope the ongoing curriculum and assessment review will better balance the previous government’s excessive focus on a small number of academic subjects with more room for vocational, digital and creative subjects – which nurture many of the skills sought by employers.’
Full report: https://tinyurl.com/mrz4z6py