Skills progress update
Unemployment continues to be the impetus for gaining relevant skills through government-funded courses or full-time education.
“Skills are important, whether you’re talking about some of the more immediate problems [of] basic employability skills … right through to discussing what are going to be the future skills needs of the economy,” Stephen Farry has told agendaNi (issue 50, page 8).
The Employment and Learning Minister launched a revised skills strategy last year and intends to publish strategies on higher education and young people not in employment, education or training (NEETs) this year.
It was estimated that there were 46,000 in the region in March 2011 and the draft NEET strategy aims to formally identify those individuals and prepare them for work.
Northern Ireland’s priority skill areas are:
• business services (including ICT);
• financial services;
• retail;
• food and drink and agri-food;
• advanced engineering; and
• advanced manufacturing and materials.
Renewable energy, health and life sciences, and creative and digital media are seen as the three emerging sectors.
Essential Skills course enrolments are continuously increasing, most likely due to a lack of jobs. Unemployment from October to December 2011 was 7.2 per cent, down 0.1 per cent on the previous quarter. The Public Service Agreement target that 42,000 adult learners would have a recognised qualification in essential skills by March 2011 was passed by 30 per cent (with 54,395 achieving a qualification.)
There have been 36,722 essential skills enrolments to date for the 2011-2012 academic year with 36 per cent choosing literacy (13,358), 36 per cent choosing numeracy (13,168) and 28 per cent choosing ICT (10,196). In the 2010-2011 academic year, 58,961 people enrolled for those courses, up 12 per cent from
2009-2010 and up 37 per cent from 2008-2009. A shift from literacy to numeracy in 2007-2008 was in response to a new emphasis on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects.
Overall, enrolments at further education (FE) colleges fell by five per cent between 2009-2010 (163,350) and 2010-2011 (155,425). The most popular subjects for both male and female students at the region’s FE colleges in 2010-2011 were in education and training (35,378) e.g. apprenticeships in construction or plumbing, professional training such as business management certificate and early learning and childcare and foundation degrees and HNDs.
Meanwhile, the number of Northern Ireland students enrolling in universities in all parts of the UK has increased by 11 per cent since 2002 (with a decrease in 2006-2007 and subsequent rise in 2009-2010). Oversubscription in agriculture, environmental management and food nutrition courses at Queen’s this year was in response to the sector’s increasingly positive profile.
The 2010-2011 enrolment (65,555) is the second highest in the last decade (it was 65,730 in 2005-2006) and has been attributed to the UK Government’s decision to let English universities increase tuition fees to £9,000 from September 2012. The Executive has agreed to freeze fees here for local undergraduates but not for students from England, Scotland or Wales.
Sixty-seven per cent of undergraduates from Northern Ireland were enrolled at a Northern Ireland university, 26 per cent were in Britain and 7 per cent were studying through the Open University. There were 618 Northern Ireland students enrolled in universities in the Republic. This allocation is likely to vary significantly in the next academic year given the fees decision. STEM subjects were being studied by 46 per cent of local students at UK universities in the 2010-2011 academic year.
Several of training and employment programmes are available for those who are out of work. Between July and September 2011, there were 5,465 mandatory and 1,611 voluntary applicants to the Steps to Work programme. Between 2010 and 2011, 20,288 people used the programme with 51 per cent (10,368) returning to benefit and 25 per cent (5,004) getting a job. The rest did not notify the department of their outcome.
