David WilsonExecutive Director

International Public Policy Institute

SKILLS AND INCLUSIVE ECONOMIC GROWTHSkills Development Scotland Symposium

on Work-based Learning21 September, 2016

Skills and Inclusive Growth

• The “big picture” on the future of work, income and skills – a quick review• Why Work-based Learning matters, more and more• Building the work-based learning (eco)system

The “Elephant Diagram” explains almost everything

“Hollowing out” is happening everywhere

And concerns raised about future job losses

“……….around 47 percent of total US employment is in the high risk category – i.e. jobs we expect could be automated relatively soon, perhaps over the next decade or two”.Carl Benedikt Frey & Michael Osborne, The Future of Employment 2013

Should we fear the rise of the robots?

“there is a long history of leading thinkers overestimating the potential of new technologies to substitute for human labour and underestimating their potential to complement it”. David Autor, Professor of Economics, Harvard University

“The things people enjoy the most…are the things machines do worst.” Erik Brynjolfsson, Director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy

Universal skills?

Thinking about the modern workplace

“…every era has a different human model to suit a different theory of productivity…… We apply technologies of the self to our own selves, and measure our worth by the standards of the workplace”.Louis Menand, “The Life Biz”, The New Yorker, March 2016

But we know for sure the challenge on skills

“The UK performs poorly on intermediate professional and technical skills, and is forecast to fall to 28th out of 33 OECD countries for intermediate skills by 2020”UK Government “Productivity Plan” published in July 2015

Changing jobs and changing populations

Evidence of the value of higher level apprenticeships

Introduction of an Apprentice Levy

“Re-establishing a high quality apprenticeship system could do an enormous amount for the productivity of the UK economy”.Baroness Alison Wolf, Fixing a Broken Training System: The case for an Apprenticeship Levy, 2015

Developing a Research Programme

Impacts• Evaluation• Benefits

Future • Foresight• Analysis

Review• Pedagogies• Standards

Change• System• Perception

Now Future

Policy

Practice

• Working with Skills Development Scotland on the Centre for Work-based Learning

• Creating initiatives around• Policy and Research• Practice• Perception