Help WM take your skills fears to parliament
1 min read
WM is urging manufacturers to sign up to our campaign to spark a parliamentary debate over critical shortages in core skills.
Our Starved of Skills petition calls on manufacturing minister Mark Prisk to raise your fears about a chronic shortage of quality job candidates at Westminster.
The campaign pledges full support for government rhetoric about boosting the role of British factories in driving economic growth.
Sign the petition here
However, the renaissance has to be supported by a significant improvement in the calibre of youngsters entering engineering careers according to the campaign.
The warning follows heavy industry complaints over a glut of youngsters lacking basic literacy and numeracy skills.
Manufacturers should not be expected to compensate for failures in the education system, members of industry think tank the WM Leaders Forum told Mark Prisk last month.
David Fox, CEO of PP Electrical Systems- a former Best Factory Award winner- and WM Leaders Forum member said: "They don't know how to speak to you: they don't know how to communicate and they have no understanding of teamwork.. One of the fundamental problems is the KPIs for school success rates are flawed. What we ought to be measuring is whether people are employable."
Chris Mulvihill, director of EMS Manufacturing, and WM Leaders Forum member added: "We find exactly the same problem. We're not talking about high level skills gaps; we're talking about lack of basic literacy and numeracy. It's a really scary prospect that after a full bout of state education we have young people who can barely read or write."
Prisk pledged full government support for improving education standards at the WM Leaders Forum.
He said: "It's about rigueur. We have inherited an education system which has been allowed to promote the idea that everyone is going to be the same and is going to win. What it should be doing is saying 'what's your best?' and helping students achieve that."
Please send our petition link to any colleagues within manufacturing who have suffered from the core skills crisis and help us raise the profile of this long standing industry problem.
