Call to arms:a new dawn for training?

In December, the government announced something long overdue – a programme aimed at putting employers in the driving seat in deciding what skills we need to compete. On the surface it was good news: the Employer Ownership Programme is a pilot and £250 million of funding won't change anything overnight. But it would allow employers to band together to buy training we actually want rather than what we are told we need. It has taken constant lobbying from groups like our own local Black Country Chamber of Commerce to get this far and we took it as a sign that at last someone is listening. But, as ever, the devil is in the detail – or, in this case, the lack of detail. First of all, the money. On closer inspection, £250m boils down to a first-year offering of £50m not even starting until August. 'Up to £200m' is promised for a second round, dispensed by unspecified sources and dependent upon ill-defined pilot successes. It hardly stacks up to a clear opportunity to break the mould of a training and funding regime that has served us so badly for so long. Many employers have lost confidence in publicly-funded vocational training. The current system has been in place in one form or another for 20 years, yet often the qualifications it provides don't line up with anything needed in the workplace. Now employers are being invited, on one hand, to come up with radical proposals to change the name of the game. On the other hand, we are told the adjudicating body (unspecified) is particularly keen to see collective bids developed with national skills academies, sector skills councils and group training associations. In other words, the same agencies that have failed us so miserably in the past. There is a sparse prospectus from UK Commission for Employment and Skills (www.ukces.org.uk/ourwork/employer-ownership) with more detail promised shortly. At this level, it is almost impossible to see whether this is a premature and ill-thought out initiative or a golden opportunity. It may not be too late to seize the training agenda. I am urging my fellow SMEs not to sit back and allow the same old voices to dictate our future.