On Tuesday, the Prime Minister made a landmark speech on the Lifetime Skills Guarantee (LSG), which will transform the provision of skills to all adults and create a positive shakeup in education, skills and life-long learning. This will be available to people at any stage in their lives.
This plan sets out how the Government will transform the provision of skills, so they can help people retrain and find well-paid, new jobs, as well as ensure people are equipped with the skills to create and find new jobs.
The central aim of the LSG is to close the gap between further and high education, as well as increasing the flexibility in the funding system to provide support and facilities for adults to train, retrain and upskill, increasing their opportunities and supporting this Government’s pledge to ‘level up’ across the country.
This LSG will provide adults in England without an A-Level (or equivalent) qualification the opportunity to take up a free, fully funded college course - as well as making high education loans more flexible.
The Prime Minister closed his speech on the LSG by saying:
“We’ll give everyone a flexible lifelong loan entitlement to four years of post-18 education — so adults will be able to retrain with high level technical courses, instead of being trapped in unemployment.
“And this long-term plan – learning from what has worked around the world – will finally enable our amazing country to close the gap with other countries that in this one respect have had – or thought they had – the edge on us when it comes to skills and technical education. They thought they had the edge on us for 100 years. Well we have the talent. We have the potential. All we need to do is give people the chance.”
The Prime Minister’s announcement also committed to investing more in college buildings and facilities to help enhance colleges as high-standard institutions for learning. The link to the PM's full speech is as follows: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pms-skills-speech-29-september-2020
Mims Davies MP had the following to say after the Prime Minister’s speech:
“Expanding adults skills is absolutely crucial in supporting the economy both in future and now as we move through the coming months dealing with Covid-19 and tackling disadvantage across the country. This is even more important as our economy recovers in the years ahead following Covid-19. We want to help people get the upskilling and the support at the time they need it.
“One element I am particularly pleased about is the expansion for apprenticeships for SMEs, where there is so much potential for job creation. This builds on both the new DWP ‘Kickstart Scheme’ and our ‘Plan for Jobs’, and our ambitions to level up across the country.”