Green Skills: Why Colleges and Providers Need More Short Course Programmes
What are Green Skills?
Terms like “Green Skills”, “Net Zero Skills” and “Low Carbon Skills” are used frequently now in the skills world. A wide range of occupations are affected:
Occupations delivering green technology directly, are of perhaps three types;
Occupations involved in manufacturing green technology, (eg professional engineers building wind turbines or heat pumps). Although new knowledge is needed by design engineers, at craft level, this is largely straightforward engineering.
Installation and maintenance (eg plumbers fitting heat pumps, motor vehicle technicians working on EVs). Here there is both a skills and knowledge training need, but the new technology requires only additions to the occupational competence the person already has.
New occupations (eg “retrofit assessor”; the people who assess a home or building prior to installation or “low carbon heating technician”) operating as alternatives to traditional plumbers, heating technicians or electricians.
Occupations which support those above and therefore need new knowledge (eg quantity surveyors and administration staff in Construction) to perform their normal role.
Occupations which work closely with the natural world (such as forestry workers) require additional knowledge and skills.
Occupations which use green technology (eg professional drivers, farm workers) where there is a need to operate new machinery and vehicles.
Other occupations which purchase and/or use energy intensive equipment (eg buyers of machinery or chefs). These are the customers for low carbon manufactured goods and need basic knowledge in order to purchase appropriately.
Policy makers, public administrators and regulators. This group are critical to success. For example, the “Renewable Heat Incentive” grant operated by Ofgem worked efficiently. However when a new grant regime was introduced (a payment of £5k at the front end of the installation process) poor design and implementation resulted in many people never receiving their grant.
We are in a period where green technologies are presented as “special”, with extensive R and D costs built in and a certain amount of vertical integration in the supply chain. At the same time, design and manufacturing costs are high (although falling). This has led to eye watering costs for customers. The price of a heat pump is a good example. These have tended to be sold and installed by specialist firms, sometimes tied to particular manufacturers. However, we are beginning to see mainstream plumbing and electrical firms, large and small, carrying out installation and assisting customers with grants. Consequently the installation price should reduce. My guess is there should be a least a £2k/£3k reduction in final costs over the next few years, bringing the total for an average house, closer to the new £5k grant.
The Skills System Response
The system has responded too slowly to the various skills and knowledge updating requirements described above. In part this is because the necessary upskilling response is mainly the delivery of short courses. Many Colleges and independent training providers deliver only limited short course programmes particularly on a fee charged basis. They have therefore tended to wait until the public funding system (capital and revenue) catches up. The provider response has not been helped by past experience either; around ten years ago the promised “Green Deal” failed to generate demand for green technologies training.
Various “Employer Representative Bodies” (ERBs) around the country are currently working on Local Skills Improvement Plans (LSIPs). It is interesting that their research work with employers is exposing a whole host of updating and upskilling requirements. The appropriate response to these will usually be short courses, delivered with/for a single employer or on an “open” basis for smaller firms to book one or two staff onto.
It is essential that Colleges and other providers continue their excellent work delivering full time vocational courses and Apprenticeships in order to increase “whole occupation” skills supply. It is also essential that new technology skills, such as those described above, are added to these programmes for newly trained people. However, there is also an urgent need to update the existing workforce. The skills system needs to deliver open short course programmes (often on a fee charged basis) wherever new technology is implemented. Collaboration between providers to market a single programme of courses, could lead to a “win-win” for providers, employers, and learners. There will be occasions where, in order to get things moving, a subsidy may be required. The DfE should support this approach by devolving decision making in relation to a limited pot of money for updating/upskilling. This would result in a much speedier response on the ground.