AQW 53726/11-16

Ms Claire Sugden
Independent
East Londonderry

Tabled Date: 02/02/2016
Answered On Date: 15/02/2016
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister for Employment and Learning how his Department identifies skills shortage by geographical area; and how skills shortage is being targeted, and respective skills developed, to support the needs of local industries.

Answer:

The Department for Employment and Learning provides a range of pathways and provision to meet the skills needs in Northern Ireland, primarily through our universities and further education colleges.

The Skills Strategy for Northern Ireland, ‘Success through Skills – Transforming Futures’ articulates the overarching vision for the development of skills throughout Northern Ireland and provides the framework for developing further the skills base to meet this challenge and ensure that Northern Ireland has the skills base to support growth and prosperity.

We know that the economy we aspire to over the next decade and beyond will be increasingly dominated by demand for higher level skills, including those developed through higher level apprenticeships.

I commissioned a Skills Barometer for Northern Ireland and my Department has worked with the Ulster University to develop this tool for forecasting skills needs. The initial report shows that under a high growth, low corporation tax environment, skills will be undersupplied in the economy. It is essential that we address these skills needs, so that we are able to fully gain the benefits of a lower corporation tax rate.

Subjects related to science, technology, engineering, and maths - STEM subjects - will be in most demand reflecting the anticipated growth in the ICT, Professional Services and Advanced Manufacturing sectors. STEM qualifications will also be demanded by a wider range of sectors across the economy. The Department has led on the production of the STEM Strategy, ‘Success through STEM’ and we are making good progress in implementing this.

The UK Commission for Employment and Skills currently runs two large-scale employer surveys in alternate years: the Employer Skills Survey (ESS) and the Employer Perspectives Survey (EPS). The overall aim of the two surveys is to provide robust and reliable information and intelligence from UK employers on skills issues and workforce development activities.

The ESS is the larger of the two surveys and includes data based on over 4,000 completed interviews in Northern Ireland. It provides a detailed understanding of the level and nature of employer demand for new staff and the ability of the labour market to meet such demand, with data broken down by region.

This sets the context for then exploring imbalances and mismatches in the labour market that result from a lack of skills. UK results were available on 28th January and a NI toolkit is to be released on 10th March.

My Department is committed to working with and supporting employers to ensure local skills needs continue to be met in a growing economy, as evidenced by the Working Groups I established to engage with local industries. The six further education colleges play an important role in this in their local areas through delivery of the Employer Support Programme across Northern Ireland.

The Employer Support Programme is a skills development programme consisting of two strands; Skills Focus, which aims to increase the skills levels and employability of a business’s existing workforce to qualifications at level 2 and above; and InnovateUs, which delivers the skills necessary to engage in innovation activity.

In delivering the Employer Support Programme, colleges focus on engaging directly with and providing support to employers through identifying future skills needs in collaboration with employers/skills groups, and being both proactive and reactive to employer skills needs in order to provide tailored skills provision.

My Department has also encouraged our universities to rebalance their course provision increasingly to economically relevant subject areas. The findings of the first report of the Skills Barometer underline the need for more graduates in STEM subject areas and provide further validation for my Department’s support for an additional 1,419 undergraduate STEM places and 234 PhD places in economically relevant areas since 2012.

The Northern Ireland universities play a critical role in driving sustainable economic prosperity through high quality, internationally excellent research and translating that research into successful innovation through knowledge exchange – central planks of both the Department's Higher Education Strategy ‘Graduating to Success’ and the Executive’s Innovation Strategy.

However, the structure of the Northern Ireland economy leads to a lack of absorptive capacity for R&D in the NI business base. This presents a very real set of challenges which the Department seeks to address by directly supporting the innovation agenda, most notably through the Northern Ireland Higher Education Innovation Fund (NI HEIF) which provides the core, underpinning funding for the universities’ business and community engagement activities. NI HEIF is complemented by 'Connected' - a 'unique to Northern Ireland' programme which promotes collaborative working right across the higher and further education sectors enabling universities and colleges to collectively provide a “one-stop-shop” for companies wishing to access technology and knowledge capital, taking them right through the whole process from problem definition through to solution identification and implementation

‘Securing Our Success’, the new Northern Ireland Strategy on Apprenticeships, aims to help provide the skills needed to rebalance and rebuild our local economy. The strategy puts employers at the heart of a new Apprenticeship system, and I have established an interim Strategic Advisory Forum, comprised of employers, trade unions, providers of off-the-job training and other key stakeholders, to provide advice on key issues concerning implementation of the new strategy. In addition, we have launched Sectoral Partnerships, involving employers, employer representatives and curriculum experts from the FE and HE Sectors to design and agree apprenticeship provision to ensure the needs of employers are met.

Furthermore, working with Invest NI, the Assured Skills programme is designed to help attract new foreign direct investment (FDI) companies to Northern Ireland, by assuring them that the skills they need to be successful are available. Assured Skills support is also open to support existing companies which are considering expansion

Through its Collaborative Skills Change Fund, Assured Skills works collaboratively with companies, further education colleges and universities in all regions of Northern Ireland. The aim of the programme is to provide short term, pre-employment training solutions to skills shortages, in order to support the needs of local companies. One example of programme support to date is with SDC Trailers and MDF Engineering where the programme, in conjunction with Northern Regional College, provided a number of trained welders to fill job opportunities. Another example is training for Automotive/Electrician Panel Builders, in conjunction with Mallaghan Engineering and Contak Wiring Systems, which is currently being delivered in South West College, Cookstown Campus. These participants, following their period of training, will move into placement with the companies with the opportunity of gaining full time employment.

Following the recent ‘Fresh Start’ agreement, announced on 17 November 2015, which will see the devolution of Corporation Tax powers, a need now exists for speculative training to meet the anticipated demand in skills from employers. The devolution of Corporation Tax powers will change the landscape for business growth and employment and will greatly enhance Northern Ireland’s ability to attract FDI and enable indigenous companies to re-invest savings back into their businesses.

Speculative Training will be used as an Assured Skills’ tool to assist in the delivery of a lower rate of Corporation Tax to employers. Research that is currently under way is considering which sectors speculative training should focus on and also how the training should be delivered.

The Department’s Employment Service supports all businesses across Northern Ireland by providing a comprehensive range of products and services designed to assist employers to fill vacancies with appropriately skilled staff. This includes engaging proactively with employers to promote a better understanding of skills development.

The Employer Engagement Team supports employers to grow their businesses, by ensuring that people of all skill levels are given individually tailored advice and guidance to gain the relevant qualifications and achieve the appropriate skills and experience to make them more employable and to address skill deficits within an area. The Team also assists with employers’ recruitment needs; a dedicated Employer Contact Manager (ECM) will be assigned to an employer when a request for assistance is received. ECMs are experienced in working with employers to deliver a high quality service and are focused on finding candidates with the right skills and attitude to match an employer’s needs.

During the last financial year the Department hosted six major Job Fair events in Belfast, Londonderry, Ballymoney, Newry, Portadown and Newcastle. 9,067 people attended, 243 companies participated and there were a total of 4,231 jobs on offer to visiting jobseekers.

I hope this gives a flavour of the important and comprehensive work which my Department is doing to identify and address skills shortages in Northern Ireland.