The Skills for Life campaign toolkits have been updated for stakeholders and colleagues to use and include key messages, brand guidelines, assets, templates, and suggested content.

‘Get the Jump’ Skills for Life: young people’s campaign toolkit helps young people aged 14-19 explore their education and training choices. From July – September 2023, campaign activity will feature exam results and back to school themes alongside spotlighting of Technical (T) Levels, Higher Technical Qualifications (HTQs) and apprenticeships, which will then continue across October and November 2023.

‘Unlock your Potential’ Skills for Life: adult skills campaign toolkit brings together hundreds of government-funded skills opportunities available to adults to help them get the job they want, whatever stage of life.

Join the Skills Revolution: employer skills campaign toolkit aims to increase employers’ awareness of all the government training and skills products available. Campaign activity will direct employers who are considering hiring employees, offering work experience, or upskilling existing staff to the Find Training and Employment Schemes for your Business webpage which brings information about these programmes together.

As the UK continues to face the biggest squeeze on living standards in decades, having access to a secure and well-paid job has never been more important.

Inflation is stuck at 8.6% and falling real wages are impacting those in insecure and low-paid work the most. High levels of economic inactivity and long-term sickness are creating labour shortages that are slowing economic growth, and the Government is under pressure as businesses struggle to recruit.

Ahead of a likely General Election in 2024, a battleground is opening on the future of the UK labour market. The Conservative Government has pledged to build an economy to ‘deliver highly skilled roles and opportunities across all sectors’ and wants to boost pay, employment and productivity in every area of the UK by 2030 as part of their flagship Levelling Up agenda.

Labour’s New Deal for Working People aims to tackle low-paid, insecure work and provide progression into higher paying roles to escape a cycle of low-pay and insecurity.

This report provides crucial new evidence to inform these debates, shedding light on the choices and experiences of those in insecure work, and the kinds of interventions that could support them into better paid, more secure jobs in the future.

The report also finds that not only 44% of insecure workers earning less than £18,000 per year said they were in this position due to limitations, from limited jobs, poor transport, or availability of childcare. Just under half would find another job if these limiting factors were not in effect. They are also three times as likely to feel their job was at risk in the next twelve months, at 42% compared to 13% of secure workers.

To read more click here!

This release shows provisional in-year data for apprenticeships and traineeships in England reported for the academic year 2022/23 to date (August 2022 to April 2023) based on data returned by providers in June 2023. This also includes apprenticeship service data (as of 09 June 2023) and find an apprenticeship data (to June 2023). Headlines include:

• Starts (Aug – Apr 2023) – 275,630 down by 4.6% from 2021/22
• Participation (Aug – Apr 2023) – 703,670 up by 1.6% from 2021/22
• Achievements (Aug – Apr 2023) – 105,600 up by 20.1% from 2021/22.

Read more here

The National Careers Service will be providing exam results careers advice in August. Support is available to both young people and their parents/carers through exam-specific content on the National Careers Service website, social media, webchat and by phone.

You can contact the helpline on 0800 100 900 from Thursday 17 August until Friday 1 September 2023, from 8:00 – 20:00 Monday to Friday and 10:00 – 17:00 Saturday. Professionally qualified careers advisers will be available to help both young people and those supporting them with advice on their next steps after receiving results – whether their results were what they expected or not.

The National Careers Service offer includes: Exam-related content on the website Webchat with an expert careers’ adviser, accessible via the website. A free helpline where you’ll be put through to a professional career’s adviser in your local area. Top tips and live Question and Answer sessions run through the service’s social media channels

Plans to boost UK employment through widening access to high-quality health support in the workplace are unveiled by the Government.

Ministers are urging employers to do more to keep workers healthy and reduce the numbers out of work due to long-term sickness. Consultation launching on measures to increase employer uptake and widen the reach of Occupational Health

Plans include a new standard for businesses to adopt to boost health in the workplace. Better workplace support is expected to grow the economy and tackle inactivity by improving productivity and preventing health-related job losses.

Employers will be encouraged to take up Occupational Health offers to help employees access vital mental and physical health support at work, particularly for those working in small and medium-sized enterprises.

Read more here

This is a free online resource to help young people who are out of work get employment.

This first edition of the toolkit, which will be regularly updated, currently contains information about different kinds of intervention.

Take a look here.

Concerns remain over the effects of earnings growth and a tight labour market on inflation. Government debt exceeded 100% of GDP for the first time since 1961.

Inflation fell by more than expected in June 2023. The annual inflation rate in the UK dropped to 7.9% in June 2023 which is the lowest it has been since March 2022.

It was 8.7% in May.

Read more here

A summary paper from the first six months of the Commission’s work, comprising a Call for Evidence that received around one hundred responses; twenty consultation events, workshops, and focus groups; and an extensive review of the literature around ‘what works’ in employment support. In all, over 200 individuals and organisations have participated in this first phase of work, making this the largest consultation on our system of employment support and services in at least a generation.

It acknowledges that the labour force and labour market are changing.

Read more here.

The cost of living increased sharply across the UK during 2021 and 2022. The annual rate of inflation reached 11.1% in October 2022, a 41-year high, before easing in subsequent months. It was 7.9% in June 2023. 

High inflation affects the affordability of goods and services for households. This briefing gives an overview of rising prices, particularly food, energy, and fuel prices, including the effect of the conflict in Ukraine. It outlines Government support as well as how rising prices, interest rates and other policies are affecting household budgets.

Consumer prices, as measured by the Consumer Prices Index (CPI), were 7.9% higher in June 2023 than a year before, down from 8.7% in May. After several months of inflation being above expectations, the June figure came in below economists’ forecasts of 8.2%.

Click here to read more from the House of Commons Library

The UK faces a critical shortage of skills. Not enough people have the skills they need to succeed and prosper in our changing economy.

A significant number of adults in the UK hold no formal qualifications. Equally, an estimated 9 million working-age adults in England have low basic skills in literacy or numeracy, of which 5 million have low skills in both.

We know there are persistent inequalities in participation in learning, with those closer to the labour market, with more positive experiences of formal education, younger people, and from higher socio-economic groups more likely to take part in learning as adults.

Far too many UK businesses are struggling to get the skilled people they need. There are over 1 million job vacancies and 80% of small businesses say they have struggled to recruit skilled staff in the last 12 months.

The UK is not currently developing the skilled workforce it needs for our changing economy.

Increasing the rate of adult learning across the UK is essential if we are to develop the skills the UK needs to thrive and ensure everybody can benefit from our transitioning economy. 

Together, Ufi and L&W are committed to addressing this challenge by getting more adults learning, particularly those furthest from existing provision, so they have the skills they need for an economy in transition.

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