Skillfast-Uk

About us

Skillfast-UK is the Sector Skills Council for apparel, footwearand textiles. We are the voice of our sector?s employers on skillsissues.

Our campaign stance is based on detailed research with more than2,000 employers and a close ongoing dialogue with many of thesector?s major companies.

The sector, and how it compares to other areas of industry

The apparel, footwear and textiles sector comprisesapproximately 40,000 businesses. In the manufacturing component ofthe sector alone, there are more than twice as many businesses ascan be found in the food industry.

Around 380,000 people work in the sector. In comparison, thepharmaceuticals and motor vehicles sectors each employ around athird of this total; aerospace around two fifths.

The clothing, footwear and textiles sector contributes �10billion to the UK economy each year. The pharmaceutical sectorcontribution is around 60 per cent of this; the furniture sectorjust over a third.

The skills situation

At present, �80m of public money is spent every year onproviding educational and training courses of notional relevance toour sector. Up to four fifths of this money goes into HigherEducation ? mainly to fund fashion design courses ? with the bulkof the remainder going into designs and hobby courses deliveredthrough Further Education colleges.

The issues

• Why is so much money being spent on fashion design courses whengraduate supply outstrips industry demand by around up to 600 percent?
• With well over �64m per year going into fashion education, whydo our employers complain that graduates lack the essentials -CAD-CAM operation, pattern-cutting, sample-making, productionknowledge and commercial awareness?
• In England, in 2004/5, there were only 270 registrations inEngland for publicly-funded sector-specific qualifications. Theclear message from employers is that they lack faith inqualifications. A key reason for this is that local colleges haveneither the staff nor the equipment to be able to deliverqualifications. So why is Government continuing to route fundingthrough colleges?

The answer

Our research has shown that employers will invest more in skillsIF the training is right and IF it can be delivered in theworkplace ? not in a college classroom. If the Government reallywants to see an uplift in skills and productivity, why is more notbeing done to support workplace learning?

What needs to happen

• We want Government to divert some of the public funding that iscurrently spent on courses that employers DON?T want, intoworkplace learning that employers DO want. We?re not asking formore. We?re asking for the current investment to be spent where itwill make most difference.
• We want long-term systemic change for our employers on skills ?not the succession of short-term locally-funded pilot schemes andprojects that we?ve had to date. In this way we can break the?postcode? lottery which sees some employers receivepublicly-funded support for skills development, whilst othersreceive nothing.
• We see the Government?s Train to Gain programme as a step inthe right direction, BUT:

Support can only be accessed to undertake qualifications. Sincequalifications are not always valued by employers, we are forcingthem to make a choice between what?s right for the budget andwhat?s right for business productivity. We would like to see theprogramme broadened to cover other types of training ? if this iswhat will help business competitiveness. Train to Gain can only be as strong as the traininginfrastructure. Our sector suffers from lack of quality trainingprovision, so the effect of Train to Gain will be limited. We wouldlike to see Train to Gain brokers working with Sector SkillsCouncils to broker collaborative employer solutions to the lack ofinfrastructure. For documents outlining the key statistics on skills for theapparel, footwear and textiles sector, and information on howworkplace learning works in practice, visit the publications areaon this mini-site.

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