EMPLOYABILITY AND SECURITY IN A FLEXIBLE GLOBAL LABOUR MARKET Training to meet the wider needs of people and industry Another issue is the narrow scope of the training that people do receive.‘Training is almost always job-related and related to a pay-back to the employer. We need a lot more training at work. Germany and other EU member states are doing better at this than Britain. Although the majority of people, if asked, will say that they have received training sometime during the last three months, it is informal, its scope is narrow and it does not provide certificates or provable skills.’ ‘There is a growing chasm between those with university degrees and those with few vocational qualifications or none, and there are few opportunities for young people aged sixteen to twenty-one to undertake further training or education. British employers, particularly small companies, simply are not willing to pay for further training. Britain needs to spend£40 billion a year for the next ten years to halve the education and training gap for post-sixteen-year-olds.’ The problem, as Mr Edmonds sees it, is one of increasing polarisation.‘Brighter students go to university. The gap should be filled by technical colleges, but this does not happen, partly because of their redesignation and partly because of the difficulties older students have in finding the time and the money to support full-time training. Even if companies want to train people, or individuals want to seek further training, it is difficult to find a way of gaining a qualification without full-time study. We are improving the basic skills of children. But the weakest group, the sixteen- to twenty-one-year-olds, still fall outside the system. Britain should give greater importance to vocational qualifications so that they are regarded as valuable tools for the workplace.‘This is also a class problem. People believe that status and social standing are conferred by university degrees, and that vocational qualifications are a poor substitute. People with vocational qualifications are looked down upon, unlike in Germany.’ Very little financial support is given for vocational qualifications. One recent government innovation, the Individual Learning Account which subsidised individuals’ in their training, was suspended because of widespread abuse and fraud.‘Another problem is grants for people who want to work for qualifications, especially if they want to train full­time. Most adults find it difficult to continue studying while relying on a partner’s earnings. The multiplicity of qualifications is another problem. The government believes that there are too many different qualifications and that these confuse individuals and employers and is promoting National Vocational Qualifications(NVQs) as a means of unifying and simplifying the existing system.’ However, many existing organisations that issue vocational qualifications are clinging to their own system and refusing to more over to NVQs. 33 © Anglo-German Foundation for the Study of Industrial Society