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Excerpt from www.theguardian.com
Keir Starmer is speaking at the Farnborough International airshow now. He said the new Skills England organisation would transform the relationship between businesses and the education system, calling it “another marker of the future”.
The new body was announced on Monday morning. In a press release, the government said Skills England “will bring together central and local government, businesses, training providers and unions to meet the skills needs of the next decade across all regions”.
The prime minister said it was “the launch of a new organisation that we hope will transform not just how we train our young people and adults, but also the relationship between business and education system”.
He added it was “a plan to make sure that we’re training young people, not just for any business, but for the businesses that exist in their communities, the skills that you and they need to take each other forward”.
Starmer said his government “won’t be content just to pull the easy lever of importing skills”.
“All too often young people in our country have been let down, not given access to the right opportunities or training in their community And that’s created an over-reliance in our economy on higher and higher levels of migration,” he said.
He added: “I do not criticise businesses who hire overseas workers and I certainly don’t diminish the contribution that migration makes to our economy, to our public services, and of course, to our communities – migration is part of our national story. It always has been, always will be.
“And yet, if you stand back, as a system, it cannot be right that some people don’t get to feel the pride of making a contribution, that dignity of work, just because we can’t find a way of creating a coherent skills system. That can’t be right.
“So I have to say that we won’t be content just to pull the easy lever of importing skills. We’re turning the page on that.”
