The Skills Factory

Overview

It is clear that demand for higher level skills has been rising and is expected to continue. There will be considerable requirements for graduates with Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) qualifications, particularly to replace older workers.

It is important to look at the flow of people potentially entering the industry over the coming years, as well as those likely to leave. This analysis will tell us whether we are on course to meet our sector’s needs.

Projecting the skills demand

Significant efforts have been made in recent years to ensure that the skills needs of the Cogent sector are being met. We are confident that the direction of travel is broadly correct, but in order to be confident that the effort is effective, we need to ensure that the magnitude is also appropriate – in other words, that we are moving far enough, fast enough. To test whether we are on track, we have undertaken the analysis presented in this section.

The Stock and the Flow

To assess the size of the challenge, we have used available data on current and projected levels of employment in the sector (“the stock”), and compared them with information on the expected rate of “flow” of people in and out of the workforce. The outflow will consist mainly of people retiring, but will also be affected by issues such as emigration and labour market mobility. The inflow will consist of university graduates, apprentices and, to a lesser extent, direct entry from schools and further education colleges. The comparison of the projected stock, outflow and inflow will show us whether the current rate of entry of appropriately-qualified people into the workforce will be enough to meet demand, or whether we need to make efforts to increase the numbers.

Figures on some of these aspects have been readily available to us, either from existing public data sources or from our own research or projections. Others were less easily available, so in the narrative below we have pointed out where we have had either to make assumptions or to leave some figures out of the analysis for now. We will conduct further research to follow up the areas of simplification and to refine the general analysis over the next few months.

Skills Factory - Stock

The following figures illustrate the Cogent Skills Factory – the stock of people and the flow of skills.

To analyse the STOCK and FLOW of people in the Cogent sector there are many elements to analyse. The flow chart opposite demonstrates the different factors needed to be taken into consideration when determining shortfalls in SUPPLY and future DEMAND within the sector.

Entrants into the sector come from a variety of sources including graduates and apprentices as major routes into the industries

Workers exiting the sector again are through a variety of paths. Exits in the main are from retirements, however migration of workers to other countries or sectors also account for movement and lead to REPLACEMENT DEMAND.