ScreenSkills CEO Laura Mansfield welcomes the official launch of Skills England and the publication of new analysis of the skills needs for the creative industries.
Skills England’s assessment of skills needs in the creative industries sector is a picture we here at ScreenSkills recognise and are committed to working with industry to address.
As the report states, the creative industries are a ‘cornerstone of the UK’s economy and cultural identity’, contributing more than £124bn to the economy and employing 2.4m people across the various sectors.
There’s no doubt that the film and television industries specifically are facing significant challenges and that technical advances will create further disruption going forward as well as opportunities.
When developing our five-year strategy, we consulted 1,600 industry stakeholders, and set two key priorities: identifying and communicating skills needs by providing insight into current and future skills demands, and; enabling access to high-quality, consistent and inclusive training that meets the needs of industry.
Following the publication of our landmark pilot study Sizing Up: Workforce Composition and Capacity in the Screen Industries, in collaboration with 4Skills, it’s encouraging to see that Skills England’s assessment of the creative industries reflects its core findings: 65% of freelancers have found it hard to find work in the past year, with skills gaps most common in mid-to-senior roles and persistent challenges in social mobility.
While Skills England identifies an ‘overemphasis’ on entry-level training, it rightly points to the significant barriers young people face in entering creative careers, often stemming from a lack of awareness. That’s why I’m proud that ScreenSkills continues to be the lead delivery partner for the Discover! Creative Careers Programme offering more opportunities for young people to explore careers in the creative industries.
Making training accessible for high numbers of freelancers is another gap identified by Skills England. That’s why we have been working closely with industry partners, BBC Studios, ITV Studios, Sky and PACT to develop, pilot and refine the ScreenSkills Training Passport – the first pan-industry initiative to provide a digital record of standardised industry-approved training that production staff can take from one production to the next. I’m looking forward to sharing more about that project very soon.
And as a signatory to the Learning and Work Institute’s Get the Nation Learning Charter, we fully agree that flexible, lifelong learning that supports career progression is vital if we want the UK screen industries to continue to be world-leading with an agile and inclusive workforce that offers people from every background the opportunity to realise their potential.
Skills England’s observations about apprenticeship take-up, meanwhile, echo the findings from the experience of our flexi-job apprenticeship agency pilots between 2021-24, where we worked with employers and government to explore more flexible delivery models.
We look forward to working with Skills England, as we continue to gather evidence of industry skill needs across the UK. While there is no silver bullet to solve the skills shortage facing the screen industry right now, we hope this month’s long awaited Creative Industries Sector Plan will introduce greater flexibilities under the Growth and Skills Levy.
To support sustained economic growth across the sector, industry needs a levy that funds alternative shorter-term, work-based training courses. This could include modular training whereby the levy is used to fund flexible provision of short training modules, that could be delivered independently or online at the learner’s own pace.
We hope the Creative Industries Sector Plan will prioritise workforce skills, inclusion, and wellbeing to ensure lasting growth.