Bridging the Gap: Why the skills system is overdue an overhaul

Paul Walsh feels like he’s won the work lottery. As an apprentice stonemason with Historic Environment Scotland (HES), he’s learning his craft in style, carrying out restoration work on Glasgow Cathedral’s 15th century spire. It is, he says, the “Holy Grail of where you can work as a stonemason”, but his learning curve doesn’t stop there.

“I also get to go to Melrose Abbey and Jedburgh Abbey,” Walsh says. “I live in Dumbarton and have done some work on the castle there. I take a real sense of pride in doing work in my own home town.”

Things weren’t always so positive. When he first left school Walsh began an apprenticeship with Clydebank business J Miller Patternmakers, where he made the high-spec wooden models used to create cast-metal moulds. The work was highly skilled and technical, with some of the patterns he created used to make parts for the refurbishment of the Waverley paddle steamer.

“I’d wanted a hands-on skill and a trade that was transferrable across the globe,” Walsh says of that role.

But while patternmaking is a vital part of the work needed to, for example, preserve Scotland’s cultural heritage it is also, Walsh says, extremely niche. When J Miller made him redundant during Covid there were no other patternmakers able to take him on and, with the redundancy coming during the final year of his apprenticeship, he was never able to fully learn his craft. J Miller has since ceased to exist and the future of patternmaking as a skilled trade looks to be increasingly at risk.

It is a story Colin Tennant, head of technical conservation at HES, is all too familiar with. Scotland, he stresses, is a country “built of stone” that tourists flock from all over the world to marvel at. But as its landmark buildings age they are requiring increasing levels of maintenance to “keep Scotland looking like Scotland”. Skills shortages, and a lack of opportunities to train in those skills, are hampering that.

“The skills shortage – to be honest, it’s a crisis – has been building for 20 to 30 years,” Tennant says. “There’s a problem with the system in that it’s high-value but low-volume skills that are needed. Thatching is a good example. There are 250 thatched buildings left in Scotland and they need to be retained and restored, but there’s no training for thatchers in Scotland and no qualification. We’ve got something that’s valuable to our cultural heritage but it isn’t provided for in mainstream training.”

Though he concedes that it wouldn’t be economically viable for colleges to offer courses in something like thatching, Tennant stresses that higher-volume skills are also at risk.
“There’s no roof slating training north of Arbroath,” he says. “Wyvis Roofing is a company in Inverness that covers an area the size of Belgium but has to send its apprentices to train in Arbroath or the central belt. There’s stuff that’s relatively mainstream like slating where it’s patchy. For stonemasonry, we [HES] provide more than half of the training in Scotland in our sites at Elgin and Stirling, but there’s no stonemasonry training between Stirling and York.”

HES is attempting to address that gap. Tennant and I are speaking in a former Irn-Bru factory in Falkirk that is now owned by Scottish Canals. Having lain empty since the 1990s, the building, which is situated at Lock 16 on the Forth and Clyde Canal, was originally going to be transformed by Scottish Canals into a depot and community hub. That plan has since been scrubbed in favour of a joint venture between the public sector organisation and HES, which together are turning the old plant into the Centre of Excellence for Canals and Traditional Skills. The organisations have opened the as-yet-undeveloped site up for Doors Open Day, in part to showcase what it is they do and in part to try to encourage local youngsters to consider following Walsh’s lead by learning a traditional skill.

“We’ve had a training facility in Elgin for 25 years and one in Stirling for 15 years; we know how to do traditional skills training within the educational framework,” Tennant tells me as Walsh and other apprentices set about demonstrating their skills to the people who have come along. “People volunteer on operating the locks and canal maintenance, so Scottish Canals brings in much more of a focus on volunteering. We saw the opportunity to bring those things together to use volunteering in a more structured way, leading to a pathway to a career. We see there’s a skills shortage and we need to get more young people and people not in education or employment into our sector. A lot of our ambition has been constrained by lack of space, but this [Lock 16] space gives us the opportunity to offer skilled positions to volunteers or young people – apprenticeships and a career in the sector.”

Glasgow cathedral | Alamy

Scotland is not alone in experiencing skills shortages, with a report from global resourcing business Manpower Group finding that while 36 per cent of employers across the world were struggling to find the skilled talent they needed in 2014, by this year that had risen to 74 per cent. Businesses of all sizes and in all sectors are similarly affected and, while Germany has the most gaps, with 86 per cent of employers there struggling to fill roles, the UK sits right in the middle of the table with three-quarters of employers unable to find the suitably qualified people they need.

In its Future of Jobs report, which was published in January, the World Economic Forum said the gaps have occurred because “the landscape of work” is “evolving at a rapid pace”. Much of that is being driven by “transformational breakthroughs, particularly in generative artificial intelligence,” the organisation’s managing director Saadia Zahidi wrote, adding that “industries and tasks across all sectors” are being reshaped as a result.

The impact that is having on jobs markets is immense, with the report finding that “if the world’s workforce was made up of 100 people, 59 would need training by 2030”. Employers could upskill 29 in their current jobs while a further 19 could be upskilled and redeployed elsewhere within their organisation. The remaining 11, however, “would be unlikely to receive the reskilling or upskilling needed, leaving their employment prospects increasingly at risk”. 

Given that that snapshot doesn’t even take account of the people currently finding it difficult to gain the skills needed to enter the workforce in the first place – people like Walsh before he secured his HES apprenticeship – it is unsurprising that HES and Scottish Canals are looking to take action. They are not the only ones. In September three Inverness businessmen – Chance Recruitment directors Dylan Spink and Jack Howell, and HHH Equipment chief executive Callum Mackintosh – joined forces to launch community interest company Highlands and Islands Skills, an organisation whose mission is to help address skills shortages in the infrastructure, construction, engineering, and renewable energy sectors. 

The UK Government, meanwhile, has provided £2.5m of funding for a specialist welding skills centre in Glasgow to support delivery of the nuclear reactors that power the Royal Navy’s fleet of submarines. The funding is being delivered through an existing relationship with engineering giant Rolls Royce, which is working in partnership with the Malin Group and the University of Strathclyde.

Even the king is getting in on the act, with his King’s Foundation launching a free introduction to farming and rural skills course at the MacRobert Farming and Rural Skills Centre at Dumfries House. The short course runs for six weeks and includes a block on skills such as animal care and dry-stone walling as well as a two-week farming placement and a week focusing on employability. The aim, according to King’s Foundation education director Jacqueline Farrell, is to “blend practical experience, industry engagement and personal development to help participants move confidently into employment or further training”.

Yet while each of these initiatives will have a positive impact on the people that can access them, they are a drop in the ocean in terms of what is required on a Scotland-wide basis. Indeed, in a Scottish Government-commissioned report published in the middle of 2023, James Withers – the former CEO of both NFU Scotland and Scotland Food & Drink – found the skills-development system would have to undergo fundamental change if shortages are going to come close to being addressed.

“There is a lot to celebrate in our post-school learning system,” he wrote in the report. “There is good work, good intentions, and actors within the existing delivery landscape should feel proud of what they have achieved, particularly in the face of recent significant and unprecedented challenges arising from the UK’s exit from the EU, the pandemic and the current cost of living crisis.

“However, for too long the different parts of this system have been left to evolve and […] I do not believe that the current landscape is working to best effect for those who use and rely on its services. It is my view that substantial change is required to ensure the system is fit for the future.”

In total Withers made 15 recommendations, five of which he deemed to be key, including moving responsibility for skills planning away from Skills Development Scotland and the Scottish Funding Council and into the Scottish Government. Establishing a single funding body with responsibility for all post-school learning and training and “substantively” reforming Skills Development Scotland so its focus is on developing a national careers service were also seen as vital. Yet while the Scottish Government broadly accepted the recommendations put forward by Withers, more than two years on businesses are finding it as difficult as ever to address their employment gaps.

The skills shortage – to be honest, it’s a crisis – has been building for 20 to 30 years.

“Sometimes I think it would be easier to talk about where there are no gaps rather than where there are but even finding that would be difficult at the moment,” says Michelle Ferguson, Scotland director at the CBI. “Stonemasonry is a problem – we have beautiful buildings in Edinburgh, but we don’t have the number of stonemasons required to deliver the work that’s needed on them. Those are jobs that are diminishing, but it’s not just those types of jobs – there are businesses in so many areas that are saying ‘we can’t fill the amount of vacancies that we’ve got’. We’ve got a life sciences company that’s running at 25 per cent capacity because it can’t fill its skills gap.”

In certain sectors the longer-term impact of that is looming particularly large, with the Construction Industry Training Board warning in its most recent workforce outlook for Scotland that 17,950 extra workers will be required in the sector in the next five years. In order to fill those roles, the organisation’s Scottish engagement director Ian Hughes says, the way the sector “attracts, trains and retains its people” needs to be overhauled. “The fact that the construction industry continually struggles to fill vacancies points towards a training system that isn’t making a good enough link to jobs,” he adds.

Part of the problem, Ferguson believes, is that many of the people in the market for skills training need to secure an apprenticeship in order to achieve their goals, while many of the employers with skills gaps that need filling are finding it difficult to meet or justify that expense. Though medium to large businesses pay 0.5 per cent of their annual wage bill into the UK Government’s Apprenticeship Levy scheme, the way that scheme is administered puts Scottish businesses at a disadvantage.

Indeed, while the levy money is ringfenced for apprenticeships in England, in Scotland it is pooled as part of the block grant, with Scottish ministers deciding how much should be allocated to skills. The result is that an employer in England could receive as much as £27,000 to help cover an apprentice’s training costs, while the equivalent figure in Scotland is just £8,000. The levy was, Ferguson says, supposed to be an investment employers across the UK could benefit from, when instead it has resulted in 10,000 fewer Scottish apprentices than are required each year being trained.

Colin Tennant, head of technical conservation at HES | Picture: Margaret Taylor 

Tennant agrees that the way the system is funded is problematic, noting that the relative underinvestment in apprenticeships gives the impression the skills they are designed to teach are somehow not to be valued. 

“It sticks in the craw of the construction industry that you could send a young person to university, they could study what they liked for four years without it costing anything – and they could borrow money to facilitate that – then when they come out and don’t get a job that’s okay,” he says. “But for a young person to get an apprenticeship an employer has to cough up to pay them. They will hope that at the end of the four years they’ll have a productive person and that [investment] pays back, but that young person could cross the road and go to work for a competitor. There’s something wrong with that system and that culture.”

It is something Withers was acutely aware of when he was writing his report and remains acutely aware of now. Speaking to Holyrood in the days after the Tertiary Education and Training Bill – the first piece of legislation to be influenced by his work – passed its stage one reading in parliament, Withers says the skills system in Scotland is so fragmented it is barely fit for purpose. Much of the reason for that, he says, is that the idea a university education is the only route to success has been allowed to take root over several decades.

“I was the first person in my family to go to university, and it was treated like it was the greatest family achievement ever,” he says. “That’s been a thread that’s run through Scottish politics and UK politics for a while. When Nicola Sturgeon stood down as first minister one of the kite-mark things she spoke about being proud of was that more Scottish kids are going to university than ever before, but I’m not sure that should be the benchmark. 

“When I went to visit colleges [as part of the review] I was blown away by what they were doing. They are rooted in their communities and really connected to schools. They’re taking people of all ages and equipping them with real skills. For a long time college has been portrayed as the thing you do if you can’t get into university, and that’s mad.”

For Gavin Donoghue, chief executive of Colleges Scotland, that cultural shift has been self-perpetuating, with the perception that a college education is somehow less valuable than a university one coming hand-in-hand with a decline in funding for the sector. In turn, that has negatively impacted on the range of courses institutions have been able to offer. The impact of that was brought home by Audit Scotland this month, with its report into college funding finding that a real-terms cut of 20 per cent over five years has resulted in 30,000 fewer students being taught in the last year alone. If the pressures continue, Auditor General Stephen Boyle warned, colleges “will need to change how they operate rather than trying to deliver more of the same with decreasing resources”.

“Colleges Scotland has been raising the alarm about underfunding for a number of years and Audit Scotland has been very clear about the impact of that underfunding,” Donoghue says. “Most colleges are not sustainable under current Scottish Government funding levels. That’s a warning sign that they need to have a step-change in their approach in the budget to the funding of colleges. 

“We’ve got clearly delineated skills gaps on the one hand and on the other we’ve got colleges that are specifically designed to address those skills gaps but they are being underfunded. Colleges are funded from the education and skills portfolio and that’s right, but we make such an impact across portfolios that we need to see a different approach. It’s too siloed at the moment.”

The Tertiary Education and Training Bill will, as Withers recommended, transfer responsibility for funding training programmes and apprenticeships from Skills Development Scotland to a redesigned Scottish Funding Council, essentially bringing funding for universities, colleges and other forms of training together under one roof. It is a good first step, Donoghue says, that should enable colleges to support more people to get an apprenticeship, but the wider issue around skills planning and the role colleges can play in that remains unsolved.

For his part, Withers says that while he “went through a period about a year ago when I was pretty disillusioned about the lack of progress” being made on his recommendations, for now he feels “we’re not in a bad place”. That said, he stresses that the “level of transformation that’s required” over a five to ten year period “shouldn’t be underestimated” and adds that, with a Holyrood election looming, the “window for cross-party support” to get that done “is closing”.
“When I was doing the review I found that the skills system was totally fragmented,” Withers says. “It wasn’t even a system – different parts of it were battling for funds from each other, it wasn’t user-focused enough and there was poor leadership from government, which had just let it evolve so people had gone off and built their own kingdoms without being connected into each other.

“The overall context was that we have a shrinking working-age population, with that happening faster in Scotland than in the rest of the UK. I didn’t want to use the word ‘emergency’ as part of the report but we have an incredible shortage of the biggest commodity we have, which is people. That’s because we have a system that forces people to fit in and if they don’t fit in they are deemed to be failures.

“The bill going through to bring university and college funding together with apprenticeship training is good news, but we now need the government to find the leadership it’s lacked on skills planning. I’m worried that it’s not being ambitious enough on skills reform.”

Back in Falkirk, Walsh is demonstrating some of his stonemasonry skills to the steady stream of people who have come to Lock 16 to find out what the HES-Scottish Canals centre is all about. He’s so passionate about his craft that HES made him a skills experience ambassador last year. As part of that he goes into schools to pass on his enthusiasm for traditional skills to youngsters who are beginning to weigh up their own career options. He’s learned a huge amount from his mentor Joe Gangel, a monumental sculptor at HES, and has been enrolled on a mentoring course so he can learn how best to pass his own knowledge on too.  

As he chips away at a piece of stone, Walsh muses on what it is that makes his career so rewarding. There’s the fact that Scotland’s built environment is continuing to age so “there’s always going to be work there”. But, more importantly, there’s this: “I like the idea that I’m leaving my mark on history. I want to go to the cathedral with my grandkids in 50 years’ time and say that I worked on that.”

Yet there are serious fears that, if rapid action is not taken to overhaul the skills system in the way Withers imagined – effectively pulling it apart and rebuilding it from the bottom up – the children Walsh spends time trying to enthuse about the sector may never be able to enter it. The broader implication of that is that the workforce will dwindle – with all the knock-on effects that would have on personal and economic development – and vital skills will be lost. As Ferguson at the CBI says: “If we don’t make the difficult decisions and put the changes in place now, we’ll look back in ten years and say, ‘what a massive mistake we made’.”