e-skills UK
e-Skills UK Regional Contact is:
Anthony Sherlock, North England Skills Director
e-skills
1 Castle Lane
London
SW1E 6DR
T: 0207 9638920 / 07793469685
Learning and Skills Council Contact: david.gallagher@lsc.gov.uk / sally.gardner@lsc.gov.uk
Click here for the e-skills UK North East Fact Sheet
Overview of the Sector in the North East
e-skills UK acts as the voice of employers on IT and Telecoms. Dedicated to the needs of business, e-skills UK improves competitiveness and productivity through uniting employers, educators and the government on common employer-led agendas for action on skills.
With these partners, e-skills UK is capable of generating a skills pool in the North East that enables the unrestricted growth of IT and Telecoms and a prosperous economy through opportunities created via the exploitation of technology.
1.2 million IT workers exist within the UK workforce with the North East accounting for 29,956 workers (The lowest number amongst all the regions). The workforce comprises 13,505 in the IT industry and 16,451 IT professionals working in other industries across the region. The Telecoms industry employs nearly 14,000 people in the North East.1
The North East has a lower proportion of ICT managers and Computer Installation and Maintenance Engineers than the national average but a higher proportion of employed in IT operations, User Support and Database roles.
The business services sector in the North East employs the highest number of IT professionals outside the IT industry in the North East, as is mirrored in every other UK region. Financial intermediation is a much less common employer of IT professionals in the North East than in the UK as a whole.1
Key issues facing the sector now and in the future
In the North East, IT industry employment growth is forecast at 6-14% between 2005 and 20142 although the proportion of total UK IT professional employment in the North East is expected to fall in the future.1
Employment Issues in the North East
Over the coming decade significant numbers of new entrants are required to enter the IT workforce. With increasing competition, resulting from geo-sourcing, there will be demand for ‘deeper and broader’ skills in the region, to fill increasingly complex, high added value roles and to address the gender imbalance.
Recruitment difficulties and skill gaps
The North East has more companies with IT vacancies than nationally – 27% compared to 17% for Great Britain.1 In the future, IT professional workforce growth will depend on more young people choosing IT as a career. Currently the choices for young people do not support the forecast growth, and entry onto HE IT is in decline.
- Only a fifth of the IT workforce is female.
- The graduate recruitment pool has a similar or worse gender imbalance.
e-skills UK is addressing this problem through their award winning Computer Clubs for Girls (CC4G) programme. CC4G excites girls about technology in ways that are relevant to them (music, fashion and design). By running and supporting the programme, schools, employers and regional partners can help transform the attitudes of a generation of girls to careers in IT. www.cc4g.net 3
The North East has above the Great Britain average for skills gaps in the IT professional workforce, with 17% of companies in the North East reporting skills gaps compared with the average of 9%. The greatest skills gaps are found in the development and implementation of IT systems and services.1
In addition to the requirement to address and up-skill IT professionals, there are 119,300 business managers in the North East who are finding IT strategy and business are becoming irrevocably intertwined. Business managers must now define the strategic role of IT in their organisation and lead the consequent change projects. The issue is not simply knowing how to use IT, but rather how to exploit IT. It is the skills around IT strategy and IT project delivery that are most needed.
Of the skills lacking among staff, described by employers in the North East as not fully proficient, 19% lack IT user skills compared to the average in England of 26%.4 The area of greatest need for skills improvement is the accessing and sharing of information.
Future Skills Demands
Increasing the skills of IT professionals will drive up productivity per head within the IT sector in the North East and it will assist the 17% of companies across the region who are reporting IT professional skills gaps.
Within the IT workforce in general, the key skill changes which affect the region are:
- On-going demand for technical skills in systems integration.
- Networking, web design, security and IT architecture to support both custom development and package integration.
- Increasing need for consultancy and change management skills to help derive business benefits from new technology.
- Broader business skills and an improved understanding of the sector they are working in.
- Migration of IT programming skills and jobs offshore which will result in a need for skills to manage these services.1
There will be an increasing need for business managers in the North East to understand the potential business benefits of IT and this will be a particular challenge for managers of smaller enterprises that do not have in-house IT professionals. Many business managers in the future will face the need for change-management under-pinned by IT.1
The North East needs to properly equip the 119,300 business managers with the ‘skills to interpret and exploit the opportunities available from IT.’ Of the current business manager workforce in the region, up to 8,753 need improved IT professional skills in order to address the three year forecast from 2005- 2008. Some 56% need to be up skilled to the Level 2 and 43% at level 3.1
There is also a need to improve the IT user skills of 23,807 business managers in the North East to address the 3 year forecast (2005-2008), with 45% of the up-skilling up to level 2 and 55% at level 3+.1
More employees will need to have IT skills in the future and the skills will need to be at more advanced levels. There is an expectation that employees will only be able to use IT but also to exploit it more effectively for business benefits.
There is a need to up skill up to 290,800 IT users in the North east, 115,149 to addresses current skill gaps and 175,651 people to address the 3 year forecast. Of these, about 57% need up skilling to Level 2 and 43% to level 3+.
Prioritisation of Skills Issues within the Industries
The Sector Skills Agreement for IT defines a coherent strategy for IT skills in the context of a 10 year vision of the future. It defined the suite of 8 collaborative programmes to which e-skills UK and partners have committed in order to deliver on that strategy.
The e-skills UK SSA for the North East identifies the following priority actions:
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SSA Proposals
The Collaborative Solutions
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North East activity.
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Improving the attractiveness of IT careers
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1.1 COMPUTER CLUBS FOR GIRLS – Rollout Computer Clubs for Girls (CC4G) across the UK to transform the attitudes of a generation of girls to technology related careers
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e-skills UK has received funding support from the DfES for the national roll out of this award winning programme. To progress roll out, e-skills UK is looking to align strategy and gain support from NE Partners in the promotion of the clubs to schools and parents. The delivery target for the programme is 245 schools in the region by 2008
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1.2 CAREERS ADVICE – Promote a clear, current understanding of IT career options, skills requirements and development routes, linking employers with schools, colleges and universities throughout the UK
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e-skills UK has national funding support from the SSDA/DfES for the development of a programme to promote a clear understanding of IT career options, skills requirements and development routes, linking employers with school, colleges and universities. This information will then be available in the NE region.
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Preparing new entrants to the workforce
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2.1 IT DIPLOMA – Create a national modular, integrated development route for technology-related educational and work-based learning for students aged 14 – 19
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e-skills UK is working in partnership with DfES for the creation of the IT Diploma. To progress this programme, e-skills UK are obtaining input from regional partners and employers during the development of the Diploma. It is also of particular importance to build the capacity of providers to offer the new qualification and raise the awareness of schools, colleges, teachers, pupils and parents of the benefits of the IT Diploma
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2.2 UNDERGRADUATE DEVELOPMENT - Establish new employer-supported Honours degrees and develop embedded IT strategy modules for the degree courses of other disciplines
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e-skills UK is working in partnership with Northumbria University to deliver the Hons degree and will work with partners to promote the degree to schools, young people and parents and also to attract bursaries to assist those studying for the degree (in particular to support the agenda of widening access to Higher Education)
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Developing the existing workforce
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3.1 E-BUSINESS ACADEMY - Create an employer-supported national hub for IT-related business support and skills development which helps businesses in all sectors operate successfully in the e?economy
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e-skills will ask all regions to input to our submission to set up a National Skills Academy for ICT skills in September 2006 for Implementation September 2007. Activities in this element include IT workforce
SFIA Navigation service and Business Managers
IT Strategic Management Framework,
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3.2 E-SKILLS PASSPORT / ITQ - Increase the UK’s IT user skills in line with market needs, with up to 750,000 people over the next three years undertaking a skills improvement journey and benefiting from employer-recognised records of achievement
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e-skills UK and the National LSC have agreed a strategy to increase the UK’s IT user skills in line with market needs, by utilising the employer designed ITQ qualification supported by employer recognised records of achievement through the e-skills Passport.
The NE LSC have been a key partner in raising awareness with employers and providers and are working towards a regional ITQ target of 29,000 by 2008
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Addressing infrastructure matters
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4.1 RECOGNISING ACHIEVEMENT - Develop a simplified, flexible framework for recognising achievement as appropriate to employer needs, in particular for smaller companies
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e-skills UK has a nationally agreed memorandum of understanding with the QCA to further develop with other relevant national partners an employer led Framework for Achievement. The ITQ will be used as a pilot qualification for delivery in this project.
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4.2 RESEARCH - Establish a UK-wide nucleus for authoritative insight and market intelligence on IT-related business competitiveness and skills matters
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In order to ensure maximum benefit to regional partners and minimal duplication of effort, e-skills UK requests that regional partners engage e-skills UK in the provision of regional research
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Relevance of Existing Quality Provision
There were 4,716 passes in IT related GCSEs and 982 passes in IT related A Levels in 2003 in the North East. In terms of absolute figures, the region ranks eighth for GCSEs and last for A-Levels.
Minimal FE provision exists at Level 3 and above for IT professionals in the North East despite employers’ needs for these higher level skills. The IT industry itself has a high propensity to train and training expenditure is high. However, the vast majority of training for IT professionals is provided by the private sector which often leads to vendor qualifications.
References
1 e-skills UK; IT Insights: Regional Skills in the North East, 2005 www.e-skills.com/itinsights
2 e-skills UK; The Sector Skills Agreement for IT: 2005-2008, Action Plan England, 2005 www.e-skills.com/ssa
3 http://www.cc4g.net
Supporting Documents and Downloads
IT Insights: Regional Skills in the North East [pdf]
(867 KB)
SSA Solution March 07 [doc]
(50 KB)
