I remember at university reading an economics book which had a quote from a German newspaper, deriding the fact that a cricket Test match in England was sold out on a Wednesday. A sure sign, the newspaper said, of British laziness and inefficiency, it then turned out the newspaper cutting was from 1905 or thereabouts.
What brought that to mind was the latest blog from the ONS on productivity in the UK which rose sharply in the middle of last year. Unfortunately it rose because all the least efficient and unproductive parts of the British economy were closed by the lockdown, while the productive parts stayed open. It is a reminder of just how much the British economy is dependent on cheap and unskilled labour. This matters firstly because a lot of that unskilled labour has over the last 20 years come from the continent, and we have just put barriers in its way. The other worry is that this makes increasing productivity very difficult, you may have to pay staff more because of a shortage of labour but that makes you less efficient not more. British firms just don’t invest in training and skills in anything like the way they need to, if the UK is to increase productivity.
Although firms get and deserve a lot of the blame for this there is another culprit, the education system in the UK turns out lots of people with no qualifications at all. 18% leave school without 5 basic GCSE’s, their prospects are dire, their chances of turning this around thin and the cost to the economy is huge.
Firms can’t and won’t invest what little training budget they have in these people. The government has to make them employable by improving the education system from the bottom. It is slow, unglamorous, expensive and dull work, but without it productivity and economic growth will continue to stall.
https://jonty.substack.com/
"the education system turns out lots of people with no qualifications at all" - The education system follows a syllabus and teaches to that. If the children and their not so bright parents do not take advantage of that education they will end up part of the 18% with no qualifications. With the Coronavirus lockdown did the parents help their children learn? Without the 18% not so bright there would not be any unskilled Labour in the UK.
There is nothing wrong with the education system as it stands only bad parents. If we invest in our education with effort we will do better for ourselves.