Technology skills in demand
A NATIONAL skills audit has red-flagged critical shortages of science and technology professionals and a wider lack of staff trained to any meaningful level in the so called STEM subjects - science, technology, engineering and maths - all of which are needed to drive the North-east’s new manufacturing sectors.
Skills for Jobs: Today and Tomorrow, is the first comprehensive look at current skills and likely future demand by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills and sets out to provide a framework for government, teachers and employers to head off likely deficits, which, it says, could hold back future economic growth.
Among those flagged as “high priority skills” needing immediate action are those needed by science and technology professionals in pharmaceutical and medical technology industries and key parts of both traditional and advanced manufacturing. But this will only be achieved if equal weighting is given to making the STEM subjects attractive to teachers and research professionals needed to support them.
It highlights the importance of suitable qualified professionals in higher education research to help commercialise technology and production processes.
The report identifies the fastest growing top 10 occupations over the past decade as conservation officers, paramedics, legal associates, refuse collectors, leisure park attendants, town planners, teaching assistants, driving instructors and registrars.
Flight engineers are the only technology related profession to make it into the top 20. Among the 20 fastest declining professions are metal making and treating process operatives, machine setters, plastic process operatives and machine operatives - all requiring lower level qualifications.
Manufacturing as a whole now accounts for just one in eight jobs in the UK and demand across all sectors is for higher level qualifications.
The report says that to reach skills targets for 2020 “a considerable growth in achievements at all levels is required… most needed at level 3 in numeracy”.
It predicts that by 2017 engineering will have 128,000 fewer jobs than in 2007.
