growstuff
How about recognising that even "vocational manual" jobs often need a higher level of skill then UK training usually provides? People don't need to spend their whole lives at the bottom of the pile, but should be able to acquire the skills to progress. In Germany and many other European countries (especially in eastern Europe) people in manual jobs have been trained to a higher level than in the UK,which could be why they have been in demand.
I came across a couple of glitches in the training system while I was out of work.
I went on government funded NYQ level 2 in Using Information Technology. To rules of the NVQ were that to pass one needed traning to use a wordprocessing package and a spreadsheet package. In practice we got Word. Excel, Access, and some got PowerPoint too. It gave me experience and ability in modern office software.
So, keen on NVQs I asked at the local college about their NVQ level 3 in Usimg Information Technology.
Alas, not possible, one needed to be in employment for some of the units.
Now comes the glitch!
Ah, said I, can I do just the units where one does not need to be employment please as the government promotes NVQs as you can either do a whole one all at once or do individual units one at a time and gradually build up a qualification.
Oh no is the reply, because the funding council treats anything other than a whole NVQ as a fail and it affects our future funding.
So there are, one part of government advocating a way to do it and another part making it inpossible.
Also, because I had got a degree many years before I was told elsewhere that funding could not be "drawn down" ("drawn down" being I found an often-used term) as I had already got a qualification at or above level 3. (the degree being level 6).
But I wanted to get a job and the modern computer network skills were non-existent back then.
It just needs joined-up-government to avoid such things happening.