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The Skills Agenda

@thomasbewick.bsky.social

The Bluesky home of the popular Substack — The Skills Agenda https://open.substack.com/pub/tombewick

24 Followers  |  28 Following  |  43 Posts  |  Joined: 15.11.2024  |  1.6965

Latest posts by thomasbewick.bsky.social on Bluesky

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Is Artificial Intelligence destroying entry-level and mid-skill jobs? As the labour market faces one of its most subdued periods since the pandemic, Tom Bewick looks for hard evidence of whether AI-driven job losses are to blame.

open.substack.com/pub/tombewic...

21.08.2025 13:50 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Reforming the Apprenticeship Levy Ministers appear to be in a muddle over one of the government's flagship policies to raise skills and productivity. Has a Labour-friendly think-tank just a found way through the impasse?

open.substack.com/pub/tombewic...

14.08.2025 16:08 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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This is what the Skills White paper should say Education ministers in England have promised a comprehensive post-16 education and skills strategy by the autumn, Tom Bewick outlines what it should deliver.

open.substack.com/pub/tombewic...

07.08.2025 12:41 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Skills shortages do not exist Only employers, governments and individuals who fail to plan or invest adequately in the human capabilities that really matter, argues Tom Bewick

open.substack.com/pub/tombewic...

31.07.2025 17:31 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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The Orphan of Whitehall Skills policy has struggled to maintain a permanent home in Westminster. Perhaps it's time that skills and productivity had its own Secretary of State around the cabinet table, writes Tom Bewick

open.substack.com/pub/tombewic...

25.07.2025 06:22 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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How to solve the NEET problem One in 5 young people globally are not in education, employment or training, yet, the solutions have been there all along, argues Tom Bewick

open.substack.com/pub/tombewic...

18.07.2025 17:59 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Skills-First Policy and Skills-Based Hiring? New terminology is entering the labour market as both governments and employers look for different ways of diversifying and acquiring productive skills.

open.substack.com/pub/tombewic...

11.07.2025 08:46 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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One year in, Labour’s skills revolution is feeling hollow Skills were meant to be at the heart of Labour’s economic revival. Yet, after a year of bureaucratic tweaks and missed opportunities the promised transformation remains elusive.

open.substack.com/pub/tombewic...

04.07.2025 10:26 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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The 'Repatriation of Skill'? Far from being a net job destroyer, Artificial Intelligence has the potential to expand human capabilities originally displaced by Adam Smith's division of labour.

open.substack.com/pub/tombewic...

27.06.2025 13:09 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Ministers in the dock on apprenticeship quality A new report on England's expansive and diverse apprenticeship model finds internationally high drop-out rates and poor training practices.

open.substack.com/pub/tombewic...

18.06.2025 16:05 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Spending Review: It's time to party like its 1964 With key economic indicators in a downward spiral, Britain's finance ministry looks back to some Labour governments of old to jump-start growth, by taxing higher and spending more.

open.substack.com/pub/tombewic...

11.06.2025 21:48 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Education is not a 'magic bullet' to tackle inequality Chair of the UK government's Social Mobility Commission argues that innovation and competitiveness are what drive thriving local communities.

open.substack.com/pub/tombewic...

08.06.2025 13:03 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Why the state should get out of devising 'skills products' Civil Servants like telling employers and learners what they can spend on workforce development, rather than empowering those affected to solve the issues themselves.

open.substack.com/pub/tombewic...

02.06.2025 08:26 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Lack of teenage career readiness is holding countries back Two new reports show how formal education systems are failing to help young people make successful transitions to the world of work.

open.substack.com/pub/tombewic...

23.05.2025 13:22 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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T levels could fail unless the government changes course By entrenching class divides the government's flagship qualifications in England risk the same fate as the 11-plus, which segregated the secondary school curriculum after the Second World War.

open.substack.com/pub/tombewic...

19.05.2025 09:15 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Immigration White Paper omits a coherent skills plan Lack of joined-up policy across Whitehall and Devolved Administrations threatens to derail UK government's higher living standards agenda.

open.substack.com/pub/tombewic...

16.05.2025 10:27 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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We’re haunted by the ghosts of failed curriculum reforms By entrenching class divides, T levels are becoming the new 11-plus

feweek.co.uk/were-haunted...

12.05.2025 10:55 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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America and Britain's student debt crisis As the Trump Administration cancels debt forgiveness and UK universities brace themselves for new restrictions on overseas students, higher education in both countries face an existential challenge.

open.substack.com/pub/tombewic...

09.05.2025 09:07 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Experts clash on English apprenticeship reform Two former Conservative skills policy advisers, Baroness Alison Wolf and Tom Richmond call for 'radical surgery' despite 14 years of significant reform of apprenticeships in England

open.substack.com/pub/tombewic...

01.05.2025 12:33 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Does the elite class in England have a vision when it comes to skills? As Parliament continues its inquiry into further education and skills, Tom Bewick explains why technocratic tinkering and a bureaucratic culture of low expectations are the real enemies of progress.

open.substack.com/pub/tombewic...

24.04.2025 12:11 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Traditional teaching and learning is dying The meaning of being educated is about to change so profoundly, only a paradigm shift in approach will keep pace.

open.substack.com/pub/tombewic...

17.04.2025 14:32 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Will artificial intelligence steal your job? Economists can't agree on whether a fresh wave of machine automation and AI will result in mass technological unemployment or a new Utopia.

open.substack.com/pub/tombewic...

11.04.2025 17:18 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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What if the Trump tariffs are onto something? Child labour and sweatshop conditions have been a driver of globalisation for decades as Western consumers traded secure jobs for cheaper goods, but that era could be about to end

open.substack.com/pub/tombewic...

03.04.2025 14:35 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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FE braces for Austerity 2.0 after bleak spring statement Spring Statement spells doom for the FE sector however much it’s dressed up,

🔥 'The FE sector that runs the danger of being caught fiddling while Rome burns'
⬇️ Education consultant Tom Bewick reaction to the #springstatement

26.03.2025 17:39 — 👍 0    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0
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Education and skills is about to go through Austerity 2.0 With a £14 billion black hole opening up in Britain's public finances, the price of low-growth will be paid for by front-line educators and public service workers.

open.substack.com/pub/tombewic...

26.03.2025 18:22 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Putting the 'contributory principle' back into the welfare debate At a time of skyrocketing welfare expenditure due to 1 in 10 working age people signed off long-term sick, it's right to restore dignity back at the heart of work

open.substack.com/pub/tombewic...

21.03.2025 12:23 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Why is the Civil Service so unproductive? In a week when the Prime Minister has written to Whitehall departments to ask officials to work in a more agile way and adopt new technology, perhaps the real issue is about culture not skills.

open.substack.com/pub/tombewic...

13.03.2025 13:39 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Skills Policy in Britain and the Future of Work url:https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/skills-policy-in-britain-and-the-future-of-work

07.03.2025 15:33 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Groundhog day in Parliament as MPs fight over 'greater centralisation of skills' Bill More than five hours of debate in the House of Commons to decide which group of Whitehall bureaucrats will be placed in charge.

open.substack.com/pub/tombewic...

07.03.2025 11:03 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Transforming Global Higher Education Starts with Expanding Apprenticeship Degrees | FE News | Transforming Global Higher Education Starts with Expanding Apprenticeship Degrees

www.fenews.co.uk/exclusive/tr...

07.03.2025 10:34 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

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