Turbulent Times: Skills for a Global World

In an increasingly turbulent and uncertain global world, it is vital that as a society we work together to maximise opportunities and mitigate threats. This report examines some of these emerging threats and opportunities from a skills perspective, looks at the role those stakeholder groups play and how we should all come together to prepare our young people for these fast changing times. Preparing today's young people to live and work within this global system is a major challenge confronting education and training systems. Of no less importance is ensuring that businesses and employers are aware of global factors affecting their sectors, and playing an active role in helping to ensure the young people who will eventually come to them as recruits are appropriately skilled and ready to work both domestically and within an international labour market. "Think Global" and Oxford Cambridge (OCR) and RSA (Royal Society of Arts) have worked together to examine the views of current UK employers on a series of questions related to how well we are coping, and are likely to cope in the future, with the unpredictable demands of a global world. Our key findings from this survey-based research fall into three main categories: (1) The Skills Gap Persists; (2) More needs to be done to prepare for future skills requirements in a global world; and (3) Employers themselves are out of touch. These findings point to the need for a concerted, coordinated push involving not only Government, but also from trainers and employers themselves, in finding a way better to prepare our young people from the reality of work and life in turbulent, global times. Recommendations are included: For Employers; For the Skills System; and For Government.