Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Thirtieth Report - Developing workforce skills for a strong economy
Public Accounts Committee
HC 685
Published 14 December 2022
Recommendations
2
Rejected
DfE has not made clear what level of performance would constitute success for its skills...
Recommendation
DfE has not made clear what level of performance would constitute success for its skills programmes. DfE ultimately relies on measuring learners’ subsequent earnings as a proxy for the value of government-funded skills training and the extent to which that …
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Government Response Summary
The government disagrees with the Committee’s recommendation that DfE should set out what level of improvement in the FE Skills Index it is aiming to achieve and by when.
HM Treasury
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Conclusions (2)
11
Conclusion
Rejected
DfE emphasised the importance of the FE Skills Index as its key measure of the impact of the FE system on productivity. The Index works by estimating the ‘value added’ for all adult learners and apprentices in England who have successfully completed their training during the year. DfE calculates the …
Government Response Summary
The department advises against using the FE Skills Index as a sole indicator to measure performance and believes that stipulating an arbitrary target level of improvement for this index would not be a valuable measure of performance and could create issues about achievability.
13
Conclusion
Rejected
We asked DfE, given the data available to it, whether it planned to adopt a system- level metric to determine the success of its skills programmes, and what might this look like or when it could be expected. DfE asserted that having a single metric would not tell it everything …
Government Response Summary
The government disagrees with the recommendation to adopt a system-level metric to determine the success of its skills programs, arguing that a single metric would not provide a complete picture.