Golden goals

Writing this on the day that England qualified for the second stage of the World Cup, it struck me that the most appropriate way to report on the progress of the Sector Skills Council (SSC) would be to compare it to the competition.

World Cup 2002 has been in planning for more than eight years, the idea of SSCs for a mere 20 months. I have heard that "football is more important than life or death" but I suggest that satisfactory training provision to enable 5000 youngsters each year to "get a trade" is equally as important.

It has been known since the beginning how many teams would be in the final stages in Japan and South Korea, when the competition would start and on what day the final would be played. Even now we have no idea of the number of SSCs that the Government is going to license (any number between 20 and 30 – perhaps). We did get to know the start date for the process – February 2002 – and we had a pretty good idea of when it was likely to finish – late summer/early autumn 2002.

Having selected the squad, got on the aeroplane and played the first match, the competition authorities (an amalgam of the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) and the Sector Skills Development Agency (SSDA) have decided that this first match – the expression of interest submitted on 15 February – was actually a warm up. The team must now go back to the training camp to await the programme of future matches; find out how many teams there will be; when and where they will play; and when the final will be.

Five teams, the trailblazers, have already been selected without having played a match and have progressed to the next stage. The FIFA president has changed – John Healy the Government minister responsible for the whole process has been reshuffled – and the rules of the competition are so fluid that the game to be played might turn out to be rugby or cricket rather than football.

You may appreciate from this somewhat tortured analogy that all is not well in the "seamless development" of Sector Skills Councils.

In my last article ('Time to get moving', EMC, May 2002) I expressed some hope that with the Implementation Group being called to meet an SSDA adviser progress would accelerate, the process might get back on track to develop, set up and launch a SSC by the early autumn. I'm afraid to say that the chances of this seem to be receding faster than Bobby Charlton's hairline.

Even now we have no idea of the number of Sector Skill Councils that the Government is going to license

While meetings were held, it soon became clear that the purpose of these and the adviser's appointment was to review the work done to date. This work was believed by the Implementation Group to be the Expression of Interest in becoming an SSC. The review was to be carried out prior to a handover of the process by the DfES, who started it, to the SSDA, who are going to run with it in the future. This handover was in the form of a "readiness assessment" prepared by the adviser and presented to a panel of "knowledgeable" civil servants from the SSDA and DfES.

This presentation was carried out, although not in the presence of the Implementation Group, at the beginning of May. Feedback was promised within three weeks, in the form of a letter with full details of how the Sector's readiness was perceived. Following this written feedback the Implementation Group was to be given an opportunity to meet members of the panel for a more in-depth explanation of their findings, with indications of what more was to be done prior to the submission of a Letter of Expression of Interest.

The results of the readiness assessments were partially exposed by the press before those 33 or so hopeful SSCs received their letters let alone had their feedback meetings. This feat of journalistic endeavour led to great excitement, to say nothing of increasing BT's profit margin, with frantic calling between prospective SSCs trying to find out what anyone had heard – resulting in the finding that nobody had heard anything.

Eventually the letters were received – at the time of writing the feedback meeting has not been held although a date has been set.

Out of the 33 readiness assessments carried out, four were given green lights to proceed to the development stage; ten were given amber lights, which seems to mean that the advisory panel is generally happy with the progress being made by the prospective SSC but that there are some areas of concern to be addressed before progression to the development stage; and the balance were given red lights.

The prospective SSC for the electrotechnical, heating, ventilation, air conditioning, refrigeration, plumbing and gas fitting sector seems to have been given an amber light. "Seems" because the use of green, amber and red is a personal analogy rather than that used by the panel, meaning go back to the drawing board.