Make UK’s Industrial Strategy Skills Commission has published its blueprint to fix the apprenticeships and skills system.
This follows months of collaboration with industry, educators, learners and politicians.
Make UK’s Industrial Strategy Skills Commission Report 2025 proposes a series of immediate reforms needed fix the foundations of our apprenticeship system as well as a set of longer-term strategic objectives to build for the future and ensure we develop enough skills for the success necessary to support the industrial strategy and economic growth.
The organisation says that UK industry is plagued by sluggish growth, stagnant wages, and a widening productivity gap.
The economic and productivity crisis that the UK faces can only be solved if Britain has a highly skilled workforce, embedded in the latest technologies and equipped with the skills to use them effectively.
According to the report currently there are 55,000 unfilled long-term vacancies in the UK manufacturing sector, costing the economy £6bn in lost output each year.
The report goes on to add that there is a ‘perfect storm’ facing the manufacturing workforce: increased early retirement; an ageing workforce; and elevated occupational ill-health have hit the sector hard, alongside an alarming drop in the number of apprenticeship starts, down 42% since the Apprenticeship Levy was introduced seven years ago.
The result is that demand for skilled workers has increased at the very same time as the pipeline for workers, teachers, and talent, is diminishing.
The sector’s skills shortage is now a critical issue for many companies, not just affecting their growth, but their ability to maintain daily operations and to fulfill contracts with customers.
One of the recommendations is that the Government should expand the University Technical College model and preserve academy freedoms to offer more technical routes in pre-16 education.
This will help increase the whole manufacturing sector’s talent pipeline.
The Baker Dearing Educational Trust represents England’s 44 University Technical Colleges. Chief executive Kate Ambrosi said: “The report of the Make UK Industrial Strategy Skills Commission contains a number of well thought-out and sensible recommendations for meeting this country’s yawning skills gap.
“We are greatly pleased that the report recommends the government support our UTC Sleeve initiative. This would develop a technical education pathway within mainstream schools, broadening opportunities for young people to progress onto apprenticeships and careers in sectors much in need of young STEM talent.
“The initiative’s inclusion in the report demonstrates the sheer weight of employer support behind it. This is a solution to skills gaps and the lack of technical education in our schools that carries an industry seal of approval.”
The UTC Sleeve initiative has been developed by the Baker Dearing Educational Trust (“Baker Dearing”) in association with leading multi-academy trusts and University Technical Colleges (“UTCs”).
It will introduce specialist pathways, such as digital or engineering, within mainstream secondary schools. The approach draws on the experience and evidence to date, in particular the benefits to students, of the UTC programme.
Specialist pathways will allow young people to undertake a broader range of technical and creative qualifications, in addition to a core academic curriculum, at KS4, leading primarily to T Levels at KS5.
An employer and university representative ‘Board’ will be established to contribute to curriculum planning and delivery through, for example, employer-led projects.
Specialist equipment and teachers, and a Sleeve Lead, will also be needed to meet the requirements of local industry.
The UTC Sleeve is aimed at secondary schools wishing to add a relevant educational option for part of their student cohort, in addition to their existing curriculum.
In doing so, the UTC Sleeve will provide a vehicle for young people to re-engage in, and to be enthused about, their education, and to develop key employability skills which, in turn, should improve attendance, attainment, the quality of leaver destinations, and ultimately their life chances. Most funding for new UTC Sleeves will come from existing sources.
Ambrosi continues: “Through the report, the committee has also raised concerns about the Schools Bill’s proposal to compel all schools – including UTCs – to deliver the national curriculum.
“Having to deliver the national curriculum would dilute the specialist technical education of UTCs, each of which matches what it teaches students with the skills needed by local industry. This specialist curriculum provides students with the technical and employability skills they need to progress into sustainable careers. Last year, four times more UTC leavers progressed onto apprenticeships than the national average.”
Read the full Make UK Industrial Strategy Skills Commission Report 2025 here.