Scrapping training for older workers will betray the Just Transition

The UK Government has announced massive cuts to the scope and scale of worker training in England, in a move that will reduce opportunities for older workers and will likely have similar effects north of the border after impacts on the devolved Scottish budget feed through.

The UK Department of Education has announced that public funding for advanced apprenticeship courses - specifically Level 7 courses equivalent to a University Masters degree - will be limited to workers aged under 22. Employers who wish to train older workers will have to bear the full cost of the training. It is expected that only a few advanced apprenticeships will remain viable in sectors like (perhaps no surprise) legal and financial services.

The UK Government says that this is part of a “rebalancing” of the apprenticeship sector to focus on younger workers where the training will have “the greatest impact” (code for “will work for longer after the training”) but this ignores the fact that many sectors of the workforce are changing rapidly for good reasons (such as climate change and the transitions required to mitigate and adapt to it) or for bad reasons (like the current bubble around AI that threatens thousands of jobs even though it is yet to offer any substantial value for its efforts).

Telling older workers (Whether they are 53 or 23) like steel workers in Scunthorpe that they are too old to be retrained if their sector is allowed to collapse is a complete betrayal of those workers and should be against everything that a Labour government stands for. It is the very opposite of the principles of a “Just Transition” that will allow workers who face losing their job due to essential climate change responses will be able to move into an equivalent or better job instead of being cast on the spoil heap like coal and oil workers were before them.

It is, however, precisely the kind of plan that is rolled out when private companies design the training regimes that suit themselves. This pullback of training for older workers echoes the plan we reported on in 2023 when SPEN (a subsidiary of Spanish-owed energy company Scottish Power) announced their “Just Transition” plan that entirely omitted training for their current workforce.

These cuts to education only directly affect England due to devolution but they will have impacts in the other nations of the UK as the withdrawal of up to £240 million in education funding will have Barnett Consequentials that will reduce the Block Grants to the devolved nations and will put the Scottish Government under pressure to make matching cuts here (as they did with the Winter Fuel Allowance before pledging to pull money from other budgets to bring it back).

Workers should be at the heart of developing policies that affect the workforce. When they are, they show how sectors can adapt to the changes that need to be made in a way that isn’t only “Just” for them, but creates a better world for All of Us.

For more on the role workers have in the Green New Deal, see our Common Home Plan here.