GUEST COLUMN:
Mark John
Co-Founder
Tramshed Tech
Wales does not lack ambition when it comes to skills. We have strong colleges, universities, training providers and regional partnerships, and we have sectors with the potential to create the next generation of good jobs.
The harder question is whether the system is connected enough to those opportunities – and whether it is inter-connected enough to harness the increasing range of new opportunities being thrown up by rapid change in our technology and industry sectors.
We still talk about skills as if the priority is simply to get more people through courses and qualifications. That is no longer enough. A young person can leave education with confidence, ambition and a qualification, and still find that the economy around them has no obvious place for the skills they have been encouraged to build.
That was what struck me most on a recent visit to Seattle with colleagues from the Welsh FE sector. Walking through Boeing’s main assembly plant in Everett, Washington State, the scale was extraordinary (30,000 employees pass through the facility on a daily basis); but the more powerful lesson was the clarity of the skills pipeline behind it. Major employers, local technical colleges and supply chain businesses were working directly together to identify the skills needed and build training around them. It was not a system producing qualifications and then just hoping that employers would find a use for them. It was starting with skills and employment demand (from industry and business – Demand-Pull), then shaping the skills delivery pipeline around it.
That is the shift Wales now needs to make.
At Tramshed Tech we work with startups, scale-ups, primes, corporates and employers across South Wales through our innovation hubs network. We run growth programmes, investment readiness programmes and skills and training initiatives, particularly in areas such as AI, data and cyber. We also work closely with a wide range of delivery partners across the wider ecosystem, including FE colleges, regional bodies and sector organisations. That gives us a very hands-on and practical view of where the economy is moving, the rate of that change – and where the skills gaps are beginning to appear.
The question I keep coming back to is not simply how many courses are being delivered – Supply-Push - but whether we are building the right pathways into the industries Wales is trying to grow.
I have seen this through my work on the Welsh regional growth boards of the Cardiff Capital Region (CCR) and South West Wales Corporate Joint Committee (SWW CJC), and through my many and varied conversations around how different regions can work together more effectively across Wales. Each of the four Welsh regions has its own economic conditions, strengths and priorities – each with its own regional growth deal and skills and training funding – but all of them are wrestling with the same issue: how do we connect growth plans, investment strategies and skills strategies into something more coherent and joined-up?
We need a combination of Supply and Demand.
On the Supply side, Welsh colleges and training providers clearly have timetables, structures and responsibilities. They cannot turn provision on and off overnight.
But we also need a much stronger Demand-pull from employers and growth sectors, so that the system is shaped by the jobs and opportunities we are trying to create. There are proven exemplars and precedents out there for this (for example, Seattle). In my sector – technology – that means AI, data and cyber security. More broadly, it means thinking hard about the skills pipeline into areas such as energy, compound semiconductors, creative industries, renewables and floating offshore wind. These are sectors where Wales has real capability and where future growth will depend on whether we can develop, attract and retain the right talent.
South West Wales is a good example of why this has to be joined up. The SWW region has been developing an investment strategy focused on future areas of growth. This has just been published and was launched successfully at UKREiiF in Leeds. SWW CJC has also secured Local Innovation Partnership Funding (LIPF) around net zero and decarbonisation, including opportunities linked to floating offshore wind, onshore wind and hydrogen. Beneath all of that sits a cross-cutting need for AI, digital and data training to up-skill the future workforces for these growth sectors.
But there is no point creating the investment story and then treating skills as something to be added later, a bolt-on. They need to be at the heart of a coherent growth strategy and skills delivery plan. The education of young people, the development of the workforce and the repurposing of existing skills have to run through the work from the start, like a stick of Barry Island rock.
The same point applies nationally: South West Wales, North Wales, Mid Wales and South East Wales – i.e. all four of our Welsh CJCs / Growth Deals – all have economic delivery plans and skills strategies. The question is how we tie those plans together, rather than allowing them to sit in separate silos. We need a stronger thread between local priorities and a wider national plan for talent development.
That is also where fairness comes in. The Cardiff Capital Region talks about fairer, stronger, greener growth, and that is the right ambition. Growth cannot simply be concentrated in the same places and among the same groups. We need to understand where young people are disengaging, where they are falling out of the system, and what practical interventions would keep them connected to opportunity.
The 14 to 16 age group is especially important. If we lose young people at that point, we often end up trying to reclaim them later. My experience of working in schools, including programmes around STEM and encouraging girls at primary and secondary level into computer science, showed me how early this work needs to begin.
Covid set a lot of that progress back, but AI now gives us a chance to re-engage young people in a different way. Many of them are already AI natives in a way that older generations are not.
Used well, AI can help create a more level playing field and give young people routes into sectors that might otherwise feel remote. But that will only happen if the pathways are visible, credible and connected to real employment.
When investors look at Wales, the questions are often very direct. What access is there to finance? What access is there to talent, skills and training? Those two forms of capital – financial and human – sit side by side. A business cannot grow without investment, but it also cannot grow without skilled people.
The new Welsh Government has an opportunity to bring greater urgency and alignment to this agenda. There will be debates about agencies, structures and national economic development, and those debates are important. But from an industry point of view, we cannot afford to pause while structures are reviewed. A very senior voice in one of the world’s leading technology companies, with trillions of dollars on its balance sheet, said at the recent Tech Alliance conference I attended in Seattle: “Because of AI, the world is going to change more in the next six months than it has in the past 10 years”.
So standing still – maintaining the status quo – is simply not an option. We need continuity, practical action and faster connection between the work already happening regionally and the wider ambition for Wales – we need a joined-up Strategic Skills and Talent Delivery Plan.
A Demand-pull system of the kind I’m advocating is not about allowing employers to dictate education. It is about working with Supply-side partners to make sure learners are being prepared for real opportunities, in real sectors, in the places where they live and work.
And to do it at pace, in a timely manner, before we are outstripped by other regions and territories competing for that same precious talent pool (our future).
Wales has all the ingredients: strong providers, committed regional bodies, ambitious sectors and young people with the ability to move quickly into the next economy. The task now is to connect them with far greater intent, to quickly move from policy to delivery, from intent to action.
