Employers must act quickly to close the training divide between graduate and unskilled workers if Britain is to compete successfully in the global economy, according to a new TUC report, Time to tackle the training divide.  The report which analyses the latest available official data for training take up in the UK shows that last year 41 per cent of graduate employees took part in work-based learning compared to just 12 per cent of their colleagues who left school without any qualifications.

Although a range of Government initiatives aimed at low and unskilled workers have helped narrow the training divide in recent years, the report says that over a third of UK employers do not offer their staff any training at work.

Time to tackle the training divide also looks at international research from the OECD, which suggests that those leaving school in the UK with no qualifications will receive around a fifth of the training offered to their graduate colleagues over their working lives. Low and unskilled workers will be involved in an average 103 hours of job-related training compared with around 480 hours for their graduate counterparts.

The OECD research compares the training offered by UK employers with the learning opportunities on offer to workers in OECD countries, where low-skilled workers receive an average of 210 hours training. In a league table looking at the training of unskilled workers, the UK comes 12th out of 18 OECD countries able to provide comparative statistics.

TUC General Secretary  Brendan Barber  urged employers to sign up to the Government's skills pledge which makes cash available so that they can run training courses for low-skilled employees. 

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