Future skills requirements. Research to date shows that the lifelong learning workforce in the coming years will be increasingly dominated by professional occupations and, to a lesser extent by support/associate professionals. It is also anticipated that a growing proportion of this workforce will be employed part-time. The very high level of replacement demand for professionals reflects the age profile of the workforce. It is perhaps not surprising to learn that employers anticipated that demand for higher level skills (at NVQ levels 3, 4 and above) would increase, and that increasing the skills levels of the existing workforce was more important to them than increasing the size of the workforce within particular occupations. Higher-level skills are therefore a key priority for lifelong learning sector employers, but transferable and wider employability skills are also recognised to be important for a wide range of lifelong learning occupations in the future. Within this research it was not possible to consider in any depth the specific subject specialisms (and related skills needs) which will be required of the lifelong learning workforce at these different qualification levels. The ‘Impact Review’ of the SSAs developed by other SSCs will provide details of the demand for subject-related skills across the workforce as a whole, and allow the potential impact on the lifelong learning workforce’s skills needs to be more clearly ascertained. Lifelong learning employers across England identified the following overall priority future skills needs: • increasing demand for professionals, especially in FE, HE and WBL. • support/associate professionals was the category with second highest future demand predicted by most constituencies. The exception was HE which expected demand to be for managers of services • all constituencies in England predicted a high future demand for all skill types. The LAIS and WBL constituencies predicted the highest demands. XXXX identified transferable skills as likely to be most in demand. WBL predicted a greater need for professional/technical/practical skills • increasing demand for particular professional/technical/practical skills for professionals, such as teaching and supporting learning in FE and HE, records management and librarianship in LAIS, and occupational competence for WBL trainers and assessors. • increasing demand for transferable and wider employability skills, such as Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and customer service skills, ...
