{"id":533259,"date":"2025-11-25T12:45:24","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T12:45:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.constructionnews.co.uk\/?p=533259"},"modified":"2025-11-25T11:06:02","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T11:06:02","slug":"thinktank-calls-for-overhaul-of-construction-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.constructionnews.co.uk\/government\/thinktank-calls-for-overhaul-of-construction-education-25-11-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"Thinktank calls for overhaul of construction education"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Children aged 16 or even younger should have access to work experience on building sites, while trainee construction teachers should be paid tens of thousands of pounds to focus on construction.<\/p>\n<p>Those are two of 26 recommendations made in a report published this month by thinktank the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ).<\/p>\n<p>Its <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/CSJ-Skills_to_Build.pdf\">Skills to Build<\/a><\/em> study noted that an extra 161,000 workers are needed to deliver the 1.5 million homes targeted by ministers in this parliament.<\/p>\n<p>It added that the average age of UK construction workers was on course to be 46 by 2050, with the number of people aged 16 to 24 working in the sector two-fifths lower than in 2008.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere are over half a million fewer construction workers today than at the time of the global financial crisis, and over a quarter of a million fewer than before the Covid-19 pandemic and Brexit,\u201d the report says.<\/p>\n<p>Its wide-ranging recommendations call for the Department for Education to test a regional construction work experience scheme for pupils in key stage 4 (KS4), generally those aged 14 to 16 and working towards GCSEs or alternatives.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe pilot should provide a minimum of two weeks supervised, educational work experience on live construction sites, giving young people a clear line of sight into construction careers,<span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">\u201d<\/span> it urges.<\/p>\n<p>Elsewhere the study suggests paying incentives to encourage people to become <a href=\"https:\/\/www.constructionnews.co.uk\/sustainability\/urgent-upskilling-needed-to-hit-housing-and-environmental-targets-17-11-2025\/\">further education<\/a> construction teachers, in line with bursaries for subjects such as computing, maths and science.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA bursary of up to \u00a331,000 for construction trainee teachers would bring parity with other shortage subjects,<span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">\u201d<\/span> it says.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCapping bursaries at around 350 trainees, broadly equivalent to current unfilled posts, would cost around \u00a310.9m per year.<span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Other recommendations include strengthening a crackdown on bogus self-employment and misuse of the Construction Industry Scheme (CIS).<\/p>\n<p>The report also calls for a requirement for UK employers to advertise vacancies domestically before offering jobs to work visa applicants.<\/p>\n<p>It urges the creation of a credit scheme to incentivise employers to recruit and upskill people aged 16 to 24 and not in education, employment or training.<\/p>\n<p>The study says an optional technical GCSE pathway should be introduced for pupils in KS4.<\/p>\n<p>A recruitment campaign should be launched to attract <a href=\"https:\/\/www.constructionnews.co.uk\/skills\/colleges-struggle-to-meet-demand-for-construction-training-14-11-2025\/\">career changers to teach construction<\/a>, it adds.<\/p>\n<p>Jonathan Hinder, Labour MP for Pendle and Clitheroe, said in the foreword to the report: \u201cBritain\u2019s prosperity depends on its construction workforce, yet we lack workers by the thousands. This report shows the scale of the problem.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe government wants to &#8216;build, baby, build&#8217;. To do so we need workers, workers, workers and this report shows how we can get them. I urge the government to consider the CSJ\u2019s recommendations and release the potential of Britain\u2019s builders.<span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">Rico Wojtulewicz, head of policy and market insight at the National Federation of Builders, said: \u201cThe CSJ has broken the <\/span><span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">mould when discussing the construction skills crisis. Instead of focusing purely on access to learning, i<\/span><span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">t has understood that learners need teachers with strong industry experience to develop their skills, <\/span><span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">employers to take them on and an industry which has a pipeline of work to sustain career progression.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">\u201cEight in 10 construction apprentices <\/span><span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">are trained by SMEs, despite those firms struggling with work pipelines and project certainty for almost <\/span><span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">two decades. This is the main reason why the construction skills crisis continues to worsen.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">\u201cThe right way to fix the skills crisis is, therefore, to unblock work pipelines for SMEs.<\/span><span dir=\"ltr\" role=\"presentation\">\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Children aged 16 or even younger should have access to work experience on building sites, while trainee construction teachers should be paid tens of thousands of pounds to focus on construction. Those are two of 26 recommendations made in a report published this month by thinktank the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ). Its Skills to &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":87938,"featured_media":475194,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[565,575],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-533259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","category-skills"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.7 (Yoast SEO v26.7) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Thinktank calls for overhaul of construction education | Construction News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Children aged 16 or even younger should have access to work experience on building sites, while trainee construction teachers should be paid tens of\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link 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