On 9 July 2026, the government published Industrial Strategy Jobs Plans, setting out workforce and skills challenges across eight growth driving sectors and construction. The plans are intended to inform future education and skills policy, which is excellent news for the training ladder. It has spent years supporting progression and is now demanding a senior title, a personal development budget and someone to carry it between meetings.
The plans bring government, industry, trade unions, local partners and wider stakeholders into the same conversation. The conversation has been supplied with headings, a policy document and a solemn duty to continue until somebody can identify who is responsible for the next conversation.
The plans are also intended to inform the post 16 education and skills white paper and the pathways to priority occupations measure. In practical terms, the route from education to employment is being examined by people with access to binders. The training ladder is delighted. At last, its own career path has been recognised by a system that can turn a route into a framework, a framework into a measure and a measure into a meeting about implementation.
There is a serious purpose here. The plans identify workforce and skills challenges and aim to help employers engage with a more responsive skills system. They do not instantly train workers, fill vacancies or make every route into a priority occupation obvious. They offer a shared map, which is useful, even if several roads appear to lead to stakeholder engagement.
The comic danger is that coordination becomes an occupation in its own right. Soon it may require a qualification, an induction process and an apprentice coordinator to arrange the meeting where the steering group decides who owns the ladder. The ladder has already prepared its application for director of upward mobility, citing extensive experience of helping people rise while remaining firmly below them.
By the time the system is fully joined up, the training ladder expects to have completed its professional development, passed its review and been invited to chair the review of its own review. It has finally reached the top. Unfortunately, the top is another committee, and someone has asked it to take the minutes.
Source: GOV.UK.
