industry focus
Planned launch of National Skills Academy
Senior executives in the security industry are looking for investors to help establish a National Skills Academy to ‘upskill’ the industry.
The Security Skills Board, a committee of senior security industry leaders, brought together over 60 industry professionals at The Shard in London to present the next steps in their mission to support skills development and ambitions for security to be a profession of choice.
The Board includes Chair Jason Towse, managing director of Mitie and Deputy Chair Adrian White of Carlisle Support Services. They shared proposals to launch a Security National Skills Academy and as part of this, develop a Security Skills Passport which received overwhelming support from industry leaders.
Leading security academic Professor Martin Gill presented the findings of the inaugural National Security Skills Survey, which focused on the skills needs of security operatives employed by SMEs (up to 500 employees) to inform the development of services for the Academy.
The results concluded that 66 per cent of those surveyed felt that obtaining funding to pay for training courses was a significant barrier to the career development of security operatives.
Additionally, 44 per cent of those surveyed cited the lack of accessibility to existing training courses as a barrier, underpinning the need for a National Skills Academy to support security operative development in the private sector encompassing skills and knowledge, career development and management training.
An initial phase of development of the Academy has been supported by funding from the Skills Board, early investors and the Security Industry Authority (SIA).
As National Skills Academies have traditionally been funded via Government and employer-matched funding, the Skills Board also highlighted a need for employers to aid the creation of the academy calling on industry leaders to offer financial and pastoral support.
Bob Betts, Board sponsor for the proposed Academy Accreditation Scheme and Lisa Baskott held a Q&A exploring ideas of how this will set a standard for training management, product development and delivery.
Both training providers and trainers can be assessed and endorsed by the scheme to aspirational standards and ensure all Academy training products are capability-based and aligned to profession map capabilities.
Jason Towse, Chair of the Security Skills Board said: “I’ve been part of the security sector for over 30 years and this was the largest gathering of industry leaders that I can remember."
“I was overwhelmed by the spirit of collaboration and shared purpose in the room and have been amazed by the overwhelming offers of support from the industry including from previous members of the Board and the SIA.”
“The National Skills Academy will be central to ensuring our sector offers access to meaningful and practical development opportunities and we welcome the sector coming together to support it, whether it’s through investing in the Academy, mentoring, signing the Skills Pledge or just simply continuing dialogue with the Skills Boards about skills. We’re excited to work together to make security a career of choice.”
