Richard Wallis: A Sustainable Future for Skills report offers a welcome vision for developing talent

It was easy to miss, but the recent publication of a new report entitled A Sustainable Future for Skills ought to be essential reading for anyone concerned about the industry’s future talent. TV has been notorious for its casualness about skills. Short-termism has characterised an approach to talent best encapsulated in the maxim “chew ‘em up and spit ‘em out”. Yet, there has been a growing realisation that a sustainable industry is wholly dependent upon a skilled workforce. This has been evident from the many skills shortages identified during the feast of work before (and immediately after) Covid, and equally obvious now in the face of famine.

Root-and-branch reform is urgently needed, and this concise report – a document of a mere 45-pages - is as close to a manifesto for the necessary change as I have read to date. At its heart is the recognition of the need for investment and a pan-sector strategic vision for the support of long-term careers. It is the fruit of some seven-month’s work by the Screen Sectors Skills Taskforce, a BFI initiative intended to stir industry action in response to its skills review published last year. Chaired by Georgia Brown, formerly of Amazon Studios, membership of the taskforce has included representatives of most of the UK’s main broadcasters, streamers, the union Bectu and trade body Pact (with its chief executive, John McVay, as Brown’s Vice Chair).

The report is not shy of ambition. It calls for action around three central ‘proposals’: to strengthen strategy and partnership across the industry; to build sustainable growth and careers; and to put work-based learning at the heart of all skills development. Each of these is fleshed out in a series of specific required actions. Collectively these actions cover a great deal of ground, from strengthening links with education to working towards governmental reform of the apprenticeship levy (unused levy payments currently equivalent to more than 1,000 new apprenticeships per year). Many of its ideas are not individually new, but this vision for a comprehensive strategy and industry-wide plan is not something we have seen for more than two decades.

Particularly welcome in this report is the extent to which the taskforce seems to have understood the need for far more work around long-term career support and development. There is an implicit recognition here of the industry’s serious retention problem, with valuable talent being lost by mid-career. The report notes that only 27% of investment is currently spent on mid to senior level development whereas nearly 70% is targeted at early and entry level - some 2.5 times as much, despite this having been identified as a necessary priority.

There is, of course, many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip. Despite the breadth of thinking that has clearly been done by the taskforce, depth is needed before the vision can become a reality. It is essential, for example, that reforms are as beneficial for freelancers as they are for staff – a consideration with implications still to be thought through. Much of this work, it seems, is to be undertaken by a ‘transformed’ ScreenSkills. This skills and training organisation is to have a new governance model to help it to reflect more effective partnership working and is expected to produce much of the detail for these changes by March 2024.

It would be easy to be cynical about a vision for reforms of this scale and significance. Past progress in this area has been piecemeal and frustratingly slow. Yet, it does seem as if the winds of change may finally be blowing. They are welcome indeed.

•  Richard Wallis is a researcher at Bournemouth University’s Centre for Excellence in Media Practice.