A massive skills push to fulfil a government promise of "British jobs for British workers" has been launched by the government.
The plan to upgrade the skills of England's workforce includes 3.5m basic literacy and numeracy courses.
More than seven million training places will be available from 2008, but this includes millions already running.
Overall skill levels must improve regardless of the influx of migrants, Skills Secretary John Denham said.
But critics say the creation of such basic training classes points to a failure of the education system.
Under the plan, which will be rolled out in England during the next three years, there will also be 120,000 new apprenticeships for the under-25s and 30,000 places for older workers.
There will also be an extra 95,000 places for people who do not have five good GCSEs, to enable them to get those or equivalent vocational qualifications.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown made the job promise in high-profile speeches to both the Labour party conference and the TUC conference in September.
It is estimated that nearly a third of people of traditional working age in the UK are poorly qualified and almost seven million have problems with numeracy or literacy.
In an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Denham said the government recognised that something had to be done to raise the employability of unskilled British workers.
"There is a real problem that we haven't yet managed to tackle," Mr Denham said, referring to the growing problem of young people who are not in education, employment or training.
source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7097125.stm
The plan to upgrade the skills of England's workforce includes 3.5m basic literacy and numeracy courses.
More than seven million training places will be available from 2008, but this includes millions already running.
Overall skill levels must improve regardless of the influx of migrants, Skills Secretary John Denham said.
But critics say the creation of such basic training classes points to a failure of the education system.
Under the plan, which will be rolled out in England during the next three years, there will also be 120,000 new apprenticeships for the under-25s and 30,000 places for older workers.
There will also be an extra 95,000 places for people who do not have five good GCSEs, to enable them to get those or equivalent vocational qualifications.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown made the job promise in high-profile speeches to both the Labour party conference and the TUC conference in September.
It is estimated that nearly a third of people of traditional working age in the UK are poorly qualified and almost seven million have problems with numeracy or literacy.
In an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Denham said the government recognised that something had to be done to raise the employability of unskilled British workers.
"There is a real problem that we haven't yet managed to tackle," Mr Denham said, referring to the growing problem of young people who are not in education, employment or training.
source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7097125.stm
