Improve figures reveal that many workers' skills are only basic as job demands rise

Over a quarter of all employees in the food and drink industry can only read and write to the level of a 10-year-old, revealed the sector skills council Improve.

According to Improve's lastest figures, for 2004/2005, 28% (78,000) of workers only possessed these 'basic skills' and had no formal qualifications. A further 133,000 only had level 1 qualifications, the equivalent to one or more GCSEs.

The survey was part of Improve's two-year project to create a Sector Skills Agreement mapping out the skills employers needed in workers and how they will be supplied, which should be complete by next March.

The research also showed that, jobs were moving towards level 4 qualifications as production lines become more complex and demanding. "Yet over 50% of employees have below level 2 skills," said Improve's commercial director Paula Widdowson. "What does that mean for the people at level 1? We need to make sure they are moved through."

The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has just claimed that one in three employers had to send staff for remedial training in basic English and maths.

It said about a fifth of employers often found that non-graduate recruits of all ages had literacy or numeracy problems, yet a third expected the skills required to increase. Firms were not only having to pay for remedial training, but also suffered low productivity, said the CBI.

Like Improve, the CBI warned that the future was bleak for those with only basic skills. It referred to Lord Leitch's interim UK skills report, which claimed the opportunities for unskilled workers would shrivel from 3.4M today to 600,000 by 2020.

Improve's chief executive Jack Matthews said: "There must be no slacking in any quarter in addressing this issue." The focus would remain on levels 3 and 4, he said: "But we must have the foundation of basic skills in order to deliver these higher skills, which will raise productivity."

Improve was developing a basic skills strategy as part of the Sector Skills Agreement, he added: "We will make sure employers have access to basic skills programmes and that those programmes deliver. A qualification is merely a form of recognition of competence - we are looking for the competence itself."