Britain's "skills shortage" is a myth.
When employers moan in the press that there aren't enough skilled workers to hire for their company, what they really mean is "we don't want to invest in training and there aren't enough people with the *exact skill set* we need to throw them into our business with no training or development whatsoever".
There is no shortage of skilled, educated, bright people in Britain. There is a shortage of bosses who will invest in staff development.
@iona "Businesses should teach job skills" is one opinion. "Educators should teach job skills" is another. Between these opinions is an unfilled "that's not my job" gap that no one's keen on filling because it's expensive and time consuming to do so.
@thor @iona that would still count as working "in the IT" I am afraid :):) you can check out any time you like but you can never leave! In Germany you could start a training company and get probably a pretty good contract from the Bundesagentur für Arbeit (probably similar to your welfare but much more mighty;)
@thor @iona it looks like it is the people themselves should pay for this and fill the gap. Sad but seems to be a logical consequence of the above.
That also prevents a case where people do not want to learn. I've seen too many cases of this :(