Coronavirus: Spending Review Focuses on Skill to Aid Recovery

Today, Chancellor Rishi Sunak outlined his spending review to tackle the "economic emergency" resulting from the pandemic.

Among the measures were commitments to raise wages, boost industry and local government, and bolster health services. Crucially, skills and education featured as a key point of investment. The announcements included:

• As part of three-year investment plan, £2.2bn extra for schools in 2021-22, with every pupil seeing a year-on-year increase of 2 percent
• £291m to pay for more young people to go into further education
• £1.5bn to rebuild colleges
• £375m to deliver the Lifetime Skills Guarantee and extend traineeships, sector-based work academies and improving apprenticeships for business
• £14.6bn for research and development
• UK Shared Prosperity Fund will at least match EU receipts to an average of £1.5bn – will provide funding for communities to pilot new approaches

The DMA and partner trade bodies are working with the UK Government to develop programmes of investment for training people in data-related jobs, and hope to take advantage of funding available going forward. Investment in data analytics roles are shown to offer positive returns, offering the opportunity to play a key role in coronavirus recovery.

More analysis on the Chancellor's announcements will follow when the full breakdown is published.