Education needs to connect more strongly with the needs of the economy, and employers must take a firm lead in skills development, if growth is to be sustained, Wales Commissioner for Employment and Skills, Scott Waddington told a gathering of senior business people at Caerleon.

He called on schools and other institutions to pay greater heed to the sectors where employment demand is growing and to steer young people towards the skills and industries that will offer them quality jobs in their respective regions of Wales.

“We have to start recognising much earlier what skills we are going to require in the future and young people themselves will need to aim for jobs and sectors that they might not have thought of previously. If that doesn’t happen we risk failure,” he told a meeting of the South Wales Chamber of Commerce held at the University of South Wales in Caerleon.

Mr Waddington, is Wales Commissioner on the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, the body which works with employers and government to put investment in skills at the heart of economic growth.

He pointed to the many planned infrastructure investments and sector initiatives which would generate new demand for high-level skills in different parts of Wales. This included, he said, the Swansea tidal Lagoon, the Wylfa nuclear power project in North Wales and advanced engineering clusters around the country. He highlighted in particular the fast-growing ICT sector around Newport.

Better targeted development of skills is, he said, part of the wider challenge to respond to the major changes occurring in the economy, which have seen a big decline in the number of traditional semi-skilled jobs but a steady rise in the number of higher-skilled jobs, particularly at Level 4 and above.

He argued that educationalists should set objectives which focused more on preparing young people for these opportunities and not simply judge themselves on the basis of exam results. “Some schools are very good at this but some are still very inward looking,” he said.

The Commissioner, who is also chief executive of the 2,000-worker brewing and hospitality business, SA Brain, added that employers themselves needed to take a lead in meeting the growing demand for more complex skills.

In the case of small and medium-sized employers this should, he said, involve more joint working to train and upskill existing and new workers. “The more we can create industrial partnerships of like-minded businesses and better collaboration on skills development within the supply chain, the more we will succeed.”