The hands that failed to move mountains

Officially, ministers are encouraged by public response to the government's £32m advertising campaign for boosting skills. Those painted hands mimicking tulips, mountains and sperm are certainly eye-catching. The fact is, however, that barely 9,000 people have taken up the invitation at the end of the ad to call the national helpline. This does not bode well for Train to Gain (T2G), the government's new flagship programme whose aim is to transform employers' attitudes to improving skills in their workforces. The ad campaign is aimed at employers as much as at individual citizens. "Culture change takes time," says Chris Banks, chair of the Learning and Skills Council, which commissioned the campaign. "And the great thing is that actually, in terms of short-term response, we've got just shy of 80,000 individual people already who have used the website to find out more. It's a much more interesting number to us than the 9,000." The fact that the government feels it must try to persuade people to better themselves by learning indicates a need to alter attitudes. The Leitch review on the nation's skills thudded out the message that the country would have to undergo a fundamental shift in attitudes to learning in order to achieve a national level that is world class.

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