BRITISH businesses have to start working closely with educational institutions if the country’s skill levels are not to plummet further behind other nations, a leading industrialist has warned.

Miles Templeman, directorgeneral of the Institute of Directors, announced that according to the international Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Britain was now 17th in the world skills table and likely to fall to 23rd by 2020.

Delivering the main speech at Teesside University Business School’s annual conference yesterday, Mr Templeman said he had received a Government report on Wednesday suggesting Britain should aim for eighth. He said: “In 100 pages, there was not one word about how we are going to get to eighth.”

Mr Templeman said it was vitally important that business, education and Government work together to improve the situation.

He said British business had a responsibility to become involved in shaping what was taught in schools, giving guidance to provide students with a greater sense of what they needed to know to succeed and to train and develop their own staff.

He said: “Business has a responsibility to try to help, we have to get in there and transform these subjects.”

He believes the Government’s new diplomas – which combines work-based training with classroom study for 14 to 19-year-olds – were good for “those children who don’t really get involved in education, which is one of the UK’s biggest problems”.

But Mr Templeman added: “Business people need to get involved with that if it is going to work.”

He also said that schools, colleges and universities had to help businesses get involved.

Mr Templeman said: “It is about having an open and accessable approach, it is about universities welcoming the business community in.”

Mr Templeman said learning and “second stage” education should become a lifelong practice rather than something that ended when a student left university.

Mr Templeman said: “All of our children will have several different jobs. People are going to have to be continually retraining.

“Our successors will have to be learners all through their lives.

“Universities really have to be part of that process, the idea that you go to university at 18 then you are in the world of work is gone.

“People should be in and out of universites throughout their lives.”