Skills and qualifications JSNA
A high proportion of people in Rochdale borough have few qualifications. In the latest Census figures from the Office of National Statistics 2021, it was estimated that 12.1 per cent of the working-age population in Rochdale had no qualifications (Office for National Statistics).
The importance of education to health
Education is an important mechanism for enhancing the health and well-being of individuals because it reduces the need for health care and the associated costs of dependence, lost earnings and human suffering. It also helps promote and sustain healthy lifestyles and positive choices, supporting and nurturing human development, human relationships and personal, family and community well-being.
Working to improve the skill bases of people in local and regional labour markets may help to attract more skilled employment to the area and contribute to improving the quality of work. This is particularly important in areas such as Rochdale and much of the North of England, where a skills deficit exists alongside greater health inequalities.
The impact of poor employment on health
There are 4 ways in which the nature of work can adversely affect health (PHE, 2015):
- Adverse physical conditions of work
- Adverse psychosocial conditions at work
- Poor pay or insufficient hours
- Insecurity of temporary work and the risk of redundancy or job loss
The most important determinant of an employee's work quality is their position in a company's hierarchy: jobs that are manual and routine are more likely than professional and managerial jobs to have health-adverse conditions, though this isn't universally the case.
Statistics on skills and qualifications
- Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) - Wider determinants of health profile - this profile features information on the wider or social determinants of health, including data on employment and the labour market.
- Nomis - Labour market statistics - the Office for National Statistics publishes labour market statistics through the Nomis website and the annual population survey contains data on the level of qualifications present in the local population.
- Nomis - Local authority profile - these profiles are available for Rochdale and include some of the data from the key datasets on population, employment, unemployment, qualifications, earnings, benefit claimants and businesses.
- Department For Education (DFE) - Statistical data collections - the DFE publishes a wide range of statistics on education and qualifications covering everything from higher education graduates, education and training and further education and skills: learner participation and qualifications collection.
Supporting information on skills and qualifications
- Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) - Supporting information on work and the labour market - this page in the wider determinants of health profile contains additional resources that offer complimentary details or functionality to inform decision making on the wider determinants of health.