Watford's Highly Skilled Workforce

Highly Skilled Workforce

Watford is the centre of a sub-region serving around 500,000 people, living within a 20 minute travelling time catchment. Watford’s location, being part of the London commuter belt, coupled with great transport connections ensures that there is a highly skilled workforce ready and waiting for companies who choose to base themselves in the town.

With rail connections to London Euston in 19 minutes and Clapham Junction in 39 minutes, this also encompasses the majority of greater London with Watford’s wider skills base, ensuring that employers from all sectors have access to an extensive range of employees with great sustainable commuting opportunities.

In terms of educational attainment, in the academic year 2007/2008, 75.3% of pupils in Watford achieved 5 or more GCSE’s graded A* to C, compared to the England average of 65.3%.

In addition to the success of Watford’s schools, the town has a thriving college, West Herts College, with an ambitious future agenda and soon to be completed campus development.

Local businesses can also take advantage of the University of Hertfordshire, which is one of the fastest growing universities in the UK. The university has state-of-the-art facilities, strong links with both business and the public sector and a world class knowledge base. It has 22,000 students on more than 400 courses, from first degree to post-doctoral level. There’s a huge variety of subjects on offer, from engineering and information sciences to law, arts and media.

Fig. Qualifications of working age population in Watford, Herts, East of England, and nationally.

NB: Definitions of qualification levels:

NVQ4 and above: e.g. HND, Degree and Higher Degree level qualifications
NVQ3 and above: e.g. 2 or more A levels, advanced GNVQ, NVQ3
NVQ2 and above: e.g. 5 or more GCSEs at grades A-C, intermediate GNVQ, NVQ2
NVQ1 and above: e.g. fewer than 5 GCSEs at grades A-C, foundation GNVQ, NVQ1
Other Qualifications: includes foreign qualifications and some professional qualifications
No qualifications: no formal qualifications held

The graph shows that Watford has a skilled working population. The number of people of working age in Watford holding NVQ4 or above (26%) is in line with the regional average. Similar data was compiled from the 2001 census results and it was apparent that the 23.07% of people (aged 16-74) with a higher education qualification (NVQ4 and above) in Watford was significantly higher than the national average of 19.90%. This also shows that Watford has a high proportion of highly qualified people which has substantially increased over the last seven years.

While the number of people in Watford with higher education qualifications has fallen compared with Hertfordshire and Great Britain as a whole, Watford has a significantly higher proportion of people with ‘other qualifications’ including qualifications from outside the UK and some professional qualifications. This demonstrates the diversity amongst Watford business community and the diverse range of skills and qualifications available in the area.

There are also strong partnerships in place between the local business and education community, to ensure that training and education programmes are tailored to meet the future skills need.