British businesses are boosting the number of employees receiving formal on-the-job and off-the-job training in a bid to close the skills gap with rival international companies, according to a Government-commissioned report published this month.

But universities are not capitalising on the expanding market for training services.

New figures, based on a survey of over 2,000 companies with ten or more employees, show that 16.6 million employees received formal training in 1993, a 37.1 per cent increase over 1987.

Some 8.5 million received on-the-job training, 2.6 million more than in 1987.

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The remainder, 8.1 million, followed external training courses, a rise of 1.9 million on previous figures.

Although the number of employees receiving on-the-job and off-the-job training is evenly divided, much more money is spent on sending staff on external training programmes.

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Out of the Pounds 10.6 billion companies spent in 1993, Pounds 8 billion was allocated for training courses, with just Pounds 2.6 billion paying for supervised on-the-job training.

But the report, Employer Provided Training in the UK 1993 by IFF research, suggests that ÖйúAƬ institutions lag behind private training organisations and further education colleges as external course providers.

Overall, 23.4 million working days are given over to external courses. Of these, private training providers account for 30 per cent, FE colleges for 29 per cent, and universities for just 22 per cent.

The survey suggests that FE colleges not only command the traditional apprenticeship market but also beat the universities in the race to provide other types of training.

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Universities can expect increased competition in the external training market in the future.

Small and medium-sized businesses, which are expected to provide most of the newly created jobs in the future, at last show signs of responding to Government demands for an increased commitment to training.

Although barely a fifth of companies with between 10 and 24 employees boast a training budget, such small companies come second in the league table of training investors by spending just over Pounds 2 billion in 1993, just behind companies with 500 or more employees.

Most of this investment, some Pounds 1.3 billion, paid for external training courses.

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