If the UK is to compete, it needs a pipeline of talent entering the workforce These courses would be designed to help reduce the need for apprenticeships, graduate schemes and forms of employment training which are currently vastly oversubscribed or too arduous for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to provide. Secondly, there needs to be greater flexibility to enable university and school students of 16 years and above to leave education institutions before their official courses of study end, if they have found employment. This would rebalance the current structural problem of multiple school leavers and graduates flooding the jobs market at the same time in the summer each year, resulting in many of them spending a few months or potentially longer unemployed and applying for a limited number of available jobs. I propose that "early employment" should be encouraged, with schools and universities utilising the skills of employment specialists to work with students to find and place them in work approximately six months before the official end of their studies. This would stagger the number of graduates and school leavers entering the jobs market over a longer period of time. In addition, provision would be made for students to be able to complete their courses through remote learning. This would allow young people to develop the skills needed for the workplace without totally relinquishing the possibility of gaining academic qualifications. If the UK is to compete on a global stage it needs to have a pipeline of talent entering the workforce equipped to carry out the jobs that are available. It also needs to train school students and graduates to be more commercially aware so that they are better able to transition into the world of work from education and to forge the next generation of business and industry on which the UK's success will depend. The schemes outlined here are designed to begin an evolution of our education system so that it is more aligned with the needs of industry. They aim to improve the pathway from education into work by enhancing the overall business skills of the student population and enabling recruitment to work more intelligently. We cannot accept a system in which students are leaving years of education - with potentially large sums of personal debt and government funding behind them - to find that they are unqualified for the jobs advertised and vacant. Sir Alec Reed is the founder of Reed Global recruitment group and sponsor of the Reed-HJI £10,000 essay prize on youth unemployment