Skills are in fashion, at least with the UK government.    The Ministry has been re-branded the “Department for Education and Skills”.    Major new initiatives, from the Learning and Skills Councils to Sector Skills Agencies, all have “skills” in their titles.

Yesterday’s favourite, training, as featured in the late 1990s in bodies like the Training Standards Council, or the National Training Organisations, has been quietly dropped.    Learning, an even earlier favourite, is hanging in there, but is clearly not sending out quite the right message by itself.

So why skills?    Partly for the same reason as training.    Both words need a context.    To say a person is skilled means nothing;  you have to add what it is they are skilled at doing: networking, nursing, netball or whatever.    Linking education to skills emphasises the role of education as the route to employability, rather than merely an end in itself;  a key governmental message in the new millenium.

And skill is an idea with strong, positive overtones.    A skill is the ability to perform some task or function.    It can be wholly practical, wholly intellectual, or something in between.    A politician can be a skilful as an interpreter or a craftsman.

But whatever the task, to do it well is to do it skilfully.    Skill implies something more than competence, if less than excellence.    And skill is a quality to which all can aspire, a quality within reach, though its acquisition may need effort.

So skill is “on message”, to use the current jargon.    But the match is not perfect.

For one thing, not all skills are socially desirable.    A burglar or a con man can be as skilful as a carpenter.

And whilst most skills can be acquired, or at least enhanced, through training, some can only build on a bedrock of natural talent.    You’ll never be a skilful musician if you are tone-deaf.

Stressing the need for skills can underline inherent differences, even reinforce social divisions.    Skill is not an essentially egalitarian concept.

And it may fall out of fashion as quickly as it came in.