Paul Noblet from Centrepoint, which recently carried out research into how traineeships are being implemented, argues that it is a good thing that traineeships aren’t just geared at helping to boost apprenticeship starts.

The government’s ambitious plans for creating three million apprenticeships must not lead training providers into the trap of chasing outputs rather than responding to the ambitions and needs of the young people we want to support into training and employment.

FE Week reported recently that only 22 per cent of traineeships led to an apprenticeship.

This is OK. In fact, because they provide an opportunity for intensive, tailored support that is funded by the government, they may be the best way of providing young people furthest from the job market the soft skills and routine they need to find employment.

Our research shows that only one in five homeless young people are interested in pursuing an apprenticeship.

Access to apprenticeships is important, but satisfying an arbitrary number should not be our sole motivator.

Through almost 50 years of working with homeless young people, we know a key part of escaping homelessness is the ability to find a meaningful job that provides a sufficient income to leave it behind.

That is why Centrepoint has begun to provide traineeship programmes, working with young people we already accommodate to bring them closer to work.

We shouldn’t assume that all young people on traineeships necessarily want to go on to do an apprenticeship.

Our research shows that only one in five homeless young people are interested in pursuing an apprenticeship.

Perhaps this is because they have endured chaotic childhoods, so are often keen to get into work quickly, in an effort to become independent and enjoy the stability with their housing and income they lacked growing up.

A low-wage apprenticeship is unlikely to be able to provide that. Often it is only at the point of reaching some stability that young people will again consider FE.

The advent of the new Youth Obligation could push young people into traineeships.

Our concern is that if traineeships morph into pre-apprenticeship programmes we will effectively be pushing young people towards apprenticeships, when they may prefer to start work immediately.

The situation is further complicated by the low level of the apprenticeship minimum wage, which as a sole source of income could well cause young people to fall behind on their rent.

With the government focusing a great deal of its resources on apprentices in more glamorous, high-skill sectors, rather than engaging with companies who are able to offer a lower entry point accessible to disadvantaged young people, there is a real danger that vocational education itself will become a two-tiered pathway.

Research by Centrepoint and the Institute for Employment Studies bears this out.

Just four per cent of companies we spoke to said they target traineeships at the group, disadvantaged young people, they are designed to help. And, given their lack of promotion, who can blame them?

Traineeships should form the foundations of the government’s ambition of helping young people into work.

But that foundation needs to be much more accessible for those who are furthest from work.

Traineeships have an intrinsic value for young people, particularly those furthest from the job market, and they have clear benefits for companies too.

The job market has been especially competitive for young people since the financial crash of 2008. Most of the vulnerable young people we work with need little incentive to start work; they crave the independence it could bring.

What they need more than their peers is the type of intensive support that a traineeship can provide.

But we can’t rely on the enthusiasm of young people alone.

The government needs to actively promote traineeships to disadvantaged people to show them how it can help them get into work.

The sector is in danger of missing the real point of traineeships, if we keep chasing arbitrary outputs that ignore young people’s real aspirations.

We should be relaxed that only 22 per cent of trainees go on to an apprenticeship. What really matters is not the current focus on traineeships as pre-apprenticeship programmes, but on supporting young people into work.

Wirral Metropolitan College is the only college to have had its traineeships rated in a headline field under the new Ofsted common inspection framework, and received a “good”. Its director for traineeships, Di Fitch, explains what makes a good traineeship programme

Wirral Metropolitan College was keen to take up the opportunity to provide traineeships when they were introduced. Employers immediately understood the need for a programme that focused on the basics of employability. And although there has been a sense of uncertainty in the sector about the purpose of traineeships, we very much consider them a pre-employment programme.

We consider traineeships a pre-employment programme

Ofsted’s five-day visit was tough and rigorous. They focused on destination data for traineeships and were also quite rightly concerned about English and maths, but with only 13 weeks to bring students up to the required level, this is a much greater challenge. The inspectors also talked to students, phoned employers, and visited our training subcontractor.

We were pleased to be rated as good, as we have worked hard to build a successful traineeship programme, based on three key pillars:

1. Ask employers what they need

Firstly, it is employer-led. We have always designed our traineeships around what employers need – first finding employers with vacancies, then designing a suitable programme – not the other way round.

The employers we work with are an integral part of our training programme. They participate in the initial interview to select candidates. They then interview the trainees again, just before they go out on placement after four weeks, which is a great opportunity for us to show the employers how much they’ve grown. Their tutors will also visit them on placement, to maintain consistency. Then the employer will often come back to talk to the group in the final week, when we’re exploring students’ next steps.

2. Set clear expectations

Secondly, we hold our students to very high standards. From day one, we tell them what is expected of them, which includes maintaining a good punctuality and attendance record that will be shown to their potential employer. Students on our traineeship programmes have a 60 per cent chance of being offered either a job or an apprenticeship at the end – which means that they have a strong incentive to prove themselves. But it works both ways – if we didn’t set such high expectations from the start, I don’t think we’d have such great outcomes.

3. Tailor the course

Thirdly, we offer tailored provision wherever possible. For our larger employers, such as the local teaching hospital, or large hotels, we run entire cohorts just for them. This allows us to prepare students for the specific environment they will face, and integrate the company ethos and values into our initial employability training. We can also invite the employer to offer sessions during the initial four weeks of induction.

Over 30 per cent of our trainees go on to apprenticeships, compared with the national average of nine per cent

These three elements have allowed us to build a programme that delivers excellent results for students and employees. Over 30 per cent of our trainees go on to apprenticeships, compared with the national average of nine per cent. Around 80 per cent end up in positive destinations, meaning jobs, apprenticeships, or FE.

But despite all this, the biggest problem for traineeships is awareness-raising. Employers may be calling out for trainees, but young people and parents are rarely aware of the scheme. Traineeships have received nothing like the promotion apprenticeships have, and consequently lack the same high profile.

We suggested to the Department for Education that a “Have you ever done a traineeship?” button be added to the National Apprenticeship Service website, so that young people who may not be quite ready to go directly onto an apprenticeship have the opportunity to fast-track their skills to get them ready. We would welcome anything that helps parents and young people understand traineeships, and share the enthusiasm of our employers.

First published in the OCR traineeships supplement.

Traineeships are useful, but pre-apprenticeships could be a better fit suggests Catherine Sezen.

The benefit of a traineeship is that it gives an opportunity for the young person and their employer to gain experience of each other through a short-term agreement rather than a permanent job. The student gains work skills and the employer has a chance to judge the trainee’s potential.

At the end of the placement the employer should offer the young person an interview and feedback, regardless of whether or not there is a suitable vacancy. This may lead to a job, but at the very least provides the young person with an employer reference.

What a traineeship doesn’t include, however, is any flexibility to extend. It is a maximum six-month course and the student, college and employer must stick to that. However those of us who work in education know that some young people learn faster than others. For some six months will be more than enough, but others may need longer.

The Association of Colleges (AoC) has always said that while traineeships are a good package, what is needed is a pre-apprenticeship programme tailored to meet individual needs. Traineeships, as they stand, need to meet the needs of a wide range of young people; those who are work-ready and those who would like to get into work but need to develop their employability skills.

We need a more flexible style of programme with a wider range of options.

Students enrolling on a traineeship could be at any level – some will have qualifications at level 2 or 3 – the equivalent of GCSE or A-level – and simply require help to find an apprenticeship to suit their employment aspirations; some may have level 1 skills and may need more preparation time to develop their written English, maths, communication skills and teamwork.

What we need is a more flexible style of programme with a wider range of options – where colleges can decide on the length and content of the course to suit the trainee and the employer.

The government wants to create three million new apprenticeships by 2020 but it must remember that not all young people are ready for a job plus training. It needs to create a solid training scheme to support a variety of young people into work.

If colleges are to deliver two thirds of apprenticeships – as it was suggested by the former skills minister Nick Boles that they should – then the government needs to create the right entry routes into employment.

Three years in, it’s a critical time for traineeships. Mark Dawe argues that we need to leave them be to let them flourish.

Traineeships last an average of between 12 and 16 weeks, according to feedback from providers. This enables quicker progression into an apprenticeship or work, and the young people themselves say that they feel more valued as they are not working so long “for free”.

The average duration relates to a discussion which the AELP has been having with Ofsted and the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) over the provision of remedial English and maths within a traineeship.

The experience of an increasing number of AELP members is that despite achieving outstanding outcomes in jobs, apprenticeships and substantive FE, they are finding themselves threatened by the SFA with contract termination.

This is due to statistics based solely on qualification outcomes. They are often given required to improve grades by Ofsted based solely on their trainees’ English and maths results, as the regulator is not willing to accept destination data as robust evidence.

This is causing many providers start to scale down or withdraw from involvement in traineeship delivery, when the apprenticeship reforms and wider skills programme desperately need them to stay engaged.

It is not that there aren’t the learners, and it isn’t that there aren’t providers with excellent programmes achieving the desired outcomes; it is because the funders and the inspectorate are looking at the wrong things and punishing providers unfairly.

We are therefore calling for traineeships to be removed from the standard SFA minimum performance qualification statistics, with the focus instead on jobs, apprenticeships or further substantive learning outcomes.

Similarly, we want future Ofsted inspections to reflect this approach. Our members are desperate to drive this agenda forward – instead they are being driven away from it. The SFA data for 2014-15, which FE Week published on June 3, showed that 61 per cent of trainees had a positive progression from their programme last year.

Looking at these figures reminds us what traineeships are about.

Most young people not going down the higher education route will tell you they want to be earning money.

They are not exclusively a pre-apprenticeship programme and ministers made this very clear when the original framework was published – sustainable employment is also considered an equally successful outcome.

The clearly stated aim of the BIS/DfE guidance Traineeship Framework for Delivery 2015 – 2016 published in March 2015 is “to support progression into an apprenticeship or sustainable employment … or undertake further learning”.

Former skills minister Nick Boles added that “we owe it to these young people to retain this focus on quality outcomes, which is why we have strengthened the use of performance data in 2015/16”.

For a programme that’s less than three years old, a progression rate of 61 per cent is a respectable beginning.

Its importance will grow in the context of the apprenticeship reforms being introduced next April.

With an additional 100,000 apprenticeship places a year expected to come on stream, traineeships should play a major role in getting more young people prepared for them, if they are backed by the required funding.

But we should not also forget that 865,000 young people are still classified as NEET (not in education, employment or training), which is far too high given that an economic recovery has been underway for over two years.

Talk to most young people not going down the higher education route and they will tell you that they want to be earning money. So those trainees landing a job should have their success celebrated just like others securing an apprenticeship.

Of course we would want to see many of those young people have access to more training once in work, but when supporting those who frequently come from very disadvantaged backgrounds, we should be realistic about taking one step at a time.

In fact, once in employment, many young people then find the motivation to undertake FE and training.

Over the longer term, the funding of traineeships under the English devolution arrangements and the Sainsbury Review recommendations may pose further challenges.

So for now, we need a period of stability and sustained investment in a national programme which enables providers to grow traineeships as a significant stepping stone to apprenticeships and employment.

This article was originally published in the OCR Traineeships supplement .