Selling apprenticeships to young people is one thing, and selling them to parents is another. Kirstie Donnelly considers how the FE and skills sector might improve the programme’s chances of being sold.

Two reports were launched this month highlighting, in different ways, the fact that there is a desperate need to increase the value of the apprenticeship brand if the system is to be allowed to achieve its potential.

Firstly, came the Education Select Committee report on traineeships and apprenticeships which warned that constant talk of apprenticeships as a means to tackle youth unemployment risked painting them as a second class option.

While it’s great that apprenticeships seem to be fixed firmly on the agenda we must ensure that there is a clear focus on increasing quality

The report also warned against sacrificing quality for quantity, an important point as all the political parties promise significant increases in apprenticeship numbers post-election.

While it’s great that apprenticeships seem to be fixed firmly on the agenda we must ensure that there is a clear focus on increasing quality if they are to truly meet the needs of industry and learners in the future.

We also have to make sure that government isn’t making changes to the system without good reason. That’s something that has been hugely damaging to the image of apprenticeships in the past.

So what should the government do?

I was part of the second report that was launched — the Demos report on Lord Glasman’s commission on apprenticeships. It found that just a fifth of parents had been told about apprenticeships by their child’s school.

This bias against apprenticeships is well documented, and isn’t shocking as schools are largely staffed with university graduates. If teachers have only experienced one pathway to a career, how can they be expected to advise on others? And it doesn’t help that school league tables count pupils who follow the academic route as a success but ignores other positive outcomes.

That’s why the Demos report called for three things.

Firstly, a high-quality public sector careers service; secondly, a chance for all 14 to 16year-old students to take a vocational subject alongside academic study; and thirdly, improved monitoring of school-leavers to find out how their choices have affected their careers.

I strongly support these recommendations and think that they will go a long way towards a fairer system that values academic and vocational education equally.

But it’s not just the Government that has a role to play. The FE sector has three clear responsibilities.

We need, firstly, to work closely with employers to create an apprenticeship system that meets their needs. The FE sector has the skills and the experience, even dare I say the creativity to design programmes that can deliver the quality teaching and support. Employers have the understanding of the outcomes their industries truly need and the detailed insight as to what is really required. It’s important that we demonstrate as a sector that we understand these needs and can respond to them. If we don’t, we could end up being cut out of the equation, which would only lead to poorer quality apprenticeships. We must ensure that we focus very clearly on outcomes, both for the employer and the learner.

Secondly, we need to get the message out there about how great apprenticeships are. The Demos report also found that whilst 90 per cent of parents think apprenticeships are a good option for young people, less than a third would be happy for their own child to do one. This is hardly surprising, as 86 per cent of respondents said they felt that apprenticeships were for less able students. What parent would want their child to limit their life chances by encouraging them to take a route they believed to be second rate?

What few parents realise though is that doing an apprenticeship could net their child a starting salary of more than £30k and the opportunity to avoid student debt that often totals more than £44k.

And thirdly, we need to champion higher apprenticeships. For apprenticeships to be recognised as high quality by learners and employers we need to promote higher apprenticeships so we have a system that gives access to the UK’s top jobs. This way, it can become a genuine alternative to a degree.

If we can create a gold standard in apprenticeships, ensuring they are the highest quality and improve how they are perceived, we are also opening the doors for the learners to be fairly remunerated and increasing their earning power in the longer term. This is ultimately the very best way to win over parents and young people.

It’s clear from both the reports that there is a lot of work to be done to secure the future of apprenticeships. The education sector, businesses and policymakers need work together to promote apprenticeships as a first-rate option to be considered by all young people.

We have a real opportunity in our hands right now. We won’t get all the solutions from government and we shouldn’t expect to. We must take control and work more collaboratively with each other, and importantly, with employers.

If we do this then we will be able to ensure that our sector finally gets the recognition it deserves, and most importantly, that the learners get the futures they deserve.

The speakers spoke and the audience listened — they even got to pose questions. So with the curtain having come down on the huge success that was the first FE Week annual apprenticeship conference, David Harbourne gives his overview of events.

The inaugural FE Week Annual Apprenticeship Conference was a fantastic opportunity to catch up on the latest developments in apprenticeship policy and practice.

There were plenty of facts and figures, clearly presented — not least by the newspaper’s former editor, Nick Linford, who has a knack of making complicated information easy to absorb.

Conference host Kirsty Wark also did a fantastic job of asking just the right questions, in just the right way.

That said, we didn’t get clear answers to every question. Skills Minister Nick Boles couldn’t announce the government’s final decision on funding reform, though he hinted we might not have long to wait.

Meanwhile, his advisers told us what they could about future stages of reform, but when they talk about “open policy making” and “iterative processes”, they usually mean “watch this space”.

On the other side of the political divide, Chukka Umunna didn’t go down as well as he might have hoped. Labour has made technical education and apprenticeships a major theme of their election campaign, but two things niggled this time round.

First, he wants to limit the word “apprenticeship” to levels three and above. He plans to rename level two provision, not abolish it — but the audience clearly didn’t like the idea, and didn’t hesitate to tell him.

Second, he gave no pledge on adult skills funding. Instead, he told us Labour would face “some very difficult choices” if elected in May, and would “have to justify every pound of government spending”.

We don’t know what the final apprenticeship landscape will look like. We don’t even have a firm grip on some of the things that matter most to employers and apprentices alike, such as end assessments

Yet in almost the same breath, he reminded us that Labour wants to limit higher education fees to £6,000. That helps the “remembered 50 per cent” — but what about the “forgotten 50 per cent”?

We also heard from the chair of the House of Commons Education Select Committee, Graham Stuart.

Presenting the committee’s new report on apprenticeships, he started by highlighting the risk that Trailblazers will be dominated by larger companies.

On funding, he said small firms should be given a choice between administering it themselves, or accessing it via a provider.

And he called for the return of pre-16 work experience and Young Apprenticeships.

But as the dust settled in the days after the conference, one thing struck me more than any other. It’s the remarkable resilience of colleges and independent learning providers.

I’ve been involved in vocational education and training for 25 years now and lived through seemingly endless reform. A constant has been the willingness of providers and professionals to say: “Give us the tools and we’ll do the job”.

It’s no different this time round, except we’re not working to a clear, coherent plan.

Straight after Doug Richard delivered his report, the government made a deliberate decision. Rather than draw up a detailed implementation plan, it said: “Let’s just get on with it and deal with issues as they arise.”

So we don’t know what the final apprenticeship landscape will look like. We don’t even have a firm grip on some of the things that matter most to employers and apprentices alike, such as end assessments.

What we do know is that there are living, breathing people out there whose future will be brighter because of apprenticeships. We heard from one of them — Michael — at the conference, and he stole the show.

So for the sake of all the people who need apprenticeships and all the people committed to delivering them, let’s hope we soon get a good, clear plan, the funds to deliver it, and the political will to see it through.

Geraldine Swanton explains how Prime Minister David Cameron’s plans to extend the law of wilful neglect to education might affect colleges, and how existing legislation in the area is currently being enacted within the sector.

On March 3, 2015, David Cameron announced a commitment to tackle child sexual exploitation and the government’s intention to impose criminal liability on those who fail to protect children.

This will be done by an extension of the law of “wilful neglect” to education.

The press has reported that teachers who fail to protect children could face up to five years in jail under the proposals.

Following the Francis Enquiry into the causes of the failings in care at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust between 2005 and 2009, the government enacted in February this year a new offence of ill-treatment or willful neglect of patients in formal health and social care settings. It is not yet in force.

The offence applies to individual providers of health and social care who ill-treat or wilfully neglect an individual to whom they provide care, as well as to organisations which provide or organise such care. “Wilful neglect” is not defined. The proposal is to extend this offence to education.

The offence also applies to organisations in the same way as the offence of corporate manslaughter ie if the way in which the care provider’s activities are managed amount to a gross breach of a relevant duty of care to the person who is ill-treated or neglected and in the absence of the breach, the ill-treatment or neglect would not have occurred or would have been less likely to have occurred.

Colleges have applied their safeguarding policies to vulnerable adults as a matter of good practice

Organisations found guilty of the offence will be subject to a fine, a remedial order and/or a publicity order.

Colleges already have a statutory duty to promote and safeguard the welfare of children who receive education.

The guidance issued by the Department for Education is called Keeping Children Safe in Education. It gives substance to the duty and states that colleges have a responsibility to identify children who are suffering or are likely to suffer, significant harm.

Once identified, colleges should “take appropriate action”, which means reporting the fact to the relevant agencies and working with them to support the child.

That may include supporting social workers to take decisions about individual children. Colleges are also required by the guidance to provide a safe environment in which children can learn.

This is consistent with local authorities’ duty to make arrangements with relevant agencies, including colleges, to co-operate to improve the welfare of children.

Ofsted inspects colleges’ safeguarding performance and failure to discharge the duty could result in intervention by the Secretary of State.

Colleges have no comparable statutory safeguarding duty in respect of vulnerable adults, though they have duties in respect of health & safety legislation and disability discrimination, particularly the duty to make reasonable adjustments and to provide auxiliary aids to prevent disabled learners from suffering substantial disadvantage as a result of their disability.

Colleges have nevertheless applied their safeguarding policies to vulnerable adults as a matter of good practice, relying to some extent on guidance provided by the Department of Health for those providing adult care.

Colleges have, since at least 2002 when the safeguarding children duty came into force, been sensitive to the signs of abuse and have engaged with the relevant statutory agencies to protect the victim.

The current safeguarding duty is however a different order from the government’s proposal to impose a positive duty to prevent harm, with the spectre of criminal liability for a failure to do so.

While no one would challenge the need for society to protect its most vulnerable from harm, the propensity of governments to extend the reach of the criminal law beyond the actual perpetrators of heinous crimes is a source of concern.

It is too early to speculate on the extent of the proposed offence and its implications for colleges. No doubt colleges and their representative bodies will press for further information and participate at the earliest stages of the consultation process.