The significant agreement centres around the creation of a new £18 million Learning Campus in Smethwick, which is part of the Midland Metropolitan University Hospital site set to open in 2025.
The Learning Campus is the first of its kind in the West Midlands, bringing together the college, NHS, and university partners in one purpose-built environment. The initiative, supported by Sandwell Council, the West Midlands Combined Authority, and the Government’s Town Fund, is vital to meeting the growing demand for new and upskilled staff in the NHS.
Sandwell College students will benefit from exclusive access to learning opportunities within the hospital, with the first cohort of school leavers and adult learners already enrolled this year for specialist healthcare courses giving them essential hands-on experience.
When completed in 2026, the Learning Campus will support more than 1,000 learners each year, offering over 100 apprenticeships, 250 work experience placements, and new opportunities for young people with learning difficulties.
Graham Pennington, Principal and Chief Executive of Sandwell College, commented: “This partnership between Sandwell College and the NHS is a remarkable opportunity for our students to gain real-life work experience, master classes, and career advice from healthcare professionals. The new Learning Campus goes beyond bricks and mortar — it’s about collaboration between key stakeholders in the region, as well as preparing the next generation of health and care professionals.”
As the largest provider of 16-19 study programmes in the West Midlands with 7,400 young people this year, the Sandwell Family of Colleges, including Sandwell College, Central Saint Michael’s Sixth Form, and Cadbury Sixth Form, continues to lead in educational innovation, with the new Learning Campus being just one of many projects in this year alone.
Decade of Success for Graham Pennington
Graham Pennington, who is stepping down after delivering a decade of success and over £33 million investment into the region, reflects: “Our mission has always been to deliver high-quality education that enhances the life chances and economic prospects of our learners, communities, and businesses. We’ve created an environment where every student can excel, from A Levels to T Levels and vocational courses, meeting the varied needs of all our learners.
“When I was appointed to this role, I had a vision to take Sandwell College to the highest level – driving investment in first-class facilities for learners, as well as forming partnerships that would provide the foundations for long-term success.
“I’m incredibly proud of the strong position in which I’m leaving The Sandwell Family of Colleges in. We’ve experienced year-on-year growth in student numbers, achieved our best-ever Ofsted inspection outcome, and reached our highest-ever enrolment, making us the most popular college destination for people in the West Midlands.”
The government has this morning published a call for evidence for its wide-ranging curriculum and assessment review.
We already have an explainer of how the review will work (you can read that here), so the below is more specific to the call for evidence.
It’s an 8-week consultation
The call for evidence opens today and runs until November 22. That’s eight weeks to have your say. You can fill in the consultation here.
The review has “deliberately kept questions as open as possible, and welcome responses from all those interested: young people and their parents, teachers, lecturers, education leaders, subject experts, researchers, employers and others”.
Reports next year, but changes could take longer
An interim report is expected in “early 2025”, setting out key findings and areas for further work, with a final report and recommendations due in Autumn 2025.
Review chair Becky Francis suggested it could be a mixed bag. Some more straight forward changes, for instance, could be put forward in the first report, and brought in the following year. Government has committed to give schools a year notice for any major curriculum and assessment reforms.
However, she did say any bigger and more complicated reforms could require further reviews or consultations, and may not even happen in this parliament, which ends in 2029.
Focus on improving curriculum… and workload
The review’s call for evidence is broken down into nine sections, with each framed around the strengths of the current system and “the areas that most need change”
Key for teachers and college leaders struggling with retention is a secondary aim of ensuring the curriculum is deliverable “with manageable and sustainable workloads for education staff”.
Sections relevant to the FE sector include social justice, maths and English foundations, technical awards alongside GCSEs, assessment and accountability, and 16 to 19 qualification pathways.
What the review is not
The review is not connected to the short, focused review into level 3 reforms which involves defunding BTECs and other applied general qualifications.
However, it will “work closely with the internal review” ahead of its outcomes being published by the end of 2024.
In a statement in July, Education secretary Bridget Phillipson said the curriculum and assessment review will “reflect” the level 3 review’s decisions, as well as recommending changes to 16 to 19 education “where necessary”.
Other issues outside of its scope are apprenticeships and associated functional skills requirements, traineeships and adult skills.
Looking hard at post-16
Francis’ review will consider young people’s education experiences up to the age of 19 and will be “vigorously evidence and data informed”.
The panel asks whether the range of programmes up to level 3 meets the “needs and aspirations of learners” and whether changes could be made to A-levels, T Levels or other applied or vocational qualifications.
She told FE Week: “We are definitely wanting to look hard at post-16 and particularly within that, vocational qualifications, where we know that there have been long standing debates, issues and problems.”
English and maths resits
The panel is “keen to understand” what changes would improve English and maths performance, noting that less than 30 per cent of those you do not achieve level 2 at key stage 4 go on to reach grade 4 them by 19 years old.
FE Week understands that the forced GCSE resits policy is in the remit of the review.
Social justice
The panel’s call for evidence has a focus on how the education system can “improve outcomes” for young people, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
While Francis is positive about the English education system’s “commitment to excellence” over recent decades, she hopes to help the country “confront the divides that perpetuate the class ceiling”.
She said: “The reality is that we continue to fail the third of our young people who do not achieve five GCSEs at grade 4 or above age 16, a disproportionate number of whom are from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds.”
Economically disadvantaged young people are 24 per cent less likely to achieve a level 2 in both English and maths by 19, the report finds.
In addition, just under one in five young education leavers in England do not enter sustained education, apprenticeship or employment within a year of their 16 to 19 studies.
“Every pupil, across all key stages, should have an experience of education that is both stimulating and enjoyable and that provides them with the foundation and motivation to pursue lifelong learning,” the review states.
The government’s new skills quango has published its first report that outlines the “long list of challenges” to fix and the “fragmented and confusing” skills system.
Skills England’s inaugural report, which interim chair Richard Pennycook said, “does nothing more than set the scene”, assured that the new body will “bring HE and FE systems closer together” and join up decision making across the department.
Education secretary Bridget Phillipson said Skills England will “shape” the government’s response to skills needs and provide a “structured feedback loop” to inform funding and policy decisions.
The body is currently advertising for a permanent chair and board, so today’s 64-page report would have been written mostly by Department for Education civil servants and Pennycook, who himself is a DfE non-executive director.
Here’s FE Week’s roundup of the report.
Skills England to ‘collaborate intensively’
When it was announced in the King’s Speech in July, Number 10 said the aim of the Skills England will be to “bring together businesses, providers, unions, mayoral combined authorities (MCAs) and national government to ensure we have the highly trained workforce that England needs”.
Pennycook said in the report that the new body will “collaborate intensively with our colleagues across government and in the regions”.
Skills England will also work with the Industrial Strategy Council (ISC), trade unions and local leaders on the introduction of a new Industrial Strategy.
“The Industrial Strategy will aim to secure investment into crucial sectors of the economy to drive long-term sustainable, inclusive and secure growth,” the report said.
Pennycook added that it will also work with the devolved nations for more “effective” data sharing and a better understanding of the UK labour market to inform its skills policy decisions.
He said: “Whilst we are called Skills England, the UK’s skills needs do not change or stop at Carlisle or Chepstow. We will work closely with our colleagues in the devolved nations to ensure that students and employers (the customers of our system) have a seamless experience throughout the four nations.”
Cross-departmental work is also promised as the Department for Work and Pensions and his Treasury will input on a forthcoming white paper called ‘Get Britain Working’ on how to prevent economic inactivity for people looking to return to work and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the Office for Clean Energy Jobs will feed into green skills jobs needs.
‘Building on the progress’ of IfATE
The King’s speech also announced that powers from the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) will be transferred to Skills England, with the former expected to close when its successor is fully operational.
“Working with the Department for Education, Skills England will ensure that there is a comprehensive suite of apprenticeships, training and technical qualifications for individuals and employers to access that are aligned with skills needs, building on the progress made by IfATE,” today’s report said.
Legacy of skills gaps
The report acknowledged the decline in training expenditure over a decade – which is at its lowest level since records began in 2011, with investment per employee down by 19 per cent in real terms – local level economic disparities and tight labour market conditions causing difficulties in hiring suitably skilled workers and an overall “legacy of large skills gaps”.
“There is clear evidence of a gap between the skills demanded by employers and the skills supplied by the system and possessed by individuals, i.e. a skills mismatch,” the document added.
It also found that, across the UK, almost 1 in 10, or over 2.5 million roles are in critical demand, with more than 90 per cent being in roles that require training or education.
Looking to future skills needs, Skills England said it would conduct analysis to estimate future job projections and create a new measure capturing current labour demand – the Occupations in Demand index. It has already identified essential job roles for the future such as AI cyber security and heat pump installation jobs.
The report said: “Heat pump installation is an example of a clean energy workforce that will need to expand. The workforce is estimated to be in line with current demand but will need to grow significantly to meet rapid increases in future demand. The Heat Pump Association estimates that the number of full-time equivalent heat pump installers would need to increase from 2k in 2020 to 35k to keep up with future demand.”
The body will also coordinate with government departments to define the “priority” workforces that they are responsible for or reliant on.
Next steps
This autumn, Skills England said it will build on its early engagement with stakeholders by conducting a series of roundtables and webinars in the autumn to “further test and refine the initial assessment of skills needs”.
The body will also undertake and share further analysis building on the work previously led by the Unit for Future Skills. This will include mapping occupations onto education pathways to understand the most common routes into priority professions and working with the Office for National Statistics on their development of online job adverts.
Skills England will be consulting employers and others for their input on what training should be accessible through the growth and skills levy and will work closely with the Migration Advisory Committee to grow the domestic skills pipeline.
The prime minister has pledged to “rebalance” apprenticeship spending in favour of younger people by shortening the programmes and restricting employer levy investment on level 7 training.
Sir Keir Starmer also confirmed plans for new, paid “foundation” apprenticeships, which appear similar to unpaid traineeships that were axed under the previous government.
The leader used his conference speech to highlight how Labour will “get our skills system right”.
He said: “We’ve got to give businesses more flexibility to adapt to real training needs and also unlock the pride, the ambition, the pull of the badge of the shirt that young people feel when building a future, not just for themselves but for their community.”
Level 7 cuts
The Department for Education confirmed after the Starmer’s speech that this will include moving some level 7 apprenticeships outside the scope of levy funding – a policy that FE Week revealed last night.
A DfE spokesperson said: “This will involve businesses funding more of their level 7 apprenticeships – equivalent to a master’s degree and often accessed by older or already well qualified employees – outside of the levy.”
New quango Skills England will be tasked with deciding which level 7 apprenticeships will be subject to the restriction.
The Association of Employers and Learning Providers is “concerned” by the move. Chief executive Ben Rowland said: “Funding all of this [reform] through the removal of government subsidy on the majority of level 7 apprenticeships is disappointing.
“While it may not be surprising given underfunding throughout the apprenticeship system, this could have been avoided if the £800 million gap between the amount taken in by the apprenticeship levy, and the actual programme budget was plugged – or even by looking at an alternative funding model.”
Association of Colleges chief executive David Hughes said that where employers “truly value” those level 7 apprenticeships “then I hope that they invest their own money in them, showing that they provide a good return on investment”.
End of 12-month minimum duration for some
The new levy will also allow funding for shorter apprenticeships. Skills England will again decide which types of sectors this rule will be open to.
The law currently states that apprenticeships must be a minimum duration of 12 months. The policy was introduced in 2012 but some have complained the requirement is too arbitrary as apprentices can become qualified in a shorter timeframe.
Foundation apprenticeships
Starmer also announced the development of new, foundation apprenticeships that offer training to young people who are not ready to start at level two or three.
Labour teased plans to introduce a scheme similar to traineeships, scrapped by the previous government due to low take up, in June.
FE Week understands that unlike traineeships, foundation apprenticeships will be a paid job.
These new apprenticeships will “give young people a route in to careers in critical sectors, enabling them to earn a wage whilst developing vital skills”, a DfE spokesperson said.
Stephen Evans, chief executive of Learning and Work Institute, warned the government that it needs to be “careful that reforms don’t compromise quality”.
He said: “The 12-month minimum duration for apprenticeships is a somewhat crude measure, but the government should be cautious about removing this: in other countries, apprenticeships last much longer. Similarly, we need more pre-apprenticeship training, but any new foundation apprenticeships need to be more than employability training to be called ‘apprenticeships’.”
A timeline for implementation of these new levy policies is not yet known. The DfE said it will set out further details on the scope of the offer and how it will be accessed in “due course”.
Skills England’s first report, which provides an initial assessment of the nation’s working skills and future skills needs, was published during Starmer’s speech. Read the report here.
The government plans to remove some level 7 apprenticeships from the scope of levy funding, FE Week understands.
Prime minister Sir Keir Starmer is expected to highlight steps to reform the apprenticeship levy into a growth and skills levy – so that it can be used to pay for other types of training – during his speech at Labour’s party conference tomorrow.
The announcement is expected to include a move to shorter apprenticeships – meaning the end of the 12-month minimum duration rule in some sectors – and a recommitment to reintroduce a foundation-style pre-apprenticeship.
England’s current apprenticeship budget is at breaking point and is forecast to soon go overspent, largely due to the rise in higher level apprenticeships which are the most expensive to deliver.
Multiple sources have said that part of the government’s plan is to restrict employers’ ability to use their apprenticeship levy contributions to pay for level 7 apprenticeships – an idea that FE Week revealed was on the cards last year.
This would free up a slice of the levy to fund non-apprenticeship training and other priorities including the government’s “youth guarantee”.
The exact types or number of apprenticeship standards in line for the chop are not yet known.
Some of the most popular level 7 apprenticeships include the senior leader programme and the accountancy/taxation professional.
FE Week previously revealed that spending on level 6 and 7 apprenticeships soared from £44 million in 2017/18 to £506 million in 2021/22 – hitting £1.325 billion in total over that period. Figures for more recent years are not yet known, but the programmes now account for over a fifth of England’s annual apprenticeship budget.
Spending on level 7 apprenticeships alone rose from £11 million in 2017/18 to £216 million in 2021/22 – totalling £588 million over that period.
Levy spending on those aged 25 and over more than doubled between 2017/18 and 2021/22, growing from £460 million to £934 million.
At the same time, spending on apprenticeships for young people aged 16 to 19 fell by £60 million, or about 10 per cent, from £686 million to £626 million.
Skills minister Jacqui Smith has urged the Treasury to acknowledge the “real issue” of staff pay in FE and VAT ahead of next month’s autumn budget.
At a Labour Party conference fringe meeting, the new skills minister told delegates that she has made the case “strongly” of the issues around status and pay in FE and its “general ability” to the Treasury.
But while Smith (pictured second left) said she understood the issue of charging VAT to FE colleges as “one of the disadvantages” of 2022 public sector reclassification, she couldn’t speak further on the matter given the upcoming budget.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves is due to unveil the Autumn budget on October 30 and has already warned of “difficult decisions” on fiscal spending after discovering a £22 billion black hole in public finances.
The Association of Colleges recently warned that the government’s decision to snub colleges from public sector pay awards means it is highly unlikely there can be an above inflation salary bump of anything more than 2 per cent in 2024/25.
The Department for Education previously blamed the “very challenging fiscal context” and the fact that FE does not have its own pay review body for Reeves’ decision to find cash for school pay rises but not for colleges.
But Smith said today: “There is a real issue in FE, about status, about pay, about the general ability of FE, which is the most responsive bit in some ways in the whole education system, to be able to continue doing that.
“It’s a case that’s been made strongly to us by FE colleges and we have made it strongly to the Treasury. So we will wait and see whether or not that has fallen on good ears.”
FE colleges have long called for more favourable rules on VAT, and demanded exemption that would cost the government an estimated £200 million each year.
“I hear you on VAT,” Smith said. “That’s one of the disadvantages, of course, of bringing back of FE colleges into the public sector.”
After a slight pause she added: “That’s about as much as I can say at the moment, but not least because Rachel [Reeves] is up to speak soon and tell us how difficult things are.”
In the same Labour fringe, former education secretary Lord Blunkett said the Treasury is “pretty bad at releasing small amounts of money” which can “actually make an enormous difference”.
David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, spoke a different Labour conference event today and urged “patience” from the sector and for a “united solution”.
“We don’t have to beat up [education secretary] Bridget Phillipson if they don’t deliver overnight the changes we need from government underfunding for 14 years,” he said.
“Give them [DfE ministers] the chance to make the case. Rachel Reeves is holding that purse very tight, let’s help her loosen that hold a bit.
“We have an incredibly strong case for more money. It will come true, it might take three years but it will happen.”
We’ve got to make Skills England work
On T Levels, Smith said her department was “really very committed” to the previous government’s flagship qualification but there was always room for improvement.
“There is a commitment to T Levels, and we need to be working with people to make sure that they’re both being taken up and that they’re deliverable,” she said.
She added: “That doesn’t mean we don’t think there are changes that we need to make in order to make them properly accessible, in order to make sure that employers can contribute both to the placements that are necessary and to do that alongside and also providing the work experience, which really is important for others.”
Towards the end of the fringe meeting, Smith said now that the creation of Skills England has been announced, there was “a lot of work” to be done.
“We have announced it, and now we’ve got to make it work,” she said. “And there will be a whole period of engagement, a lot of work to be done.”
Earlier in July, former Co-op chief Richard Pennycook was appointed Skills England’s interim chair. The process of appointing a permanent chair and board is ongoing.
“Certainly, Richard Pennycook, the chair is going to be bringing people together to ensure that it’s a success.”
A specialist engineering apprenticeship training provider has gone bust, leaving behind debts of more than £350,000 to several colleges.
Salford and Trafford Engineering Group Training Association Ltd (STEGTA), established in 1966, declared itself bankrupt in August, months after notifying stakeholders of financial issues.
STEGTA’s demise comes a year after it managed to retain its contract to deliver apprenticeship training, despite Ofsted downgrading it from ‘good’ to ‘inadequate’ due to safeguarding issues and its poor oversight of subcontractors.
The company, which operated as a “group training association” that was partly controlled by employers, has left debts to several colleges in the north of England to which it subcontracted training.
According to a report published by liquidators Leonard Curtis, STEGTA left behind debts of £650,000 – with only £130,000 in assets to be shared out among employees, colleges, and other trade creditors.
However, when asked what pushed the company into financial ruin, a spokesperson for the liquidator said: “We are unable to give any further information at the moment.”
Chief executive John Whitby did not respond to a request for comment from FE Week.
The company’s largest debts are £104,000 owed to Leeds City College, £80,000 to City of Westminster College, £67,000 to Wigan and Leigh College, and £40,000 to Trafford and College.
A spokesperson for Trafford and Stockport College Group said it had a “strong partnership” with STEGTA for many years, working together to provide “exceptional training.”
They added: “It is unfortunate that STEGTA has had to close, as they played a significant role in shaping the future careers of many skilled professionals.”
York College confirmed that it has written off a debt of £10,000.
It is understood to have subcontracted training both to and from STEGTA.
Following its ‘inadequate’ Ofsted grade, STEGTA was not struck off the apprenticeship register, in line with usual Education and Skills Funding Agency policy rules, although it was suspended for several months.
At the time, Whitby told FE Week the ESFA supported STEGTA through its new intervention strategy.
Under that policy, the ESFA identified the training provider as being “at risk” and placed it under intervention before a monitoring inspection.
This found the company was making “reasonable progress,” partly thanks to a “wholescale review of safeguarding” which included the appointment of two extra safeguarding officers.
An awarding giant has called for the revival of skills councils for specific sectors in a new report that outlines a “once in a generation opportunity” to reform training through Skills England.
The report, Making Skills Work: The Path to Solving the Productivity Crisis, by City and Guilds and the Lifelong Education Institute, calls for an end to the “wasteful cycle of policy churn, duplication, and reinvention” in the UK’s skills policy.
It charts a history of “consistent revision” in the various national and sector-centric predecessors to Skills England, set up by the government to guide workforce training since the 1960s.
It calls for Skills England to exist alongside revived Sector Skills Councils that oversaw training development in specific industries in the 2010s and for it to be “empowered” to redirect resources across the country when needed.
City and Guilds chief executive Kirstie Donnelly said: “We have a once in a generation opportunity to clean the slate of skills policy for good and create a holistic, long-term strategy for uplifting our economy through skills provision that works.
“It’s crucial now that we learn from mistakes of the past; Skills England must not be yet another reinvention of the wheel.”
The report charts the history of centralised state planning bodies up to the 1980s, followed by market-led quangos and the Learning and Skills Council, Sector Skills Councils, and Regional Development Authorities, established in 2001-2.
More recently, it points out that the UK Commission for Employment & Skills (UKCES) was established in 2008 to coordinate skills and employment issues before its closure in 2017.
The report says: “The government has presented the creation of Skills England as a historic opportunity to implement a wholesale step-change in the formulation of UK skills policy.
“Yet despite its ambition, Skills England is quite simply not a new idea.
“It follows in a long tradition of Westminster and Whitehall exercising some degree of directive input into skills development across the UK.”
As reported by FE Week, the quango’s board membership is still at the recruitment stage.
Sector Skills Councils (SSCs)
Revive business-led councils, established in 2001 and later designed to give employers a platform to voice their skills needs, should be revived.
The councils were sidelined in 2008 but remain in “semi-moribund abeyance”, the report notes.
SSCs were similar to industrial training boards (ITBs) that existed in the 1960s, and still exist for some industries to this day, such as the Construction Industry Training Board and the Engineering Construction Industry Training Board.
Funding powers
Skills England should be given powers to “redirect resources to address needs” in specific areas, which it should justify through an annual report.
Clearly defined roles
Overlaps and coordination with regulatory bodies need “clear definition” to avoid unnecessary duplication, the report recommends.
Skills England should agree with the Office for Students (OfS) on its role in higher-level and vocational education.
It should also have a “convening role” with the growing number of authorities that have devolved control over their adult skills budgets.
It should also “co-advise” with the Office for Budget Responsibility all skills-related budget measures, as well as working with Ofqual, Ofsted, and both the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education and the Independent Schools Council.
Focus qualifications on productivity
One way to ensure growth should be qualification reform that would “rebalance” the supply and demand for skills to “directly influence” productivity growth.
This could include scope for a “sustainable, scalable model” for T Levels and more “suitable availability” for some degrees.
Reforms are coming to the apprenticeship system in England and the Labour government has been showered with suggestions about what it should do.
But are there lessons England can learn from the skills paths charted in the last decade by Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?
England is the outlier; it is the only one with end-point assessments and rigid rules around apprenticeship duration and off-the-job training. Its more prescriptive system has standards, while its neighbours use frameworks.
And whereas England experienced a “big skills revolution” with the introduction of the apprenticeship levy, its devolved neighbours had “evolutionary and incremental” change, says the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) policy director Simon Ashworth.
Frustratingly for employers, although all UK companies with a salary bill of over £3 million have to pay the levy, only those in England directly reap the rewards. In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland the money is repaid via the Barnett Formula back to their governments.
None of them spend all of it on apprenticeships, and the amount they do spend on training has declined in the last decade. But having their own government bodies, rather than employers in the investment driving seat, means a greater share of apprenticeships funding is directly channelled into addressing the most critical skills gaps.
Apprenticeship numbers game
England has experienced the steepest decline in apprenticeship starts in the last decade, analysis by London Economics shows.
Wales and Scotland maintained their level of starts from 2014-15 2022-23 and starts grew in Northern Ireland, while in England they plunged by a third.
In 2021-22 (the last period for which comparable national figures are available), FE Week found apprentices made up 0.65 per cent of the Welsh population, 0.62 per cent in England, 0.46 per cent in Scotland and 0.36 per cent in Northern Ireland.
Tom Bewick, author of upcoming book Skills Policy In Britain, believes since England’s “big bang reforms” that followed the Richard Review of apprenticeships in 2012, the quality of apprenticeships “improved to a degree” but the changes have not delivered on quantity.
Funding woes
The amount devolved nations get back from the levy is no longer published. But we know the Department for Education’s apprenticeships budget this year was £2.7 billion – over double the £1.3 billion it received in 2016 – with the devolved administrations getting around £500 million between them.
Over £200 million is raised from the levy each year by Welsh employers and returned to the Welsh government, but only around £130 million of that is spent on apprenticeships, says Lisa Mytton, strategic director for the National Training Federation Wales.
The Welsh apprenticeship budget this year was cut by 14 per cent, which Mytton says has had a “major impact” on delivery, but the system still appears to be more generous to its providers.
Iain Salisbury, chief executive of Aspiration Training, a provider specialising in childcare and health and social care that operates across England and Wales, says Welsh funding rates have risen “across the board” for the last three years (5 per cent in 2022-23 and 2023-24 and 3 per cent this year) for his apprenticeships, while in England rates have stagnated.
He says the Welsh Government are “much better stewards of the market”, and, unlike in England, they “work with the provider network to make sure it does the best for apprenticeships”.
“We’re not having to lay people off in the same way [as in England], and we can afford to give people the pay rises they need,” he says.
But the Welsh enforce a “cap on contracts” which limits the amount a contract can pay out during a set period, which Salisbury believes is “a bit silly”. It meant that in July, Aspiration Training had no starts because it “ran out of money”.
Stuart McKenna, chief executive of the Scottish Training Federation, believes the Scottish government receives over £300 million a year back in levy funding – the latest official figure is £240 million but he believes this is an “underestimate”. He thinks it only spends £100 million of that on apprenticeships.
Funding rates for older apprentices are far lower in Scotland and McKenna describes some as “rubbish”, pointing out how some hospitality apprenticeships for those aged over 24 only receive £300. “How on earth can you deliver an apprenticeship for that? The government says we should be asking employers to pay, but they don’t want to,” he says.
He adds there’s more demand than places, and while the Scottish government’s pre-pandemic target was 30,000 apprenticeship starts a year, it’s dropped that to 25,500, despite a survey of employers showing a further 2,000 places were needed.
McKenna explains that in Scotland, apprenticeships funding is perceived as existing to “plug market failure or skills gaps”, not as a “nice thing for companies to access”.
Similarly, in Northern Ireland, overall apprenticeships funding is less than in England but the spend per apprentice is higher, says Leo Murphy, chief executive of North West Regional College. Apprenticeships there are “treated as high value” programmes to “prepare someone for the future… we’re building citizenship, not just fodder for industry”.
Iain Salisbury of apprenticeships provider Aspiration Training
Favouring management
Levy-paying employers in England have chosen to spend a greater share of their money on higher-level apprenticeships, which rose by 9 per cent to 70,780 in the year to 2023-24.
“There’s been this mission drift away from apprenticeships being about younger people getting a foothold in the labour market towards degree apprenticeships in management,” says Bewick.
In Scotland and Wales the number of higher-level apprenticeships has stayed roughly stable in recent years, although both Scottish and Welsh governments have policies in place intended to boost them.
Lewis Cooper, an Association of Colleges director who previously worked on a commission bringing the nations together to learn from each other, describes England’s situation as “a collapse in young people undertaking apprenticeships, from a low bar”.
In Scotland, where under-19 apprenticeship starts have risen every year since 2020-21, funding allocations are split into age brackets (similar to how they were in England before the apprenticeship levy) to ensure young people are accounted for.
Similarly until last year in Northern Ireland, only those under 25 were eligible for most apprenticeships funding. In 2021-22, 83 per cent of the country’s new starts were aged 16 to 24, compared to 58 per cent in Scotland, 54 per cent in England and 48 per cent in Wales.
The greater sway of market forces in England has led to more pronounced declines in apprenticeship starts in deprived areas, as levy funding has been poured into management training for businesses based in London and the South East.
In Wales, skills priorities are thrashed out by four regional skills partnerships, representing the country’s respective regions, which is partly intended to ensure that deprived areas do not lose out.
Stuart McKenna, chief executive of the Scottish Training Federation
Strategic apprenticeship oversights
In England there has been no strategic body to align apprenticeships funding into priority sectors, leaving it with chronic skills gaps particularly in the construction and health and social care sectors.
Both Wales and Scotland have witnessed a rise in starts into the construction and health and social care sectors since 2014-15.
FE Week’s analysis shows whereas in England the most popular apprenticeship in the first three quarters of 2023-24 was in business, admin and law (27.6 per cent of apprenticeships), in Scotland construction apprenticeships came top ( 25.3 per cent) and in Wales health and public services apprenticeships were the most common in 2022-23 (44.5 per cent).
SkillsDevelopment Scotland is an arms-length agency that looks at the country’s skills needs, as Skills England is expected to do soon.
And the Welsh this summer launched the Commission for Tertiary Education and Research. It goes a step further than the ambitions of Skills England by linking up the whole post-16 education system under a single funder and regulator.
Apprenticeship rules and regulations
It’s only in England that apprenticeships have to be at least 12 months long and only English apprenticeships contain rigid off–the–job time requirements, although these were relaxed this summer from being monthly to every three months.
McKenna says in Scotland, “the feeling is there’s no point in having people sitting in a face-to-face classroom situation if that’s not what the job intends”.
Off-the-job requirements are flexible in Northern Ireland, where Murphy says because the economy is so strong in its neighbouring republic (particularly when it comes to house building), many apprentices head to Dublin for work worth “£1,000 Euros a week in their pocket”.
Who are the providers?
In Scotland, McKenna says colleges get only eight per cent of government contracts – rising to 20 per cent when work subcontracted by private providers is taken into account. Private training providers get the bulk of the work.
In England colleges in 2022-23 were responsible for around 17 per cent of apprenticeship starts and private providers 66 per cent.
In Wales, Salisbury says seven of the 10 apprenticeships contracts made this year were with “colleges or [providers] owned by colleges”.
Salisbury believes contracts are inevitably “more relationship based” in “any devolved area”, including England’s mayoral regions, because of their smaller footprints.
And he says the Welsh system is more stable with many providers being in the game for more than 10 years.
He adds: “You haven’t got people going bust all the time. You get better practice because nearly everyone in business is trying to do the right thing.”
Ashworth concedes England’s system is in some ways “not very employer friendly”, partly because of the “complexity” involved in having over 600 occupational standards and 1,500 providers.
In Northern Ireland, while colleges “tend to do the heavy lifting that industry needs”, private training organisations make up around 15 per cent of the apprenticeships market doing “the lighter stuff – retail and wholesale”, says Murphy.
A legacy of the peace process in Belfast is that the community and voluntary sector is “quite strong”, and “far better” than colleges at “introductory skills because they’ve got reach within their communities”.
Apprenticeships expert Tom Bewick
Assessment differences
England is the only nation to have end-point assessments (EPAs). Cooper believes there is “no evidence” they have driven up quality. The other nations instead use ongoing assessment – which many English providers would prefer, says Bewick.
Whereas English apprentices “get nothing” in terms of qualifications until their programme is completed, McKenna says Scottish apprentices are “working on units of qualifications all the way along” which “still count, even if they don’t finish the apprenticeship”.
But Ashworth sees the Welsh and Scottish systems as being “mark your own homework” models with “outdated frameworks” which are “a bit stuck in the past”, compared to our “employer led” and “relevant” standards.
Pick and mix the best
Cooper believes that if England could cherry pick the strengths from each UK jurisdiction it could create an “incredible system”.
So what could be borrowed?
Salisbury praises how in Wales recent immigrants eligible for work can do an apprenticeship, whereas in England they have to already be a resident for three years. Salisbury’s own analysis for the DfE showed how around half of Aspiration Training’s learners in Wales would not have been eligible for an apprenticeship in England.
Northern Ireland is currently expanding its traineeship programmes, and Ashworth praises “effective” pre-apprenticeship programmes in Wales and Scotland for “getting more young people to join routes into apprenticeships”. He hopes the Labour government could learn from them, amid ongoing “discussions” at DfE about what a reintroduction of traineeships would look like.
The last government scrapped traineeships in 2023 due to low take-up.
There’s been much criticism in recent years of England’s functional skills qualifications – particularly for maths, which Ashworth lambasts as “probably harder than GCSEs”. Curriculums have become “too academic” in recent years and “not contextualised enough with job roles”.
Scotland has “more sensible” core skills qualifications, akin to the ‘Key Skills’ programmes England had in place previously, with “softer curriculums” and a “more inclusive approach to assessment”.
Salisbury describes the equivalent (Essential Skills) in Wales as being made up of much shorter and broader courses, with a focus on “communications” as well as English and maths, and without the “need to know probability”.
“They’re much more practical and don’t get the same vitriol that we get for functional skills,” he adds.
