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.

David Hughes outlines his hopes for a new Apprentice Charter

There are many uncertainties surrounding the general election, but one thing we can be sure of is that the next Government will support more apprenticeships.

That support will almost certainly survive any permutation of parties entering into coalition (or minority Government) negotiations, probably unlike some other manifesto commitments.

I spoke at the FE Week apprenticeship conference this month about the dangerous place the apprenticeship programme is in at the moment and the need for us to focus on three things — defining what an apprenticeship is and what it contributes for the apprentice themselves, for the employer and for the Government; the quality of the experience and how we measure success; and, really getting to grips with inequalities in access and achievement to apprenticeships.

These issues contribute to the other big issue we have to face up to — how to get more employers, parents, teachers and careers advisers to value apprenticeships. We are still a long way from convincing enough people that an apprenticeship will be a good investment for them as they enter the labour market.

This is not the same for degrees where the presumption seems to be prevalent from many that any degree will be a good investment.

Convincing people to change their views is not easy of course, and there is no silver bullet. Improvements in defining the experience, quality and access will help, but they will not be sufficient on their own.

At Niace we are convinced that we have a concept which will help and we’re keen to engage with the sector, employers, apprentices and others to develop our idea into a workable proposition. We call it the Apprentice Charter and it is a simple idea which is already capturing people’s imaginations.

The Apprentice Charter is a new quality mark which would be awarded to employers that demonstrate a commitment to give their apprentices a high quality learning experience which will set them up for a career.

The quality of the apprenticeship experience will become more and more consistent and positive, without the need for centralized, top-down Government intervention

The employers we have spoken to are attracted to an independent quality mark which can help them show that they are doing the right thing, that they take seriously the investment they are making in their apprentices.

As well as differentiating employers offering apprenticeships, we believe that an Apprentice Charter can help achieve a number of other things. It will codify and set a new standard for what the best employers do in addition to the formal training and the employment contract.

This includes the informal learning, the soft skills, the mentoring, the support, the advice about future careers and the opportunities to understand the business and not just the job. For prospective apprentices and their families and advisers, it will be a simple guarantee that the experience is worth their investment, enabling them to make informed choices about how to make the transition into work.

It will stimulate demand from people who want the chance to enter the labour market and progress into a career, giving a strong alternative to the well-trodden higher education path, particularly for young people.

The Apprentice Charter will help the Government to be confident in the quality of the programme and allow them to target support to those employers who want to aspire to achieving the quality mark. In this way, the quality of the apprenticeship experience will become more and more consistent and positive, without the need for centralized, top-down Government intervention.

We are now keen to engage with stakeholders in developing the concept. We want employers, providers, colleges, apprentices and others to work with us to scope out how this will work. The next Government will want to improve quality at the same time as increasing numbers, our Apprentice Charter will help ensure that the experience for apprentices and the return on investment for employers matches up to the strong political support which apprenticeships now have.

Please get involved and help us develop the concept into reality.