Apprenticeships for 14 to 16-year-olds should make a comeback, sector experts have told MPs.

All eight witnesses appearing before the House of Commons Education Select Committee hearing last week agreed a return for the programme could help prepare young people for the workplace and further training before turning 16.

The young apprenticeship, which consisted of two days a week in the workplace, alongside maths, English and other subjects, was scrapped in 2010 due to fears over cost.

David Massey, senior manager, UK Commission for Employment and Skills said that around a third of employers who take on a 16-year-old apprentice report that the youngsters were poorly prepared.

“And when you ask them why they invariably say lack of work experience,” he told the committee, which is investigating traineeships and apprenticeships.

He agreed that the 14 to 16 apprenticeship could help to combat this.

Alison Fuller, professor of vocational education and work at the Institute of Education, told the committee she and the other witnesses were “disappointed” when the programme was phased out and there hadn’t been a ” strong evidence base” for the decision.

“The strong feature of them was that it wasn’t a case of closing down options for those who were on the programme because they had to do seven GCSEs as well, so it was an enhanced programme,” she said.

“And the evidence is that the graduates were going in all sorts of directions — A-levels, vocational education, apprenticeships.”

Committee member Dominic Raab — who last year put a bill to revive the programme before parliament, but it failed to pass by the end of the session and so was dropped — agreed.

“When you look at all the evidence, young apprenticeships were phenomenal to have at least as an option,” he said.

Learner numbers on the programme were restricted by the previous government and the programme, started in 2004, was cancelled under the Coalition over concerns that it cost £3,000 per learner more than if they had been in school.

However, David Harbourne, Edge Foundation director of policy and research, said expanding the scope of the programme could have made it better value for money.

“The previous government capped the numbers to 9,000 per cohort, that meant that if you had a school in which you had
four young apprentices, there were no offsetting savings to the school whatsoever,” he said.

“If you could get numbers up to around 30,000 you would start to see economies of scale that we never saw when the numbers were capped.”

The next evidence session is due to take place on November 26. Witnesses are yet to be announced.

Public funding for nearly 700 adult qualifications is to be axed while a further 972 are also at risk following a Skills Funding Agency review, it has been announced.

The agency released lists of qualifications with no or low demand — of fewer than 100 funded enrolments a-year — since August 2012, which it said it would no longer fund from 2015.

Of the 691 qualifications to be scrapped with no demand, 33 were level one, 243 were level two, 289 were level three, 90 were level four while 29 entry level qualifications were also listed to go.

Awarding organisations (AOs) who want to save their qualifications among the 972 with low demand have until December 4 to make their case to the agency.

Federation of Awarding Bodies chief executive Stephen Wright (pictured front page) told FE Week: “I’m happy with the list, as long as the agency responds reasonably to reasonable requests — we’ll be keeping an eye on it.”

He said there were many reasons why an awarding body might want to save a qualification, for example an expected increase in uptake, a course in a sector with skills shortages or a strong uptake for non-funded learners.

The agency was tasked with reducing the number of adult vocational qualifications it funded following the Nigel Whitehead report, published in November last year, which called for 95 per cent of the 19,000-plus adult qualifications to be axed. Meanwhile, last year’s annual review resulted in funding for 1,601 qualifications being cut.

City & Guilds has 88 qualifications set to be cut in this year’s review and a further 223 at risk due to low demand.

Director of product Chris Kirk said: “Low take-up can be the result of small markets, not lack of interest. We have no interest in spending time and effort developing something no one wants.”

He added the organisation would continue to offer non-funded qualifications if demand existed.

A spokesperson for WJEC, which has 14 no demand qualifications on the list and 17 with low demand, said it was “in discussion” with centres over whether to appeal.

A spokesperson for Pearson, with 85 no demand and 158 low demand, said it would also be working with providers on possible appeals.

The agency said providers should speak to AOs about efforts to retain qualifications, who would then make the case for retention.

Concerns about the “ethical use of funding” have been raised after a sixth form college started advertising £500 incentives in a bid to lure high-achieving learners to its proposed new free school sixth form.

New College Pontefract applied to the Department for Education (DfE) last month to set up New College Doncaster, which would open in 2016 for up to 1,200 learners.

The website for the new sixth form advertises an ‘academic scholarship’ in which: “If you are predicted to achieve more than five A grades in your GCSEs, we will offer you the opportunity to receive £500 and a place in our Excellence Academy to support your post-16 education.”

But professor of education and public policy at Durham University Stephen Gorard (pictured top) said the use of public money to incentivise enrolments was a cause for concern.

He said: “I have never heard of this before and I can’t see that it would be an ethical use of funding, given that it would cost money from the public purse that could have been spent on something else.”

However, Richard Fletcher (pictured bottom), vice principal at New College Pontefract, defended the offer in an interview with FE Week sister publication Academies Week.

“The £500 is something quite new to the college. This is something that we are looking at doing,” he said.

“It’s an incentive — it might not be £500, and we might look at a laptop, an iPad, something to support them with their studies. It will be a choice of what the student wants, we’ve got the idea from some other colleges which is something schools and colleges seem to be doing at the moment. It is about raising aspirations I would say, an incentive to attract the best students from the area to sign up to our college.

“Until we got to the stage of opening and we had the students applying and enrolling we wouldn’t know how many students would receive this. There is no guarantee they would receive it until they had got their results, once they had their results then we would be committed to keeping to what we said. It wouldn’t be offered on predicted grades it would be offered on actual grades so when they come to enrol after their GCSE results.

“It is a little bit like a private school saying to someone who is good at rugby, come to our school and we’ll pay for your fees. It’s a scholarship for the brighter students.”

The DfE is due to confirm next month whether the college, rated outstanding by Ofsted, has reached the next stage in the free school application process.

The Department for Education (DfE) has defended its continued refusal to exempt sixth form colleges from VAT after a controversial move to give academies borrowing powers.

The borrowing powers of sixth form colleges have long been seen by government as a justification for their continued payment of VAT, but an announcement that academies — and also colleges — will be allowed to borrow from the DfE’s condition improvement fund (CIF) has prompted the Sixth Form Colleges Association (SFCA) to renew its call for change.

SFCA deputy chief executive James Kewin said he was pleased sixth form colleges would also be able to take advantage of the low levels of interest offered by the DfE scheme — ranging from 1.5 per cent to 2.5 per cent — but said the inclusion of non VAT-paying academies in the deal was unfair.

Mr Kewin said: “The government’s position on the VAT treatment of sixth form colleges has always been shaky, but this latest development means it is now completely indefensible.

“We urge the government to drop this tax on learning that sees the average sixth form college redirect £335,000 a year away from the front line education of its students to pay VAT. Young people should receive the same level of investment in their education, irrespective of where they choose to study.”

He welcomed the fact sixth form colleges would have access to the CIF loans, adding: “We have been making the case to government for some time that the ability to borrow money has become an increasingly theoretical freedom for many sixth form colleges — many of our members are unable or unwilling to take out new loans as the ongoing reduction in funding hinders their ability to make repayments.

“So we are pleased that the Government has responded to our concerns and allowed Sixth Form Colleges to access loans for capital projects at the same non-commercial rates as schools and academies.”

A DfE spokesperson said: “To help schools get access to the funding for maintenance and improvement of buildings they can now choose to borrow from the
CIF at a favourable rate — with zero interest for energy efficiency projects. All loan repayments will be cycled back into the fund, meaning other schools will continue to benefit once the loan has been paid.

“The ONS categorises sixth form colleges as private sector organisations and, as such, they are liable for VAT. Academies are classed as public sector organisations and are not.

“Although academies are now able to borrow fixed sums of money from the CIF, they cannot borrow from the private sector. Sixth form colleges are still able to borrow from the open market.”

Concern has been raised about the workload of Education Funding Agency (SFA) chief executive Peter Lauener after the same role at the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) was added to his remit.

Mr Lauener took up the additional role on Monday (November 3) and Shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt told FE Week sister newspaper Academies Week: “The National Audit Office (NAO) has warned about the EFA becoming overloaded — yet ministers respond by appointing its chief executive as the joint chief executive of the SFA as well as the EFA.”

The EFA employs around 950 staff and manages £54bn of funding a year to support state-provided education for 8m children aged three to 16, and 1.6m 16 to 19-year-olds. Meanwhile, the SFA employs around 925 staff and contracts with more than 1,000 colleges, private training organisations and employers, with more than £4bn of funding each year.

The SFA job was advertised with a salary of £142,000, but Mr Lauener, who earns up to £145,000 with the EFA, will not receive a pay rise for his new role, said a government spokesperson.

A spokesperson for the Department for Education, which oversees the EFA, said: “Peter has a strong team of directors who take day-to-day responsibility of the EFA’s functions.” The SFA declined to comment.