It took the National Apprenticeship Service, and the overarching Skills Funding Agency, three months to act over a 3p rise to £2.68 on the apprentice minimum wage. The rise happened in October, but it took until mid-December before the official online advertising system for apprenticeships was amended so as to only accept adverts at the higher wage. Stephen Gardner discusses the importance of keeping all things apprentice as clear as possible.

Given that apprenticeships should be about learning in the workplace rather than simply earning it is appropriate that there is a rate set for an apprenticeship minimum wage that is below the National Minimum Wage (NMW).

However, it also seems to me that this should be rigorously enforced by the government or those mandated to distribute funding, thereby ensuring that young apprentices are treated fairly by all employers.

Simply saying that the minimum wage should be paid is not enough — it seems the probability of an individual employer receiving a visit from a NMW officer is too low to prove a deterrent.

Apprentices in employment are not in a strong position to complain to their employers, even with the help of their training provider and it would seem appropriate that there should be a means whereby apprentices, or those who know that wages lower than NMW are being paid, can notify the National Apprenticeship Service in confidence.

Once notified, there should be a duty on NAS to investigate and take appropriate action. This should involve liaison with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and, where substantiated, prosecution and remedial action in the form of back payment.

Training providers should also be required to do more to ensure that the employers they contract with do pay the correct amount for all the hours worked.

Technically, only an apprentice paid the NMW is legitimately an apprentice, so the Skills Funding Agency could, in theory, recover any funding paid to a provider for an “apprentice” not in receipt of the NMW.

The first requirement is for the NMW to be widely publicised so that all school leavers and their parents or guardians know what apprentices should be paid.

Simply saying that the minimum wage should be paid is not enough

Careers advisers should be the first source of information — but this assumes that the current arrangement for providing careers advice tells the young people and their parents or guardians about apprenticeships at all.

The recent ruckus about the apprenticeships vacancy area of the NAS website is embarrassing for NAS and damaging to apprenticeships.

It should be a simple matter to ensure that the current NMW is automatically displayed on every appropriate page of the apprenticeship vacancy website, removing the opportunity for anyone to advertise a lower wage and I hope that this is something that NAS is now implementing in light of the recent adverse publicity.

Apprenticeships need to be clearly seen as a three-way investment in skills.

Government invests funding, employers (with the help of training providers) should invest in high class training, and young people invest their time and dedication to learning.

A fair financial contribution to help the apprentice with their living and travel costs during the apprenticeship is essential.

Stephen Gardner, chief executive of
Fair Train

Why have traineeships had such a poor take-up, asks Ruth Sparkes.

Traineeships were supposed to be ‘the next big thing’ for FE.

You may be forgiven for thinking that traineeships were a government knee-jerk reaction to our shocking youth unemployment figures.

While it may well be the case that 59 per cent of young people get five good GCSEs with English and maths, and these teens can go on to comfortably complete A-levels, BTecs and apprenticeships, what’s left for the 41 per cent of young people who don’t make the grades?

Pendennis, a luxury yacht builder in Falmouth, takes on a dozen apprentices every year.

This year, around 180 young people applied for an apprenticeship with the firm. This means, broadly, that the 168 applicants who were rejected didn’t have the personal skills or the qualifications the company was looking for.

We often hear similar stories surrounding the big national companies such as Rolls Royce and BT, but believe me, this sorry tale is replicated at a company near you.

Employers have been complaining that young people don’t have the necessary skills to start an apprenticeship. Traineeships are supposed to bridge that gap, and I’m sure they do. However, take-up is so poor and it’s tricky to find a learner to ask them about it.

So, if traineeships are a good thing, and there’s a real need for them, why is take-up so embarrassingly poor? We need to ask whether we’ve got the seven Ps right.

First, the product. There is no point in developing a product or service that no one wants.

We have already established the great need for traineeships, so by and large this part of the mix is okay.

Second, place. The product must be available in the right place, at the right time.

FE, like other education sectors, has its own cycle, and traineeships were not presented to the sector at the right time. As colleges and higher education providers know, any new course that misses the advice and guidance cycle misses out.

Third, promotion. Promotion is the way an organisation communicates what a product does and what it can offer its ‘customers’.

Who knows about traineeships? Government, the FE sector and West Ham’s Karren Brady know all about traineeships.

FE, like other education sectors, has its own cycle, and traineeships were not presented to the sector at the right time

What about headteachers, careers teachers, advice and guidance people, parents and most importantly, the prospective trainee? These very important stakeholders know nothing of traineeships. And they aren’t alone. By and large, employers don’t know about them either. Promotion of traineeships has been low key to say the least.

Fourth and fifth, process and people. The process of giving a service, and the behaviour of those who deliver are crucial to customer satisfaction.

And now in an effort to increase take-up, grade three providers who ‘require improvement’, according to Ofsted) will now be able to deliver traineeships as prime contractors (where they have been downgraded in-year).

On one hand, this is a good thing. Grade one and two colleges are not equally spread out geographically, so before this edict, a potential ‘trainee’ in somewhere like Bristol might have been unable to secure a traineeship simply because of a lack of a quality provider.

But on the other hand, the government was, initially, at pains to make sure that traineeships weren’t seen as sub-standard and so restricted their delivery to only good and outstanding providers, along with grade three subcontractors.

Traineeships are already below apprenticeships in the hierarchy of qualifications, and I believe the government was trying to ensure that employers and learners viewed these as desirable qualifications. If you restrict the availability of a product, you serve to make it exclusive.

Sixth, physical evidence. Training is a service, and a service can’t be experienced before it’s delivered. New courses are always a bit of an unknown quantity, there’s no track record. What is important here, especially for traineeships are institutions’ reputation with employers.

And finally, price. It is the only element of the marketing mix that generates revenue — everything else represents a cost.

Funding for traineeships has been sketchy and confusing, and a few providers have been put off by this. Never forget other products are available.

Traineeships need more time and proper, planned attention to really take hold, until then, they’ll sadly continue to be FE’s best-kept secret.

Ruth Sparkes, managing director of marketing and education, media and PR agency EMPRA

The Department for Education would have been hoping its impact assessment of the controversial 17.5 per cent funding rate cut for full-time 18-year-olds put an end to further questioning. But, as Mick Fletcher, explains, it’s done quite the opposite.

Imagine a man embarrassed about his short stature. Instead of saying he is four inches shorter than his friend, he could accurately say that he is only two inches shorter than the average of their heights.

Indeed, if he were six inches shorter than everyone else in the whole land except for his friend, he could still truthfully say that he is only two inches shorter than the average, as long as he reveals in a footnote that he means the average of himself and his friend.

If this sounds convoluted, it is, but that in essence is how the Department for Education has approached the impact assessment for the cut to 18-year-old funding.

Government is clearly embarrassed to have made a cut that discriminates against disadvantaged students.

Those who are still studying in FE at the age of 18 are more likely to be from a disadvantaged background than 16 or 17-year-olds.

They are even more likely to be from such a background than 16 and 17-year-old students in school sixth forms who, in general, come from more affluent households.

To focus cuts on these students in particular risks undermining any gains achieved through policies like the pupil premium and further damaging social mobility.

The impact assessment presents the data in a way calculated to disguise these facts.

The assessment appears to have been written to justify a policy that is clearly flawed

Instead of comparing 18-year-olds with 16 and 17-year-olds it compares them with the average – 16 to 18-year-olds as a whole.

Instead of comparing those affected with the rest of the cohort it only looks at those on the ILR ie it excludes school sixth forms which actually recruit more full time 16 and 17-year-old pupils than FE colleges.

Furthermore, it makes no mention of the potential distortion caused by omitting such a large part of the population in question nor attempts to estimate its direction and scale.

The inescapable fact is that this is a cut that targets poorer students and those who work with them in FE colleges.

The assessment does identify that the impact on FE colleges is more than seven times greater than it is on school sixth forms (the authors show this as a 2.6 percentage point difference whereas it is equally true to say that colleges are hit 750 per cent harder).

In a commentary that is truly breathtaking, however, they argue that it is acceptable to hit colleges harder because schools “have so far seen a significantly larger reduction in funding per student since 2011/12, as part of equalising funding rates across institution types”.

What that means in translation is that after years of foot dragging government has finally abolished the indefensible funding gap between schools and colleges — and since that has meant a cut to school budgets it is now right to target any further cuts on FE. The authors have clearly been clutching at straws.

The Government seems equally embarrassed by the impact on black and minority ethnic (BME) students and uses similar strategies to downplay the impact.

Once more, the large numbers in school sixth forms are left out of the calculation and despite the fact that FE recruits from a more diverse background there is no commentary or attempt to show the potential distortion.

Even the trick of comparing 18-year-olds with 16 to 18-year-olds still shows that the proportion of BME students in the group affected is some 30 per cent higher than 16 to 18-year-olds as a whole (26 per cent as opposed to 20 per cent).

The impact assessment therefore chooses instead to highlight that within FE colleges being both from a BME background and from a disadvantaged postcode is not more prevalent among 18-year-olds than 16 to 18-year-olds.

Reading the impact assessment one is forced to conclude that this is not evidence-based policy-making but policy-based evidence.

The assessment appears to have been written to justify a policy that is clearly flawed. At a superficial level it manages to do that, but it does not hold up to serious scrutiny

Mick Fletcher is an FE Consultant

Providers delivered less 16 to 18 apprenticeship provision last year than they had initially expected. It resulted in a £241.5m under-delivery on the programme across the sector. Ben Pike looks at what providers can do to get more teenagers interested in apprenticeships.

At a time when the media is shining the spotlight on apprenticeships and the government is making significant investment in vocational training, apprenticeship providers should be dancing with joy at the influx of young people to fill thousands of roles across the UK.

The market for 16 to 18-year-olds is a target market which is arguably having the toughest time to find work and so should be falling over itself to grab the opportunities that an apprenticeship can offer.

But this is not the picture across the industry.

With many training providers struggling to find the right people to deliver on their funding allocations, why are some providers succeeding where others aren’t?

It is a pity that some higher-achieving schools still show resistance to apprenticeships, but this shouldn’t dissuade providers from plugging away at the basics

We’re a grade one provider and we have built success with 16 to 18s by giving them what they want — that’s a real job, an exciting progression route in the IT sector, and industry-recognised qualifications that support them into their career.

But to achieve that, providers should start by pleasing the employer and work backwards to the candidate.

One challenge here is to communicate the benefits of apprenticeships to employers, and set their expectations accordingly.

We are honest with employers — a 16 to 18-year-old may take longer to become effective. They may interview less confidently. They may do some unusual things in the office.

Because 19+ candidates are only part-funded, QA also charges a programme fee for them.

Older candidates are likely to be more mature and boast professional experience. They require less of an investment in time, so we invite employers to invest more financially to work with them. This way, the employer is faced with a commercial choice over their new hire.

It is an effective, positive way to delineate the two funding options and frame the benefits in an employer’s mind. The employer is challenged to make the internal investment in time required to take on a more junior person.

Beyond telling them what to expect from a candidate, providers need to help employers fit as much of the apprenticeship around their workplace needs as possible. A provider should help employers create bespoke development plans, so that apprentices come into a well-structured, nurturing environment.

The employer has thought about the role that the apprentices should fulfil – this is the structure upon which to hang the qualifications and units; not the other way around.

If a training provider can communicate opportunities through engaging dialogue and proactive campaigns, then those elusive 16 to 18-year-olds will respond positively.

Speak to 16 to 18-year-olds where they’re likely to listen — via social media, on-the-go communications, or through their influencers and peers.

It is a pity that some higher-achieving schools still show resistance to apprenticeships, but this shouldn’t dissuade providers from plugging away at the basics.

We see our apprentices as our strongest ambassadors, so we put them at the centre of our communications — whether via imagery, quotes on emails or appearing on YouTube, showcasing those who have enjoyed the process is by far our strongest endorsement.

And as for what to say — it comes back to giving them what they want. As much as possible providers should give young people live, up-to-the-minute information on all vacancies and opportunities — creating a buzz and urgency as young people see their peers step into roles that could have been theirs.

Be bold with campaigns and unapologetic about success — in a fast-paced world, only the loudest are heard.

Finally, the candidate screening and selection process is a crucial ingredient to attracting young people to apprenticeships.

For many of these young people, an interview for an apprenticeship may be their first ever job interview and as an apprenticeship provider we have to do more than simply hand out tips. Through telephone assessments, recruitment days and interview preparation, there is a structured process that adds value and excites them at each stage.

Ben Pike, director, QA Apprenticeships