Cuts hit much more than bank balances

Former House of Commons Education Select Committee specialist Ben Nicholls is head of policy and communications at London’s Newham College. He writes exclusively for FE Week every month.

When I started writing this column a year ago, I promised myself I’d try not to rant, to get too defensive, or to be one-sided.

But when the government announced its 17.5 per cent funding cut for 18-year-old learners, all that went out of the window.

Because it was Christmas, though, I tried to approach the problem with gentle humour, in the shape of a little poem.

Somehow, it made me feel that, grim though the cut was, we could protest in a calm and possibly even witty way. However, the time for calm and wit has gone.

As more evidence emerges on the damaging impact of the cut, lots of us get angrier.

As we all know, individual colleges are set to lose hundreds of thousands from their budgets, and will overall be hit far worse than other providers.

We need, also, to fight against the similarly devastating cut to adult learning funds.

Under plans revealed by FE Week, the Skills Funding Agency [SFA] will no longer fund nearly 1,500 qualifications, many of which are the most valuable in ensuring participation and progression.

In a college like ours, where so many adult learners have had such poor prior experience of education, or come from seriously disadvantaged areas, short and flexible qualifications can be the best way of ensuring success and employability — a picture no doubt recognised by colleagues across the country.

It goes without saying that the damage to budgets is significant, not just for the measurable loss of funds, but because of the wider impact.

If, for example, short courses are no longer possible, and adults on 16 to19 programmes don’t attract viable funds, what does the adult learning offer look like in many colleges?

If a programme is offered with a majority of 18-year-old learners, but some others, does the funding cut necessitate the closure of the entire course?

Barbara Spicer [SFA interim chief executive] was wrong to suggest, writing on the FE Week website about the adult qualifications cut, that it was “not about funding policy” — both it and the 18-year-old cut are very clearly funding issues.

Actually, though, the real issues go much wider than cash.

The cuts could quite simply result in fewer students going to FE colleges, particularly if certain courses have to close, not to mention the potential impact on staff recruitment and morale.

They could also have a devastating effect on the education of people from minority backgrounds, from deprived areas, with low levels of English ability, or with poor records of previous attainment, because these are the people for whom the flexible courses are often of most value.

They could result in fewer students — from those backgrounds and others — accessing higher education and apprenticeships, or the best jobs, or the other opportunities which come from those pathways.

Finally, they will — in their immense short-sightedness — have a lasting and negative impact on local and national economies, because people will, as a result of the funding changes, have a tougher time getting jobs.

And in doing all of this, the cuts will damage efforts by the FE sector and many others to improve social mobility and economic inclusion.

Combined, these cuts are nothing less than an assault on the values of fairness, equality, opportunity and access for which FE has always been the proud flag-flyer.

The situation makes me phenomenally angry, and I’m glad that our college, alongside our representative bodies and others, won’t let the issue rest.

We all need to channel our anger into our local MPs’ inboxes, into articles and letters and posters and case studies and anything else which will make the government see its error.

If we’re serious about the value of what FE does, we will fight seriously against a cut not just to our funds but to everything we stand for – and which you’d hope the country does too.

 

Government funding agencies publish reports on Barnfield Federation

The Skills Funding Agency (SFA) and Education Funding Agency (EFA) have this afternoon published findings from their investigations into alleged funding of “ghost learners” and financial mismanagement at Barnfield Federation.

The SFA report explains how the federation’s college slashed funding claims by nearly £1m after the probe, by auditors KPMG, got under way. Among the problems was guided learning hours failing to match attendance registers “leading to an overstatement of funding”.

It said: “In summary, a lack of oversight by governors of the organisation as a whole, together with a lack of clarity around financial information led to risks not being identified around the financial performance of the college.”

The Education Funding Agency’s investigation report also came out today. It looked at many of the same issues covered by the SFA probe.

The SFA report went on to outline how federation founder, former director general and ex-college principal Sir Peter Birkett was allowed to leave last year with an Audi A5 company car because governors thought he would in fact be getting a far less expensive, and older, Jaguar. He also got two, unspecified, lump sum payments and an additional month’s holiday pay.

None of the perks had been in his contract, although the report said he had only asked for a “few extra days holiday in excess of his contractual entitlement”.

The report, which came out the day Hertfordshire Police decided it would not carry out a criminal investigation, continued: “We do not believe that the board properly and diligently negotiated the former principal’s final payment on leaving the college, mistakenly allowing an expensive motor vehicle to be transferred to him and, in addition, paid him above that to which he was contractually entitled.

“This was not proper use of college funds.”

A Barnfield Federation spokesperson told FE Week it had been, “working for some months to address the issues raised by the agency investigation, and are putting in place a set of actions which address those issues”.

She added: “We are determined to put Barnfield Federation at the forefront of local education provision.

“We are proud of our education record and we are determined to maintain and exceed those standards for future generations of students and their parents.”

The federation’s interim chief executive, Dame Jackie Fisher, said: “We are tackling the issues raised by the report with the single aim of ensuring that Barnfield is a strong, fit-for-purpose education provider that puts its students, parents and staff at the forefront of its thinking and actions.

“Our efforts over the next few months will be to identify and deliver the best possible shape and structure for the federation, the college and our academies.”

Sir Peter could not be contacted by FE Week.

Dame Jackie Fisher, chief executive, Barnfield Federation

Dame Jackie Fisher, describes herself as “an outsider to the system looking in”.

Coming from the well-known former chief of one of the largest college groups in England, NGC (formerly Newcastle College Group), who was named a dame for her services to education in 2010, it’s a bit of a surprise.

“I don’t like rules that aren’t necessary, and I don’t like being organised or orchestrated — I never have,” she says.

Fisher’s attitude to “unnecessary” constraints may explain her formidable reputation in the sector, not least as the chief who booted Ofsted inspectors out of NCG in 2012 — something she describes as a “deeply painful” professional experience.

“I have always treated people, and expect to be treated, with openness, transparency, respect and a fundamental decency,” says the 55-year-old.

“And it was extremely disorientating, and actually quite traumatic, to find oneself in a position where they did not appear to be the predominant value system underpinning the inspection.”

But there’s a brusque pragmatism about Fisher, which you suspect would have allowed her to get past the experience.

“I think very few things are the end of your world,” she says.

I think very few things are the end of your world

“Most things help create the person you are and must be seen, as much as possible, as positive things. Because we are a work in progress, aren’t we?”

Another factor which might contribute to Fisher’s outsider sense is her strong identification with the north of England and her native Yorkshire, and a frustration with the North/South divide.

“When you meet people from London or the South, they immediately tell you how far north they’ve been, as though it requires a congratulatory handshake,” she explains.

Born near Leeds, Fisher describes her parents, Anne and Stanley, as “both very bright but intellectually-thwarted”.

“What you are talking about is people who were born pre-NHS, pre-state education, left school at 13,” she says.

“Without the war — I know it’s a harsh thing to say — they probably wouldn’t have had those opportunities presented to them.

“They were both, because of the time they were born, very closely tied into a kind of pre-opportunity Britain.”

However, Fisher explains, this background made it difficult for her parents to push her academically.

“I think they were educationally aspirational for me but in a very abstract way, without much of an understanding of the system and how it worked,” she says.

As a result, she says, she had “very little access or contact with professionals and I don’t think I had the experiences or the imagination to realise exactly what it was possible to do”.

Fisher left school at 16 and got a job with an insurance company, but her life changed when, at 18, she married and gave birth to twin boys.

She developed preeclampsia, a potentially life-threatening complication with the pregnancy that left her in hospital for four months.

“During that time, I met some professional women in hospital,” she says.

“And although I had been to school, clearly, that was my first real insight into how you get to university and how going to university can benefit you.”

Having recovered, an inspired Fisher began studying for A-levels in history, general studies and English, which she went on to study at bachelor’s and masters levels at Park Lane College (now Leeds City College).

“I like books, I like poetry… I believe it gives you a much more sophisticated understanding of the world, and of people’s motivations and desires – and I don’t think you can get that from anything but books,” she explains.

With two small children, her education was quite a balancing act, but she says, her studies were “helpful” in giving her a focus outside the home.

Having children at a young age, she says, was “just the way life turned out”.

“But I think it was a good thing,” she says.

“Forgetting the fact that I have some delightful and lovely children — which I do, and fabulous grandchildren — certainly at the time I was developing my career, it was easier and more sensible to have the kids delivered first, because if you took a career break 25 years ago it was actually a career killer.”

Fisher now has two stepchildren and nine grandchildren, with a 10th on the way, but the college leader tells me she doesn’t have any “matriarchal qualities”.

“My children were born assertive, confident — I am not entirely sure I made any contribution to shaping them at all,” she says.

“They’re like me but more so.”

Following university, Fisher got a job teaching English and communications at Wakefield College — with “absolutely no experience whatsoever”.

“I did actually seek help from my manager,” she says.

“She rammed a textbook into my hand and said: ‘Read it over the summer’.

“I have to say it was extremely helpful — apart from that, I made it up.”

In spite of this, she says, she absolutely loved teaching, and moved up the career ladder to St Helen’s College, before the ‘outsider’ became vice-principal and then principal at Tameside College.

There wasn’t a particular moment, she
says, when she decided she wanted to lead a college.

“I think it was evolutionary,” she says. “At the point where you become a senior manager, you become much closer to the detail of the job of a principal, and you ask yourself, ‘Could I do that job?’

“If the view that you take is that you can, then you ask yourself, ‘Do I want to do that job?’

“And for me, the answer was, ‘Yes, I do actually’ — I don’t know why people would say no.”

Getting the Damehood, Fisher says, was “a very nice recognition, but it isn’t real life”.

“I’m not intuitively someone who takes pride in things, because it’s self-congratulatory and complacent,” she says.

After 12 years at NCG, Fisher made the decision to retire, and she says it had nothing to do with the Ofsted inspection.

“I believe organisations have a story arc, where a particular leader is the person to do that job — and I was very conscious over the last couple of years that my arc was coming to an end,” she says.

But now Fisher has taken the reins at Barnfield, a federation rocked by accusations of financial mismanagement and grade massaging, the outsider, it seems, has begun a challenging new story arc.

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It’s a personal thing

What’s your favourite book?

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

 

What’s your pet hate?

Beetroot and the bedroom tax

 

What did you want to be when you grew up?

An architect

 

What do you do to switch off from work?

Being an English literature graduate, I have an interest in books and the theatre, and cinema, and I have a lot of family

 

If you could invite anyone to a dinner party, living or dead, who would it be?

I would not have a dinner party, regardless of who could attend. I would rather go to the pub

 

Exclusive: an FE Week Q&A with Skills Minister Matthew Hancock on apprenticeships

Reforms, the minimum wage and 24+ loans are just three issues covered in an exclusive  FE Week Q&A as Skills Minister Matthew Hancock speaks all things apprenticeships. 

 

Are you worried about being seen to tweak with the system too much?

Our priority is to expand apprenticeships where they deliver greatest benefits, including for young people, to reflect sector skills needs and opportunities, and where there is progression to advanced and higher levels.

We also want it to become the norm for young people to go into an apprenticeship or go to university or do both in the case of higher apprenticeships.

We are therefore making a number of reforms to the programme to ensure that apprenticeships are even more rigorous and responsive to the needs of employers. These are set out in full in The Future of Apprenticeships in England implementation plan.

 

Do you think apprentices are put off by £2.68 minimum wage?

The apprentice minimum wage is a minimum — not the rate for the job. Research shows that in reality employers pay more — the average pay for apprentices is £200 per week.

The apprentice minimum wage recognises that employers invest significantly in apprenticeships and that apprentices are initially less productive than other, skilled employees.

Employers may be put off recruiting apprentices due to their lack of experience in the workplace and the additional training costs involved. A lower pay rate addresses this.

 

Can the dip in uptake of 24+ apprenticeships be rectified now that advance learning loans don’t apply?

The introduction of 24+ advanced learning loans has been very successful. To the end of December, there had been over 57,000 applications submitted.

However, application numbers indicate that employers and learners are not engaging with loans in apprenticeships so the government has taken steps to remove apprenticeships from loans and re-introducing grant funding to the provider.

Regulations that will remove apprenticeships from the 24+ Advanced Learning Loans scheme were laid in Parliament on February 13 and are set to come in to force on March 7.

 

How much of a boost are you expecting to apprenticeship numbers from the HMRC funding reform if it goes ahead?

The apprenticeships programme is employer demand-led, and as such government does not set targets for apprenticeships but provides funding and forecasts the overall number of places that may be afforded. We rely on employers and providers to work together to offer sufficient opportunities to meet local demand, taking advantage of the greater freedoms and flexibilities that we have created in the further education system.

 

What do you consider your greatest success with regards to apprenticeships?

Apprenticeships are real jobs with training. There were 868,700 people undertaking an apprenticeship in the 2012/13 academic year — the highest recorded in modern history.

More than 60 organisations are involved in the first phase of trailblazer projects. They took on more than 13,000 apprenticeship starts in 2011/12.

We have also taken strong steps to raise standards and crack down on poor quality. The apprenticeship programme is underpinned by statutory standards to make sure that all apprenticeships are real jobs and lead to recognised qualifications.

New quality measures such as minimum durations and enhanced English and maths requirements have been introduced and enforced. We have removed 50,000 short duration apprenticeships and 20,000 programme-led apprenticeships, where apprentices were not employed in a real job.

 

How is your own apprentice getting on and are you still in touch with your previous apprentice?

I now have two parliamentary apprentices. They are both getting on very well. It is hard to keep up with them as they are so keen and learning fast. I am also still in touch with my apprentice from last year.

 

National Apprenticeship Week supplement
National Apprenticeship Week supplement

National Apprenticeship Week 2014

Download your free copy of the FE Week 16-page feature supplement focusing on National Apprenticeship Week 2014.

Click here to download (5 mb)

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Introduction

Apprenticeships have long been the Coalition’s answer to the UK’s skills shortage, and in some ways, their efforts are paying off.

Many of our experts in this National Apprenticeship Week supplement will give you the facts and figures, which generally point to success for programme. More people are on apprenticeships, and that is a very good thing.

As someone who left school at 18 for a job in my first newsroom in Gloucester, I know the value of learning and earning. But, to be fair, I’m hardly the government’s target market anymore as a six-year happily-employed, and fully qualified, journalist.

The question is — do young people in England know the value? Are schools presenting apprenticeships as a viable option? Are children hearing about them in the same way as they hear about university? Are children hearing about them at all?

We have a long way to go before all these can be answered with a resounding yes.

Schools continue to push university as a preferred route for bright kids, as they did with last year’s apprentice champion of the year Chloe Gailes, on pages 10 and 11.
Young people are still put off by low wages, and few would say the apprentice minimum wage of £2.68 an hour (just over £100 a-week, or £5,226 a-year) does much to alleviate that. This is an issue discussed by National Union of Students vice president for FE Joe Vinson on page 12.

Yet there are still 10 applications for every post advertised on the National Apprenticeship Service website — indicating the problem might also be a shortage of employers.

This supplement aims to inform, empower and start a debate, with expert views and opinion from politicians to principals, from chief executives to commissioners, and from Britain to Brussels, starting with Skills Minister Matthew Hancock, before his Shadow, Liam Byrne, and then Liberal Democrat apprentice champion Gordon Birtwistle have their say.

However, the first aim of this supplement is to celebrate the programme, so here’s
raising a toast to all apprentices, their employers and
providers.

Apprentice minimum wage cheat among those ‘named and shamed’

At least one apprentice employer was among the first batch to be “named and shamed” as the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) gets tough on national minimum wage offenders.

Peter Oakes, of Peter Oakes Ltd, Macclesfield; Lisa Maria Cathcart, of Salon Sienna, Manchester; Mohammed Yamin, of Minto Guest House, Edinburgh; Anne Henderson, of Chambers Hairdressers, Middlesbrough; and Ruzi Ruzyyev, a car wash operator in Carmarthen, South Wales, were all said to have underpaid.

A BIS spokesperson said Mr Oakes neglected to pay £3619.70 to two workers, Ms Cathcart neglected to pay £1760.48 to one worker, Mr Yamin neglected to pay £808.56 to one employee and Ms Henderson and Mr Ruzyyev neglected to pay £452.22 and £225.38, respectively, to one worker each.

However, it was not disclosed which had offended over apprentice pay, which is legally at least £2.68 an-hour.

The BIS spokesperson said: “We do not disclose information on the identity or status of the workers.”

She added that the five cases had been “thoroughly investigated by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs”.

It comes just weeks after the Low Pay Commission recommended that the apprentice minimum wage should go up 5p from October. A BIS spokesperson said the recommendation would be considered.

Keeping an apprenticeship culture change in sight

A busy year for apprenticeships shows no sign of letting up with reform proposals expected to come to fruition, explains Matthew Hancock, skills minister. 

Across the country, our culture is changing, with more people recognising the long overlooked value of technical skills, and just how valuable apprenticeships are.

This will be another exciting year for skills and apprenticeships and I am committed to continuing our hard work to reform the skills system so it meets the needs of both learners and employers.’

Apprenticeships deliver work for young people and adults, giving apprentices the chance to earn while they learn in a real job, gaining a real qualification and a real future.

Since becoming skills minister, I have said that I want the new norm to be for young people to either choose to go to university or begin an apprenticeship. This is starting to become a reality.

Research shows that one-in-five of the top 100 apprenticeship employers have a former apprentice on their board.

This highlights the contribution that an apprentice can make to an organisation and the value of apprenticeships to individual’s career progression. It’s something we continue to build on.

We have seen the introduction of higher apprenticeships in new areas such as law, space engineering and even spies, with MI5 and MI6 offering roles for the right candidates.

Equivalent to degrees, more of these specialised and highly-skilled apprenticeships are being offered each year, giving individuals the chance to continue their professional development and fully realise their potential.

We want all apprenticeships to meet the needs of the learner, with training that is high quality and rigorous, and responsive to the needs of their employer. When firms decide to take on an apprentice, it’s vitally important they can see the benefits to their business.

That’s why I launched the apprenticeship trailblazers. This programme allows employers in key sectors, including automotive and aerospace, finance and professional services, to shape the training and qualifications made available to potential apprentices.

This will ensure that apprentices will develop the skills and gain the knowledge to succeed in their chosen career path. This year I am looking forward to announcing the initial results from the first phase of trailblazers as well as the sectors that will be involved in the next phase.

For those young people who are not quite ready for an apprenticeship, the new traineeships programme is an ideal option.

Traineeships unlock the great potential of young people and prepare them for their future careers by helping them to become ‘work ready’. They provide the essential work preparation training, maths and English and work experience needed to get an apprenticeship or other job.

More than 150 employers are now behind traineeships, helping to unlock the potential of young people. I am also urging yet more employers to help 16 to 23-year-olds gain the vital work experience needed.

During National Apprenticeship Week, there will be more than 500 events taking place across the country, involving apprentices, employers and training providers. I am looking forward to taking part in some of the visits myself and meeting the people that are benefitting from apprenticeships.

During the week, we are also encouraging employers to visit the National Apprenticeship Service (NAS) website — apprenticeships.org.uk — and pledge the number of apprenticeship places they plan to offer within their business.

At the end of the week we’ll be able to announce how many employers have come forward and how many places will be available across the wide range of sectors for prospective apprentices.

This will be another exciting year for skills and apprenticeships and I am committed to continuing our hard work to reform the skills system so it meets the needs of both learners and employers.

I want to see high quality vocational educational and apprenticeships deliver for the economy, for employers and for learners and apprentices themselves.

We are building a highly-skilled workforce across a range of industry sectors. This will help grow the UK economy and us to compete, and most importantly, give thousands of
young people the chance to reach their potential.

 

National Apprenticeship Week supplement
National Apprenticeship Week supplement

Promoting the job done on apprenticeships and examining what’s next

The National Audit Office has laid out the economic benefit underpinning investment in apprenticeships, says Gordon Birtwistle, Liberal Democrat apprentice champion, who explains what the Coalition has been doing to boost their popularity and rigour — and also what still needs to be done.

As the government apprenticeship ambassador to business, my job is to advocate and promote apprenticeships to businesses, young people and schools across the country; working closely with both the National Apprenticeship Service and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

The Coalition is committed to creating more apprenticeship placements than ever before and enabling young people to see apprenticeships as a valid and worthwhile next step after school.

Over the past year I have been visiting a range of schools, training providers, businesses including small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and apprentices to hear from a range of people and to establish how the government can improve apprenticeships.

Since 2010, Liberal Democrats in government have helped to create 1.6m new apprenticeship starts — more than double the number under Labour. As a party, we are extremely dedicated to keep the number of apprenticeships growing.

Apprenticeships are vitally important to the UK’s continued economic recovery.

For the UK to compete in the future, we need a highly skilled workforce. The National Audit Office has estimated that for every £1 spent on apprenticeships the wider economy benefits by £18.

The government is supporting businesses to ensure that apprenticeships are of the highest quality possible.

We have introduced new rules requiring an apprenticeship to last a minimum of 12 months. At the same time we are supporting the training of apprenticeships. We will cover 100 per cent of training costs for apprentices aged 16 to 18 and 50 per cent of the costs of those aged 19 to 24.

The government is also encouraging new businesses to take on apprentices. Companies employing more than 1,000 staff can receive grants of up to £1,500 to help support apprentices, in addition to training costs, if they have not taken on apprentices before.

There is an aging workforce across UK manufacturing — particularly in my
local area of Lancashire. We need young people to be trained up to ensure the knowledge and experience of the current workforce are not lost and can be passed along to the next generation creating a knowledge transfer network that will be retained.

It’s clear that SMEs also need to be able to access cheap finance to ensure capital investment is achieved and they need to be made aware of and understand financial markets, in particular the banking industry.

The government needs to ensure that the tax and regulatory systems are easy to understand and provide incentives to ensure SME companies expand and do so with apprentices.

I am confident the majority of SMEs in the UK are well-managed, visionary and see their role in delivering our future’s economy. They are hugely important to
our country and the road to economic recovery.

The government is also working to make sure there is better recognition of apprentices. Part of National Apprenticeship Week will focus on increasing awareness, understanding and demand for apprenticeships, as well as celebrating the achievements of apprentices.

Over the past month, I have had positive responses to apprenticeships and am starting to see a slight shift in attitude towards them. However there is plenty more to be done, especially in schools and on careers advice. We must engage young people and make them aware of the opportunities out there, eliminating this stigma of failure for not opting for the ‘normal’ university route.

Apprenticeships are fantastic alternatives which guarantee skills for life and employment too.

National Apprenticeship Week supplement
National Apprenticeship Week supplement

The three ‘big problems’ facing apprenticeships

Government action on the apprenticeship programme isn’t doing enough to address the UK skills gap, says Liam Byrne, shadow skills minister.

For three years, Britain has been trapped in an economy where wages have grown slowly, and prices have grown fast. Long-term unemployment is up. Youth unemployment is above 900,000. Yet all over Britain firms say they can’t get the skills they need.

We need real action to grow new jobs with better wages, not just to the lucky few but to all. This is why we need to grow the apprenticeship programme, but instead the government is shrinking it.

Today, our apprenticeship system faces three big problems.

First off, there just aren’t enough apprenticeships to go round. When it is harder to get an apprenticeship with Jaguar Land Rover than it is to get into an Oxford college, then we need more.

England has relatively low levels of apprenticeships compared with some of our main competitors. Australia, Austria, Germany and Switzerland all have between three to four times more apprentices as England.

But the overall number of apprenticeship starts has fallen on the year.

We now have fewer young people starting an apprenticeship than at the time of the last election.

Just to help, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) has bungled its most recent figures — these show that apprenticeship starts have fallen by more than 40,000, but BIS has admitted that the figures aren’t reliable because of data collection issues.

The government just can’t afford to be letting down our young people at a time when so many are out of work.

Second, the apprenticeship brand has been badly tarnished under David Cameron. We’ve seen in-work training rebadged as apprenticeships and a spike in the numbers of apprenticeships of short duration and of poor quality.

More than half of the increase in apprenticeships between 2010 and 2012 was in level two apprenticeships. One-in-five apprenticeships lasts for less than six months; and, according to the government’s own research, one-in-five apprentices report receiving neither on nor off the job training as part of their apprenticeship. And a shocking 29 per cent receive less pay than they are legally entitled to.

Third, employers — particularly small businesses — find the apprenticeship system mind-blowingly complicated. According to the CBI/Pearson Education and Skills Survey, 41 per cent of employers say they would become more involved in the apprenticeship programme if qualifications were more relevant to business needs. Just under a third of employers say that reductions in bureaucracy would encourage them to get more involved. The key issue is that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are creating jobs five times faster than big business — but only a quarter of these firms offer apprenticeships.

Labour’s Skills Taskforce recommended that doubling the number of apprenticeship offered by employers should be a national mission. That needs to involve establishing a ‘something-for-something’ deal with employers — offering employer-led sector bodies more control over skills funding and standards, provided they create more high quality apprenticeships in their sectors and supply chains.

The government’s current pilots for entirely employer-led design run the risk of leading to narrow training that meets the needs of employers but isn’t transferable; sector bodies are likely to ensure qualifications are transferable.

We also need to re-establish apprenticeships as gold-standard qualifications. This means working towards a situation where all apprenticeships are at level three or above, and last for a minimum of two years, with at least a day week of off-the-job training.

But we won’t stop there. We need an ‘earn while you learn’ revolution. That means exploring radical ideas now being tested by pioneering councils throughout the country.

In Manchester, training providers have launched a UCAS-style early application system for apprenticeships.

In Leeds, the council and Leeds College have set up an Apprenticeship Agency, designed to tackle SMEs’ reluctance to take on the risk of hiring an apprentice. Others are telling us about ideas to build new strong links between apprenticeships and university degrees. The competitiveness of our economy depends on ideas like this.

National Apprenticeship Week supplement
National Apprenticeship Week supplement