Simple, structured and supported — three key characteristics that must define moves toward apprenticeship funding being routed directly to businesses, says Neil Carberry, director for employment and skills policy, Confederation of British Industry.
Now that things are looking up for the economy, investment in apprenticeships is crucial.
As the recent results of a UK Commission for Employment & Skills survey show, the flipside of growth is an escalating skills gaps and shortages — the survey found that skills shortage vacancies had doubled since 2009.
Encouraging more firms to benefit from apprenticeships will be a vital part of tackling this skills crunch, in part because of the particular combination of training they deliver.
And by allowing people to take their first steps on the career ladder and for others to move up it, more apprenticeships will help us move towards growth that benefits everyone after a prolonged squeeze.
Many businesses have already invested in delivering high quality apprenticeships and many more could be, including smaller firms, with the right balance of simplicity and relevance.
That’s why the apprenticeships reforms are such an important opportunity — we have the chance to establish a truly demand-led apprenticeship system that works for firms of all sizes.
There is some great work going on out there — the five per cent club, made up of some of the UK’s biggest employers, is focused on industry playing an active part in addressing youth unemployment and the chronic skills shortage we face.
Its members are companies who have signed up to five per cent of their UK workforce being young people on structured training schemes over the next five years, which includes apprenticeships.
The trailblazer pilots also demonstrate firms’ willingness to play their role in this change.
Road-testing the reforms like this is the only way to find the speed bumps and level them out.
One of these is to find ways for time-poor smaller firms to genuinely feed into and shape frameworks.
Another is some hand-holding for firms who are less familiar with training systems — whether that be shared learning from other trailblazers, or from industry or sector bodies.
In both of these areas, businesses recognise that they have a responsibility towards their wider sectors and supply chains.
Routing more funding through employers to send a clearer market signal of the kinds of provision that firms value is a proposition we’re right behind.
There are undoubtedly some significant hurdles to overcome, and we have set a number of key tests for any new system.
First of all it must be simple. The government must reduce, not increase the complexity for firms taking on apprentices.
Any transfer to the new system must be carefully phased and piloted, with firms given the option to retain arrangements that work over the change period and providers given the time needed to adapt.
A key part of this is coming up with a solution on how to support smaller firms to play their part. Finally, the government must retain the current level of support for the apprenticeship programme: the proposed reforms must be an opportunity to spend smarter, not reduce overall levels of government support for the apprenticeship programme.
None of these changes can stand in isolation. New apprenticeship frameworks and funding arrangements must sit within a wider skills ecosystem that supports the new leadership role for business.
For example, I envision a strong role for collaboration, including providers, to guide and enable smaller firms to engage meaningfully with the skills system. One way to achieve this is through seed funding for clusters of skills provision — locally, sectorally and within supply chains.
I’m in no doubt that we have to seize the opportunity the current reforms present us with. It represents a seismic change for businesses — but if we can implement a demand-led skills system, the potential prize is huge.
While National Apprenticeship Week rightly celebrates the programme, we shouldn’t forget the problems those on it face, says Joe Vinson, vice president, further education, National Union of Students.
National Apprenticeship Week is dedicated to the thousands of apprentices across the UK and it is a celebration of the positive impact they have on individuals, businesses and the wider economy.
Apprenticeships are fantastic for businesses, personal careers and creating opportunities for both employers and apprentices, but unfortunately the fact is that vocational study and apprenticeships often aren’t viewed with the same esteem as other routes of education.
This is evident right from the start of the study leaver’s journey, from the sheer lack of information, advice and guidance in schools, universities and colleges.
It should be shaped in collaboration with the learners themselves, but at the moment the information and advice available to students is patchy and often not very good.
Research from the National Union of Students last year showed that more than 50 per cent of university students were reported as being unaware of the apprenticeship opportunities available to them.
We’ve even found that some students have been told that they are “too clever” to think about going down this route.
How can learners begin to shape their own destiny without a guarantee of impartial careers advice?
More needs to be done to ensure that apprenticeships are valued and promoted as much as the other choices available to students.
Especially because with many not being able to afford tuition fees for university, other career options are looking more enticing.
Our own research, however, has showed that the apprenticeship minimum wage — a measly £2.68 per hour — could be a major deterrent for those who would otherwise consider apprenticeships.
The government’s own evidence last year showed a fifth of apprentices were paid below even that pathetic wage.
Research from the Equality and Human Rights Commission indicates that pay and the quality of apprenticeships are inextricably linked.
Traditionally male apprenticeships such as engineering and construction have better wages, more classroom time, and more on the job training than traditionally female apprenticeships, such as hairdressing and childcare positions.
The very best apprenticeships are doing what they can to combat this, but this kind of quality should be standard practice, not a luxury for the lucky ones.
The low wages paid to apprentices stack up problems in other areas of their lives too.
They have little disposable income and let’s not forget that many have to pay to travel to work or to college.
We’ve heard stories of apprentices who have to pay almost £10 a-day to travel to work while on the apprentice minimum wage.
We’ve heard stories where apprentices are only paid for the four days they are in work, but not for their study day in college. How can anyone expect to live a decent life on such a low income?
We need more than just naming and shaming.
We need a clampdown on those who are choosing to exploit hardworking young people trying to get their foot on the career ladder.
We need to raise the esteem of those choosing their own vocational path into adulthood. We need to view apprenticeships with the same respect that other educational choices receive.
We need to make sure that all young people are aware of all the choices they have on offer to them. And we need these things now. Apprentices must have a voice. And we will make sure they are heard.
The government is pushing hard on promoting apprenticeships, but five key areas still need to be looked at, including employer engagement and maths and English, explains David Russell, chief executive of the Education & Training Foundation.
I have been heavily involved in shaping national apprenticeships policy over much of the last five years. But the view from Whitehall is always a partial one, in many senses of the word.
That’s why, in my first month as chief executive of the Education and Training Foundation, I have been visiting providers, talking to learners, and hearing what employers, apprentices and sector professionals across the country need.
Those of us who work in the sector need no convincing about the vital role apprenticeships play in building the skilled workforce employers need to reshape the economy and meet local and regional business needs.
We know apprenticeships can provide the highest quality learning experiences, and that there is an abundance of excellent practice out there, with providers working hand-in-hand with employers to deliver relevant, high level training with a clear line of sight to work.
But we should not make the mistake of assuming everyone outside the sector shares this view.
There is still a long way to go in terms of convincing young people, parents, and indeed schools, that vocational study is as valuable and rigorous a route into a career as university.
Not all training providers and employers are best placed or equipped to support apprentices or engage with the government’s planned reforms to the apprenticeship programme.
And for all the fanfare, the percentage of employers hiring apprentices in the UK is still disappointingly low, especially among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
That’s why the foundation is commissioning a suite of programmes to support providers and employers in further developing their apprenticeship programmes, and ensuring that traineeships, which are often the route into apprenticeships, are rigorous programmes which increase employability of young people and promote to employers the value of learning in a working context.
In November, we commissioned two of the sector membership bodies which shape our board — the Association of Colleges and the Association of Employment and Learning Providers — to ask providers what they needed to help them, and their apprentices, achieve their full potential.
Their members told us they need help in five key areas — engaging employers, especially SMEs; communicating the benefits of maths and English provision to learners and employers; embedding maths and English into apprenticeships; developing staff and their capacity; and ensuring that the apprenticeship provision is tailored to suit employer needs.
In response, we have launched our apprenticeship support programme. It will have two phases.
The first, which launches this month and runs until December, will focus on engaging and involving employers, especially SMEs; meeting the needs of the labour market, locally, nationally, or for a specific or emerging sector; and preparing for the design of apprenticeships in the future.
The second, which runs from January to July next year, will embed and contextualise level two maths and English, develop new approaches to teaching, learning and assessment, and adapt and develop existing apprenticeship delivery to fit the new standards being delivered by the government’s trailblazer pilots.
Just like apprentices, professionals in our sector want their learning to be relevant, in the context of their work, and provided by experts. So models to support these approaches will be at the heart of our programme.
We will also be supporting and managing a series of provider-led action research projects. The learning from these will be used to enable all types of providers to learn from, adopt and embed effective practice.
I want this programme to equip and enable sector professionals with the confidence and professionalism to encourage employers to expand their involvement with apprenticeships.
I also want us to help employers evolve from being intelligent customers to informed collaborators, ensuring apprenticeships bring the benefits to the economy we know they can.
It was recently reported that apprenticeship providers have under-delivered on their allocated number of funded apprenticeships for 16 to 18-year-olds in their August 2012 allocations.
Education Funding Agency figures show that 769 colleges and training providers were going to be funded around £827m for 16 to 18 apprenticeships, but 524 providers had under-delivered by a total of £241m, potentially impacting on the future allocations that these centres will receive.
So what are the reasons behind this?
Some have pointed towards increased competition from 19+ applicants to get onto apprenticeship programmes. Others have speculated that it could be due to the requirement for increased employer contributions, putting employers off taking on young apprentices. It also begs the question — could the situation be indicative of problems with forthcoming apprenticeship reform?
Whatever the reasons, the providers who’ve under delivered will potentially be in line for a reduction in their young people’s apprenticeship funding the following year which may affect their capacity to deliver apprenticeships to younger learners.
At NCFE, we’re keen to increase both the appetite of providers to deliver apprenticeships and the appetite of businesses to take apprentices on.
The quarterly apprenticeship Index produced by the National Apprenticeship Service (NAS) this month, shows that there has been a phenomenal increase in online applications for apprenticeship vacancies between August and October 2013, leaping by 43 per cent.
Each online position is attracting an average of 12 applications, demonstrating that demand is significantly outstripping supply.
It is clear that we need to capitalise on the evident enthusiasm of these young people and encourage employees to see the long-term benefits of hiring apprentices to help grow their businesses.
Apprenticeships can go a long way to helping education meet the skills needs of the economy, uniting the worlds of learning and work. Forecasts suggest that apprentices could add up to £3.4bn a-year in economic gains, holding the key to a highly skilled workforce that can compete and thrive on a global scale.
Prime Minister David Cameron has said that he wants apprenticeships to be seen as a ‘first class career move’, while Skills Minister Matthew Hancock recently highlighted research which reveals that one-in-five employers have former apprentices working in senior positions.
Yes, apprenticeships are high on the government agenda, and they’re a top priority for us at NCFE too.
According to the NAS index, the greatest numbers of both applications and vacancies were in the business, administration and law sector and it’s with this high demand in mind that NCFE offers a range of apprenticeships in this area.
Our apprenticeships also span popular sectors including education and training, health, public services and care, leisure, travel and tourism and retail and commercial enterprise. Alongside our qualifications, we offer a range of free apprenticeship resources designed to support both the tutor and the learner with independent learning and cost effective delivery. They offer essential knowledge and activities in a flexible format to help consolidate learning and practice.
We understand the challenges that come with apprenticeship delivery and we’re keen to make providers’ lives easier while also helping learners to achieve their ambitions.
We’re greatly encouraged by the renewed interest of young people in apprenticeships but we all need to work together — awarding organisations, independent training providers, colleges and employers alike — to ensure that their interest does not go unrewarded.
Together, we can help them find their strengths, utilise their skills and contribute in a meaningful way in the labour market.
Bob Schwartz, professor of practice in educational policy and administration at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, was appointed to Pearson’s qualifications expert panel earlier this year. He has studied vocational training around the world and FE Week reporter Paul Offord spoke to him to find out what he thinks England can learn from other countries.
Many people think Switzerland has the best apprenticeship system. Why is this?
It’s the best I’ve seen. I think it has a lot of assets and strengths that we can learn from.
I have looked over the last four or five years at what the strongest vocational systems are in the world and have had the opportunity to spend time looking at the systems in Singapore, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland and a little bit of the UK.
The Swiss system is, for me at least, the kind of international benchmark.
Importantly, 70 per cent of kids are in the vocational system. This is a mainstream system, serving most kids. We have a saying in the US that goes: “Vocational education is a wonderful thing — for other people’s children.”
That is wrong…but when you get to a system that’s serving most young people…well, it makes a difference.
Two thirds of the 70 per cent are in the dual system, which means they are learning in the workplace typically for three or three-and-a-half days a-week. For the other day-and-a-half they are in an aligned academic programme. Programmes are typically three years in duration, but some are four.
Essentially employer associations in each sector take the lead role in shaping the standards. They decide what students need to know and need to do.
The payment of wages to apprentices is not subsidised directly by the government. There’s lots of indirect support in terms of infrastructure, but cost/benefit analyses show employers that the gains in bottom-line productivity at the end of a three or four year apprenticeship more than offset the costs in wages.
The system has also invested pretty heavily in early and good quality career guidance, to guide young people onto the right courses for them. They take that seriously because they know that, at 15 kids are going to make some important choices.
Others view the German apprenticeship system as the benchmark. How does that compare to the Swiss system?
We can obviously learn a lot from both the German and the Swiss systems.
However, I think for the US and UK at least, it is better to look to the Swiss system, because their labour market is more similar to ours. It is more open and less regulated than in Germany.
There is more flexibility with the Swiss system, where moving from the academic world to vocational training and back to academia for example is easier.
The German system is certainly trying to move in this direction, but the Swiss have really worked hard over the last 15 to 20 years to build pathways between the two sides.
It means kids get the message that there are lots of options open to them. They are not dead-ended.
It is very common in Switzerland to find people in very senior positions in business and government and education that had started their careers on the vocational side and managed to go on to academic careers.
Should we seek to copy elements of the Swiss and German system in England?
Obviously, systems like the Swiss or the German ones are deeply embedded in their own cultures, their own political history. It’s very easy I think for folks in the US or the UK to say: “That’s great. It works for them, but there’s really nothing we can learn from that.”
But it’s really short-sighted to behave as if we can’t figure out some way to take on board some of the underlying principles of these systems.
There are other systems that have figured out how to do this much better than we have, and we’ve got to have an obligation to see if we can figure out an adaptation that will work in our setting.
Many smaller firms in this country worry about investing in apprentices, but then losing them to other firms after they qualify. Is this a problem in Switzerland?
You can’t address the poaching fear unless you can really get a broad base of employers in your sector to think sectorally.
The system is organised by sectors in Switzerland. The great virtue of that is employers will buy into a qualification system because it’s good for their industry not just themselves.
Swiss employers worry less about holding on to people and often you will hear a Swiss employer say that they actually encourage people, when they complete, to get some experience of another firm.
The government tried to introduce loans for 24+ apprenticeships in this country, but it didn’t work. Do you think a loans system could work, or would it be better for apprenticeships to be funded by the government and employers rather than learners themselves?
Apprentices shouldn’t need to borrow money. They should be earning.
And should employers bear at least some of the cost of training?
Yes. In the Swiss system, the state pays the cost of the provider portion of the training, and it’s the companies that pay for their part of the [work-based] training.
The government in this country plans to give funding directly to employers, who will then pay providers and have more influence over the classroom-based training their apprentices receive. Do you think this will work?
It’s absolutely critical to have employers buy-in [to apprenticeships], but I worry a little bit about the risk of handing so much of the system over to individual employers, particularly if it’s individual employers rather than employer associations that are driving it.
There is also a danger that training can become too firm-specific. In the Swiss system, there are actually three different settings where kids get education, if you will. There is the workplace, there’s the classroom, but there is also a chunk of time that is spent on understanding the [wider] industry.
I would also be a little sceptical about giving too much control to the market.
If you are not careful and you don’t have sufficient regulation, you will wind up with lots of providers who may not really have the capacity to do high-quality training, and if you create an environment in which cost becomes the principal criteria for choosing a provider, whoever is paying, that can be a problem.
Another important point is whether the unions or employer associations are at the table with employers to strike a balance between the needs of firms and apprentices.
My worry about the apprenticeship proposals here in the UK is who will moderate the natural tendency of the employer to mainly be concerned about solving their immediate firm’s problems rather than thinking more broadly [in apprentices’ interests]?
Have you looked into how different systems avoid having too many apprenticeships in a particular discipline — like possibly too many hairdressers, for instance?
The Dutch and the Swiss both have apprenticeship barometers, where you can actually see the numbers of apprenticeships in each area. It’s a nice way, on a quarterly basis at least, of monitoring supply and demand.
I was in Australia recently where there was a kind of running joke that Victoria, which is the state where there was least regulation, had a huge over-supply of personal trainers.
What I’m driving at is that you want to make sure that you are monitoring demand and not overproducing people for different areas of employment.
Beauticians are a fairly classic category where typically…a lot of countries are ending up producing many more people than there are available jobs.
You need to figure out how to strike a balance between student interest and market demand. Smart countries really manage this process. They will actually control the supply to make sure it doesn’t get way in excess of demand.
You can adjust funding to create financial incentives to develop a training programme to meet the demand [of employers].
What advice would you give to apprenticeship policy-makers in this country?
This government is obviously more interested in strengthening the role of employers and consumer choice and moving away from what I think it would view as an over-regulated system. It’s part of a general Conservative Party orientation.
But the strongest systems don’t think only of employers — they think of employee organisations as well.
How can we raise the profile of apprenticeships in the UK to the same level they enjoy in Switzerland?
Apprenticeships in the UK and US are seen — for understandable historical reasons — principally as appropriate training for people in the traditional trades and crafts. People immediately think of electricians, carpenters and plumbers.
In countries with a strong youth apprenticeship tradition apprenticeships cover a much wider range of occupations.
Most apprentices, if you look at the distribution in Switzerland, work in the commercial sector — meaning banking and insurance — and other business-related sectors. That makes a difference.
Exeter College need no longer bite its lip after watching Walsall College take credit for the first ‘outstanding’ Ofsted result under a tough new inspection regime nearly a year after it had already achieved the feat.
It meant the college remained on its ‘good’ grading from 2008, and could only look on with envy as Walsall College was hailed the first to officially win an outstanding grade under the new inspection regime.
The Midland college’s grading came in March last year, around five months after the new FE and skills common inspection framework — with the notice period down from 30 days to just two — had fully come into force.
Exeter College principal Richard Atkins
But Exeter was revisited by the education watchdog last month and, like Walsall, inspectors gave it grade one marks right across the headline fields.
Exeter principal Richard Atkins said: “Following our success with the pilot in 2012, I was confident that the Ofsted inspectors would see again evidence of our outstanding teaching and learning and exceptional practice across our curriculum areas.
“The new inspection places a high emphasis, rightly, on hearing the views of students and college users and seeing at first-hand training and academic sessions. This makes for a very rigorous and thorough view of the college and, while we are not perfect, I am very proud that this report makes such positive reading.”
The report on the 9,000-learner college said: “Outstanding leadership, management and governance have improved teaching, learning and assessment and raised standards since the last inspection.
“College leaders have established a culture of high expectations in which lecturers are encouraged to innovate, and learners to have high aspirations. A very large majority of learners successfully achieve their qualifications and almost all learners progress to further education, training or employment once they have completed their course.
“Standards of almost all learners’ work are high, and in many cases very high. Learners attending the excellent provision in The Michael Caines Academy, the REACH Academy and the Flybe Training Academy produce exceptionally high quality work.
“As a result of the highly motivated, skilled and experienced staff, the quality of teaching, learning and assessment is outstanding. Lecturers provide learners with challenging work that prepares them extremely well for their next steps.”
It also said: “The college has excellent, long-established links with local businesses and organisations which offer valuable work experience or visits. These show learners the career options in the sciences and help them with their choice of degree.
“For example, last year four physics learners, who were considering a career in engineering, gained valuable knowledge by working with a local company on a design problem to reduce waste from a moulding process.”
Mr Atkins added: “The success of the college is a direct result of the continued development of strong and committed partnerships between the college and local and regional businesses, schools, and community organisations.
“I am pleased that the strength and range of these partnerships are recognised as a real feature of the college with the inspectors praising our ‘excellent links with schools, employers and other agencies’; that our values and priorities are viewed as fostering ‘excellence, innovation and a commitment to educating and training the local community’ and that the college’s provision makes an ‘excellent contribution to the educational, social and economic development needs of the region’.”
Philip Bostock, college governors’ chair said: “On behalf of the board I am delighted that the college’s passion and commitment to outstanding teaching and learning has been recognised by this fantastic outcome. This Ofsted report is a great result for the students and staff, for the city and the wider community the college serves.”
Police in Hertfordshire have announced they will pursue no criminal investigation into allegations of financial mismanagement at the Barnfield Federation.
Reports by both the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) and Education Funding Agency (EFA) into the organisation were passed to officers last week.
But a Herts police spokesperson said today: “Officers from Hertfordshire Constabulary’s Economic Crime Unit have reviewed all of the material referred to them and can confirm that the information does not warrant any criminal investigation. The matter has been referred back to the education authorities.”
The reports were handed over amid claims that the Federation, which runs Luton-based Barnfield College, received around £1m in funding for learners it had no record of teaching.
Now that the matter is out of police hands, reports from both agencies are expected to be released, but neither have said when this will happen or commented further at this stage.
A Barnfield spokesperson said the federation would not comment until the reports are released.
Using learner destination data to determine funding for FE is “fraught with difficulty,” according to Geoffrey Stanton.
The recent Skills Funding Statement indicates that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) is considering “how funding can be more strongly linked to outcomes in future”.
In post-19 FE and training, funding is, of course, already strongly linked to outcomes — outcomes in the form of qualifications.
For 16 to 18-year-olds on the other hand, this approach has now been abandoned following the Wolf Review.
It is to its credit that BIS is now recognising there are problems in just using the achievement of qualifications as a trigger for funding in the adult FE sector, but using learner’s destinations for the same purpose is even more fraught with difficulty, and it looks as if this is what BIS has in mind.
There has been ongoing confusion in policy circles for decades about the use of outcomes in education and training. Are they usable as quality measures, or just quality indicators? Could they even be used a triggers for funding?
Efficiency came to mean avoiding the teaching of anything that would not be tested, and avoiding the recruitment of learners who might take longer than average to achieve
At one level the greater focus on outcomes has been hugely beneficial — not least as a counterbalance to an emphasis on where, how and for how long someone has to learn before their achievements can be recognised.
It was a good idea for NVQs to link qualifications to occupational standards, what a job required someone to do and understand.
This benefitted many adults already in work. But it all went wrong when NVQs were used as a trigger for funding.
All too often efficiency came to mean avoiding the teaching of anything that would not be tested, and avoiding the recruitment of learners who might take longer than average to achieve.
There was also a disastrous confusion between designing accurate standards for the occupation and designing effective learning programmes for individuals.
The former was funded and prioritised, the latter was not. It has taken until last year’s Commission on Adult Vocational Teaching and Learning to start to redress the balance.
Of course destinations matter, not least to the learners. I have no problem with encouraging providers to make strenuous efforts to track destinations, and to publish the results to applicants and to Ofsted. But the practical problems of a link to funding are obvious.
How long a period should be allowed to elapse after qualifying before the destination affects funding?
Promotion, a successful job application or a career change may not come immediately. And how enduring should any destination have to be? If someone gets a new job in a prioritised occupational area, but loses it within a month or two, should there be clawback?
There is also the problem of keeping track of individuals post-course. Email addresses may prove to be more stable than postal ones, but recipients cannot be compelled to respond.
The 2012 report Social Market Foundation (SMF) suggested that individuals could be tracked through the tax system. This would not identify the occupational areas concerned, but in any case the SMF was understandably sceptical about any government’s ability to forecast what should be priority areas.
The tax system would if course identify wage rises, and the SMF argued that these would necessarily indicate overall productivity improvements.
However, this required the making of heroic assumptions about the rationality of the labour market and the geographical mobility of workers, among other things.
What proportion of funding should be linked to destinations?
If the incentive was small it would be an irritating piece of noise in the finances of institutions.
If it was large it could destabilise some good institutions because of the need to fund provision up front perhaps years before they could be sure of the level of income from government.
Finally, there is always the “sauce for the goose and gander” test.
Why not road test the approach by applying it to universities or schools first?
I look forward the day when a minister writes to a university vice-chancellor with the news that the funding for an expensive engineering degree has been reduced because its graduates ended up in financial services rather than manufacturing.
Geoffrey Stanton is an independent consultant and visiting fellow at the Institute of Education
