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
The government’s raising of the participation age (RPA) policy has been questioned after figures showed the number of unemployed 16 and 17-year-olds not in education, employment or training (Neet) had actually increased since it came into force.
According to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), between October and December, 38,000 16 and 17-year-olds were unemployed Neets, compared to 31,000 the previous three months. Between October and December 2012, the figure was 37,000.
The proportion of the total number of 16 to 17-year-olds who were unemployed also rose by half a percentage point. Between July and September, 4 per cent of 1.464m 16 to 17-year-olds were unemployed, rising to 4.5 per cent of 1.461m between October and December.
Jonathan Clifton, a senior research fellow specialising in education at the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), questioned whether there had been “enough reform and action taken to make it [RPA] a reality”.
Rushanara Ali MP
Meanwhile, a Department for Education (DfE) spokesperson said it would not acknowledge or comment on the ONS figures that came out the day Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg (pictured) announced pilots in which Jobcentre Plus outlets would serve 16 and 17-year-olds.
The Liberal Democrat leader also spoke about setting up a UCAS-style application system for vocational courses — a similar idea to that mentioned by Shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt in an interview with FE Week last October — and providing young jobseekers with work experience. He also said those without level two maths and English would be required to train as soon as they sign on for Jobseekers Allowance.
However, the rise in unemployed 16 and 17-year-old Neets has drawn questions over the RPA, which came into force in September. It means young people have to stay in full-time education until the end of the academic year in which they turned 17.
Mr Clifton said he supported the RPA as a potential solution to a “collapse in the labour market”, but said people may be “falling through the cracks.”
He said: “Policy like this always takes time to filter through the system and I suspect the main reason [for the rise] is that there has not been enough reform and action taken to make it a reality. Just saying we want people to stay in education longer won’t make it happen. I suspect for a lot of people it is not being tracked and it is very easy for them to fall through the cracks.
“There are lot of things we have got to consider here, like the drop-off in jobs at the labour market, the fact we are still seeing the impact of the cut to education maintenance allowance and we know there are very confusing pathways for people when they do come to leave school. It is not clear to them what else they should be doing and there isn’t a decent offer for them so they just stop turning up, and because a lot of them are still living at home they do not get picked up through the benefits system.”
The ONS figures for October to December further show that there were 1.04 million 16 to 24-year-olds in the UK who were Neet, a decrease of 38,000 from July to September 2013 and down 37,000 from the previous year.
Joy Mercer, director of policy for Association of Colleges, said: “We have supported raising the participation age since it was first proposed in 2008, and we outlined some of our concerns in our report Sticks and Carrots: Will every 16 and 17-year-old stay in education or training? These included poor careers advice — which meant that young people were being told they had to stay in school rather than in education and were not given access to information on alternatives such as apprenticeships and vocational courses at colleges. As local councils were cutting travel subsidies for 16 to 17-year-olds, this made it even harder for them to make a choice that was right for them and affordable.
“Overall in 2013 the figures fell by 0.7 per cent over the year, but it is always going to be a concern that there are any young people not participating in education, employment or training when there are opportunities to re-engage and re-motivate them through college provision.”
The figures follow a review of the country’s youth unemployment policy by Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood. The government said the review would not be published, but it is thought that Mr Clegg’s speech at Southfields Academy in London on Thursday (February 27) drew on Sir Heywood’s findings.
A spokesperson for the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) said: “We welcome the announcements made by the Deputy Prime Minister, particularly in respect of the support being offered by Jobcentre Plus for English and maths.
“We only very recently called for Jobcentre Plus to work much more closely with providers on the initial assessment of jobseekers’ needs, especially basic skills, and at an earlier stage. We believe that more young people will then secure sustainable employment as a result of using employment support services.”
Both Skills Minister Matthew Hancock and Shadow Junior Education Minister Rushanara Ali declined to comment specifically on the ONS figures for 16 and 17-year-old unemployed Neets, and on whether they felt the RPA policy was working. Instead, they provided comments on the general Neet figures.
Mr Hancock said: “We must stick to our long-term economic plan and continue to bring Neet levels down. Through programmes like the new traineeships scheme, we will equip young people with the skills they need to compete in the global race and make a meaningful contribution to the economy.”
Ms Ali said: “The number of young people not in education, employment or training is still far too high and there are nearly a million young people unemployed under this Tory-led government.”
———-editorial———
Need for Neet Minister
The revelation that the number of unemployed 16 and 17-year-old Neets rose after the participation age increased last September isn’t enough for the sector to question the value of the policy.
But it has brought to the fore serious questions about what the government is and should be doing to implement the policy.
It comes, coincidentally of course, at the same time as the Deputy Prime Minister announced he wanted the same age group to be able to use the local Jobcentre Plus.
Hopefully advisers will be fully conversant in the RPA, having already witnessed confusion over what the policy actually means (NOT staying on in school).
And if we could justify a minister for the Olympics, maybe it’s time to raise the youth unemployment profile in the cabinet with a minister dedicated to coordinating coherent Neet policy implementation across departments?
The government has come under fire for rejecting Functional Skills qualifications in favour of GCSEs in its entry requirements for early years educator (EYE) training courses.
This will not raise standards but exclude some excellent educators who will be excluded for the wrong reasons.
From August, the Skills Funding Agency will only pay for new learners who have already got GCSE English and maths at grade C or above.
Functional Skills fully replaced Key Skills in October 2012, but concerns have been growing in the sector that they are increasingly seen by government as inferior to GCSEs.
And the Department for Education (DfE) claims its rejection of Functional Skills will “raise the overall quality of literacy and numeracy skills of those entering the workforce”.
But the move has come under strong criticism from the sector.
Stewart Segal (pictured right), chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP), said: “Our view is that this is completely wrong.
“It will exclude many people that have been failed by the system and we should set qualification requirements by the end not beginning.
“This will not raise standards but exclude some excellent educators who will be excluded for the wrong reasons.
“It should be GCSE and equivalents such as Functional Skills which are well respected by employers who value functional literacy and numeracy above GCSEs.”
Deborah Ribchester, 14 to 19 and curriculum senior policy manager at the Association of Colleges, said: “The recent announcement by the National College for Teaching and Leadership at the Department for Education says that functional skills will not be accepted as equivalent to GCSE. Currently, functional skills are part of the early years apprenticeship framework, and we are seeking clarification in this area.”
Rob Wye (pictured below), chief executive of the Council for Awards in Care, Health and Education, said: “While we recognise the importance of maths and English as a key part of developing a professional workforce for early years, we are concerned that making it a prerequisite to starting training, rather than to starting employment at the end of the course, will dissuade very many excellent vocational learners among young people and adults from coming forward for the EYE [early years educator].
“Many older learners may not have GCSE maths and English. Indeed, we note that there is no option to study the GCSEs alongside the EYE, thus excluding these learners from entering the workforce as an early years educator.
“We believe these new requirements will drive down the numbers taking the new EYE — at the very time we need numbers to go up to meet demand, not least because of the new and expanding two-year-old offer.”
And Suzi Gray, portfolio adviser at City & Guilds, said: “The government’s continued preference for GCSE risks understating the importance of being able to apply maths and English within the workplace.
“Singling out GCSE could be very damaging in recruiting to the profession, as it would bar potential applicants who have acquired these skills through other channels. It might also disadvantage applicants from areas where GCSE is not available.
“While we would obviously agree with the government that high standards are of the utmost importance, learners should be able to relate these skills to their everyday work and life and we would want to avoid the dangers of imposing a one-size-fits-all solution.”
The DfE said training providers “will be required to confirm learner’s prior achievement of this and record it in the learning agreement before enrolling learners on to early years educator training”.
Plans to revive the Young Apprenticeship Programme, offering 14 to 16-year-olds a work-based alternative to the classroom, are to reappear before MPs.
Conservative MP Dominic Raab’s (pictured) Young Apprenticeship Bill seeks to bring back the programme first introduced by Labour in 2004, but phased out around 2010 following concerns it cost £3,000 per learner more than if they had been in school.
The Young Apprenticeship Programme was a two-year scheme which combined English, maths and optional vocational subjects, as well as two days a-week in a workplace.
“The bill is about expanding educational opportunity, plugging the skills gap and giving 14 to 16-year-olds a credible, work-oriented vocational option,” he said.
Mr Raab claimed costs associated with the original programme might have been caused because the scheme never achieved the same economies of scale as post-16 apprenticeships. In its first year, with around 1,000 pupils, the scheme cost £3.95m.
Nevertheless, he also acknowledged that there were vocational options available for 14-year-olds with University Technical Colleges and direct recruitment of 14 to 16-year-olds to colleges.
But, he said: “We still lack a work-based alternative for 14 to 16-year-olds.”
Mr Raab’s bill, due to get its second reading in May, was welcomed by Association of Employment and Learning Providers chief executive Stewart Segal.
He claimed the scheme had previously been successful and said current funding flexibilities should allow schools to work with training providers and colleges on delivery.
He said: “We believe that many more young people should combine school studies with periods of work experience and work tasters.”
The bill also won the blessing of Teresa Frith, senior skills policy manager at the Association of Colleges.
She said: “We are pleased to see Mr Raab raising this as an issue in Parliament as we frequently hear a call from employers for young people with better work-related skills.
“Many young people would benefit from a more vocationally biased education, but this must be seen as an alternative, and not as the ‘academic failure’ route.”
