Funding rethink

For Michael Davis, the Richard Review got it just about right

In politics, consensus is a rare thing. And consensus on something that actually matters is even rarer. That’s why apprenticeships, with their broad cross-party support, are a cherished area of relative stability in the turbulent waters of FE and skills.

For the Prime Minister, apprenticeships should become “the new normal”. For Labour, they are for the “other” 50 per cent — the ones that don’t go to university.

It’s clear that apprenticeships enjoy an exalted position unparalled within the skills system which has been rightfully earned.

Good apprenticeships deliver strong economic returns for both employers and individuals and there is a clear consensus and commitment to continue raising apprenticeship standards.

Yet within this, the truth is that only 15 per cent of employers offer apprenticeships and only six per cent of young people are currently apprentices. We have some way to go before we can say that apprenticeships are mainstream.

Last year, total government spending on apprenticeships topped £1.4bn, yet reached less than 10 per cent of young people.

If we want to substantially raise our game in vocational training within a climate of tighter public spending constraints, it’s clear that a different approach is necessary as it is difficult to see how we can achieve another step increase in engagement in apprentices on current budgets.

Doug Richard’s review of apprenticeships proposed a number of reforms aimed at boosting quality and re-establishing apprenticeships as good jobs with training to industry recognised standards.

For me, ensuring public funding for apprenticeships flows directly to employers — as advocated in Doug’s review — is an integral part of this reform.

I believe that this has the potential to put vocational education on a long-term pathway for sustainable public investment alongside greater private investment, as has already been done to a certain extent in higher education.

At the commission, our proposal is that we need to “hardwire” good jobs for young people into how businesses think and the labour market works — and that the most effective way of doing this is to leverage more employer investment, in the broadest sense of the word, by passing the public contribution for apprenticeships directly to employers as a PAYE offset.

Vocational education, including the apprenticeship system, has been subject to many reforms, and for us to further complicate the system would be damaging. Direct payment through PAYE, however, builds upon an established system which is known and understood by all employers.

Experience shows us that tax changes are a powerful mechanism to influence employers and can help apprenticeships become a normal part of business behaviour while providing employers with a tangible return on their investment.

Moreover, in terms of employer involvement in the skills agenda, a shift to the PAYE model would position investment in training alongside other investment decisions. Public funding would move closer to the front line, improving accountability both to employers and employees. Putting purchasing power for apprenticeships in the hands of employers would make them active customers, as well as co-investors — with a vested interest in driving quality.

Creating an established vocational path for the young people who don’t go to university should be a priority, and with high level occupations set to increase in the UK, so should ensuring that our young people have the skills to match

Changing the way that we understand employer engagement can allow us to ensure investment, quality and innovation, and ultimately to secure more and better jobs.

Michael Davis, chief executive UK Commission for Employment and Skills

Think-tank calls for the return of polytechnics

The Association of Colleges has questioned the conclusions of a report calling on the government to bring back polytechnics, abolished by the Conservatives in 1992.

The final report of the Commission on the Future of Higher Education, published by think-tank IPPR, suggests that large FE colleges, in which most students are on higher education courses, could be eligible for polytechnic status.

Association deputy chief executive Gill Clipson welcomed the report’s “recognition of the distinctive role colleges play in advanced and higher vocational study”.

But she added: “It is debatable as to whether the re-introduction of the title polytechnic for some larger colleges with degree-awarding powers will send out the desired signal about the importance of vocational study; this is a question not so much about an institution’s title but of the value placed upon the distinctive, specialist, high-quality provision already on offer.”

She said it would be up to colleges as autonomous bodies to make up their minds individually.

The commission’s chair and vice-chancellor of the University of Warwick, Nigel Thrift, argued that “a different title would protect a distinctive role for higher vocational learning that was lost in 1992”.

“Polytechnic status would carve out a distinctive place in our tertiary education system for institutions that focus on providing higher level vocational qualifications,” he said.

“[It] would be a mark of vocational excellence that would send out wider signals about the importance of vocational learning . . . and would signal that the university title and the university route are not the only form of high status in our system.”

The report also recommended the introduction of new £5,000 fee-only degrees, focused in vocational learning, which would be offered to local students who would not be eligible for maintenance loans.

It also suggested a student premium of £1,000 for each student from a low participation area, or those previously eligible for free school meals.

Miss Clipson said: “The introduction of new £5,000 ‘fee-only’ degrees, focused on vocational learning and higher level apprenticeships aimed at local students, would be a welcome opportunity for colleges.”

She warned the number of places available should not be constrained as the qualifications would create the skills for economic growth.

“One of the recognised strengths of colleges delivering higher education is their ability to widen participation and engage older students with work or family commitments, or those from disadvantaged backgrounds or deprived areas, who may not otherwise be able to pursue degree level study.

“We therefore fully support the proposal for the introduction of a £1,000 student premium for those people who have previously been eligible for free school meals, or who are from areas with historically low levels of participation in higher education.”

A spokesperson for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said the report was “a useful contribution to the debate on how to maintain and improve the reputation of our world-class university sector”.

He added: “However, the alternative undergraduate funding models that are discussed would cost more for families, taxpayers and graduates while doing nothing to improve the student experience.”

Research to look at dip in part-time HE in FE

The Association of Colleges and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) are backing research into the delivery of part-time higher education courses in FE colleges.

The £246,000 programme will aim to identify barriers in recruitment to part-time degree level courses in colleges, which has been declining for the past six years. It fell nearly 40 per cent in the 2012/13 academic year.

It will also identify barriers to the expansion of higher education in colleges and make recommendations on how colleges can be enabled and supported to develop their higher education offering.

Nick Davy, the association’s higher education manager, said: “This is a significant research programme and will be crucial to widening our understanding of the underlying causes for the recent decline in part-time higher education numbers, improve colleges’ market intelligence, and inform future policymaking to expand college higher education and support strategic objectives, such as achieving degree-awarding powers.”

A statement from the association suggested that the decline could be due to the introduction and limited promotion of 24+ loans, reduced employer training budgets and the uneven spread of part-time courses.

It also suggested that younger students might have poor regard for this form of study.

Universities and Science Minister David Willetts said: “This is an important study that will help us in our drive to create a more diverse sector with more opportunities for part-time or accelerated courses, distance learning and higher level vocational study.

“FE students studying higher level qualifications are more likely than university students to be over 25, part-time and come from areas with low rates of participation in higher education.

“So it is vital that we understand what more can be done to get FE colleges to increase their higher education offer.”

Mr Davy agreed, saying: “Higher education is a core priority for many of our member colleges, the majority of which provide undergraduate and postgraduate level courses.

“The college higher education offer is distinctive in that it offers cost-effective courses close to home and has a strong track record in widening participation to people from disadvantaged backgrounds who may not have thought university was for them.”

The two-year project will be carried out by the centre for widening participation policy studies at the University of East London Continuum, which has expertise in higher vocational education.

Professor John Storan, director of Continuum, said: “This research will address both the reasons for the downturn in part-time higher education college participation and examine the factors which impact on the expansion of higher education capacity within colleges.”

The AELP wishlist for the election

Having long called for a pre-apprenticeship programme, the Association of Employment and Learning Providers can claim a victory in the government’s new traineeship scheme but, says Martin Dunford, there is much still to do

We may be two years away from a general election, but the political manoeuvring has already started.

Labour and the Liberal Democrats have had policy groups looking hard at education and skills and the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) has contributed to both.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives are increasingly pointing to the recent growth of apprenticeships as a trump card to take to the hustings.

We feel our 2013 national conference is the right time to start feeding our policy input into all of the main parties.

Our policy recommendations range from the education schools should provide to prepare young people for the world of work, to the training adults need whether they are in or out of work.

We are acutely conscious our case for the taxpayer to continue investing in skills coincides with the government’s Spending Review this month.

It was therefore reassuring to hear the Business Secretary Vince Cable tell the BBC recently that we need to be investing more in training to support the economic recovery.

At the heart of our argument is the belief state support for employment and skills programmes yields clear economic advantages.

This is especially pertinent to the future of our young people, nearly a million of whom are unemployed.

State support for employment and skills programmes yields clear economic advantages”

Our manifesto document says that to make more of these young people work-ready, they need schools to focus on a range of skills including English, maths and soft skills for employability that cover, for example, attitude, team-working and problem-solving.

Long before the current government entered office, we were making the case for a preparatory training programme that could lead to full apprenticeship or employment for young people who have left school with few or no qualifications.

So we are pleased traineeships are being introduced. However, it is disappointing they are only available to 16 to 18-year-olds, and we are already receiving feedback from members that this range limits the programme’s appeal to employers.

The government should extend the range to 24-year-olds as soon as possible.

Where statutory education has not been able to succeed for pupils (and according to the Department for Education (DfE), 40.1 per cent failed to achieve English and maths GCSEs at grade A* to C in 2012), we are advocating that government should fund basic employability skills and competencies up to level two, regardless of age, beyond which responsibility for learning should be shared between employers, learners and the state.

Another policy win for the AELP has been to persuade the DfE to introduce programmes for young people that do not stipulate qualifications as the only measure of success.

Securing a job is now regarded by the DfE as a positive outcome for a 16 to 18-year-old and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) now agree also.

Nevertheless, with many AELP members having contracts with all three departments, there remains scope for more coherent procurement to avoid fragmented and inconsistent contract management.

High up the government’s priority list has been the ‘quality agenda’. We have always been in the vanguard of promoting continuous improvement even for such highly successful provision as apprenticeships.

While programme review and modification will always feature, the most important element is to ensure scarce government funds are rigorously targeted on the highest priority provision (apprenticeships and traineeships) and targeted funding is made available to providers with demand from employers best able to deliver success.

The level playing field necessary for this to happen is undoubtedly better balanced than in the past, but we are not there yet. We cannot continue to have providers of any type underperforming — yet retaining funding — while others are unable to obtain the resources they need to meet the immediate demand from employers, potential apprentices and those needing a traineeship to avoid joining the unacceptably high cohort of NEETs.

Martin Dunford OBE, chief executive of Skills Training UK and chair of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers

The apprentice voice

Learning providers know full well the value of their provision and so too does 19-year-old apprentice James Davies

As an apprentice currently working with HIT Training, I’m lucky to have first-hand experience of working with a provider and would absolutely recommend the apprenticeship route as a credible, viable alternative to anyone who may feel that going to university or college, or settling for any old job, is not for them.

Although HIT is a leading specialist provider of work-based learning and apprenticeships in the hospitality sector, I’m working as a technical support apprentice at the company’s headquarters, in West Sussex. This means that although I have day-to-day direct links with the hospitality industry, my specific role is help maintain, support and track all of HIT’s IT equipment, and to give advice and support to any of the 400-plus staff who may be experiencing technical issues with their equipment or systems.

But when I left school my plan wasn’t to be an apprentice at all. I spent two years at art college and then went on to do a further six months at university before deciding that classroom-based learning wasn’t for me. I started to look at alternative ways into an industry that I felt I would enjoy and would enable me to develop a career.

Perhaps one of the most important qualities to demonstrate when applying for an apprenticeship is enthusiasm — it’s vital to show you have a passion for whatever industry you are trying to enter.

The value of a good apprentice can be under-rated in some industries — it would be good to see more employers from different sectors taking part in apprenticeship programmes. School pupils, too, should be given more opportunities to learn more about the apprenticeship route, so that ultimately they have a greater understanding of the options available to them and that learning and training are not necessarily only available through university or college.

Working as an apprentice really does give you the best of both worlds — I earn while I learn and all the while I can see a direct link between the skills I am learning and the way in which they contribute to the business.
Practical experience and work-based learning enables you to see straight away how certain skills can be used in the workplace and, personally, I felt that this combination of practical learning in a business environment was much more valuable to me than time spent in a classroom.

For the learner, an apprenticeship is a valuable experience as you really feel that you are contributing to the day-to-day business of your employer. For employers, investment in apprentices can really pay dividends as they develop a loyal member of staff who is totally immersed in the company culture — yet that person is also properly trained and qualified to help develop the business in the longer term.

Even though I am still a junior member of staff, HIT always welcomes my opinions and encourages me to explore new avenues for business development. I love keeping up to date with technical issues and always enjoy offering technological solutions which I feel could improve either ease of use or company productivity.

Right now I’m totally immersed in working towards my diploma in IT user skills, but once that is complete I’m planning to start a computer programming course.

And for the future? Hopefully, I’ll continue to work for HIT, but I’d also like to be able to plan my diary more efficiently to make room for my four nights a-week training in mixed martial arts and Brazilian jiu jitsu.

James Davies, technical support apprentice at HIT Training

Read the Employer’s point of view from Greggs resourcing manager, Karen walker here

The employer voice

Karen Walker is looking for enthusiasm and a willingness to learn among the learners she sees at Greggs

Greggs is a baker and a retailer with ten regional bakeries and a central savoury plant supplying more than 1,680 shops across the UK. We employ around 20,000 people.

We work with various disadvantaged work groups ranging from ex-offenders, homeless and the long-term unemployed.

With almost a million 16 to 24-year-olds currently unemployed, we want to play our part in providing training, mentoring and hands-on experience to help provide young people with a greater opportunity to get a job. So what have we done?

Working in partnership with Job Centre Plus, we offer our tailored work placement programme, A Taste of Greggs, to young people who are work-ready.

A placement can be a fortnight or four weeks and offers participants practical knowledge and skills to put on their CVs, allows us to provide them with a reference and, where vacancies have arisen, the opportunity for young people to secure employment with us.

People work in a variety of roles within our head office departments, shops and bakeries. Since launching the programme two years ago, we have been able to offer paid work to a fifth of the young people who undertook a placement with us.

We’ve had great feedback from people on the programme. They all said that without it they wouldn’t have gained valuable experience or a reference, and in a number of cases a new job.

One participant, who was offered a permanent role in our payroll function, described it as a “lifeline”.

We find that individuals who have never who have been unemployed for a long period of time find it difficult to apply for jobs through normal recruitment processes.

Without experience, employers don’t know their track record and it’s hard to establish whether they’re good at timekeeping or whether they would fit in.

To help with this, we work closely with selected work providers who source work-ready candidates for us to take through one of our group selection events, where we focus on customer service, team working and communication skills.

This enables individuals to build their confidence and gain experience of the types of recruitment processes in the jobs market.

The benefit of using work providers is that they focus on training for the skills we require in the workplace — skills such as food safety and customer service, and they help individuals develop their employability skills to help them work to a daily routine.

They also talk to them about working for Greggs, so that they know our history, roles and benefits before group selection.

Having identified a skills gap in the bakery industry, we also established a two-year apprenticeship scheme aimed at getting young people into baking.

We recruited five people onto our scheme in December 2011 in partnership with the North East Chamber of Commerce.

The apprentices have gained an NVQ in manufacturing operations and have been involved in all aspects of the bakery operation from food technology to logistics.

But we’re more interested in a young person’s employability skills than their qualifications and previous work experience. We’re looking for personality, attitude, flexibility and reliability.

We’ll look at their extracurricular activities such their volunteering achievements.

We have been able to benefit from the Youth Contract and we have reinvested this funding back into the work that we do with disadvantaged work groups, enabling us to do even more — it’s a win-win.

Karen Walker, Greggs resourcing manager

Read the apprentice’s point of view from James Davies, technical support apprentice at HIT Training here

AELP now and in the future

Traineeships were firmly among the top agenda issues for the Association of Employment and Learning Providers during opening speeches at its packed national conference in London.

Day one of the two-day conference, entitled Strictly Skills and Employment, focused on employers, providers and apprentices, while day two offered insight from government agencies and politicians.

Speakers, including the association’s outgoing chief executive Graham Hoyle, incoming chief executive Stewart Segal and association chair Martin Dunford, were introduced to an audience of more than 250, by conference chair Chris Humphries, University of West London chair.

Mr Hoyle took questions from the floor at Hammersmith’s Novotel, after what was to be his last speech before retirement.

When asked how about the risks of apprenticeships being “cannibalised” by traineeships — an unpaid scheme designed to prepare 16 to 18-year-olds for work and due in September — he said: “This is a real challenge for us.

“I have heard from one major employer who sees this as an opportunity to put apprentices through traineeships first. That’s missing the point … We absolutely have to avoid that.”

He added: “We’ve got to make sure apprenticeship-funded providers — that’s Skills Funding Agency [SFA] funded providers — are given every opportunity to deliver Education Funding Agency-funded traineeships. This is a big topical issue for now.”

The biggest challenge facing the organisation was ensuring traineeships were delivered to 19 to 24-year-olds, Mr Dunford told delegates.

The country needs a good preparatory programme for young unemployed people”

“The country needs a good preparatory programme for young unemployed people. We have to make sure we have high ambitions for traineeships — that’s the most important thing for us,” he said.

Mr Segal, due to take the reins from Mr Hoyle next month, highlighted that apprenticeships should be an “all-age” programme and employers wanted “less change, longer contracts and one funding system for all”.

“Providers have to work really hard to persuade employers to get on-board with apprenticeships. They need to know we have a long-term commitment to the programme,” he said.

“We have to balance the need to drive change and improvement with the need for certainty and confidence in the system itself.

“Employers constantly tell us the one thing they want is not to keep constantly changing the system, so when we’re driving change, we have to take an active role — only we know what it means on the ground.”

He laid out the challenges the association and its members had to take on over the next year to “have a real go” at making “big differences to people’s life chances”.

Mr Segal said: “We need to step up to the plate and set our ambitions high. And our planning advisers need longer than the next funding change.

“Can we significantly increase apprenticeships over next three years? Can we get more learners to levels three? Can we make traineeships as successful as apprenticeships? And can we make a success of study programmes?”

He said his main priorities for the next year were achieving the smooth transition from school to work and from unemployment to employment.

But, he added: “There’s a big initiative around careers in school and I don’t know that I’d give it back to schools — they’ve already got responsibility. It’s about what we’re going to do with schools. Let us work with employers and we’ll do that bit.

“We’ve got to make traineeships work. Perhaps we should be setting what the standards of them will be? We shouldn’t wait for the SFA to do that.

“I look forward to working with you all so we can make a difference to skills and employability to the UK.”

Delegates took part in workshops, including sessions on the new Education and Learning Foundation, formerly known as the FE Guild, with Association of Colleges chief executive Martin Doel and on funding with Dr Susan Pember, FE consultant and former head of FE and skills investment at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

The event, sponsored by awarding body OCR, saw exhibitors from many training bodies offering delegates information on their services.

Featured image caption: Chris Humprhies chairs the AELP conference  Stewart Segal, incoming chief executive of AELP and Martin Dunford, chair of AELP

Hoyle’s last stand

Graham Hoyle gives his last speech at the AELP National Conference 2013

This year’s Association of Employment and Learning Providers conference will be the last for Graham Hoyle OBE as the body’s chief executive.

He retires in August having built up the organisation from scratch when it was formed in 2002 to a proactive body that puts forward programme and policy proposals in the skills and employment arena.

“I am pleased that my final national conference with the association reinforces the perception that we are an organisation that is always looking ahead,” said Mr Hoyle.

“The publication of our summary manifesto shows that our members are passionate about delivering skills and employment programmes which not only support economic development but also contribute to social cohesion in communities all over the country.”

His retirement follows a career that includes 20 years with the Employment Service before a move in the mid-1980s to the Training Agency, first as area manager for Devon and Cornwall, then for Gloucestershire and Wiltshire.

In the 1990s, he became chief executive of the Gloucestershire Training and Enterprise Council (TEC). He was then behind the creation of the Gloucestershire Development Agency and the 5 County West of England Development Agency.

Mr Hoyle, a grandfather, was also chair of the TEC National Council’s Education and Training Committee, before the AELP came knocking in 2002. His contribution to the skills sector was recognised in 2008 with an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to training.

“In 2002-03, my first year as chief executive of the association, there were 167,700 apprenticeship starts. Last year 620,600 people started training on the programme – an increase of 370 per cent in a decade.

“I believe the association and its member providers can take a large amount of the credit for this, especially in terms of securing employer engagement in the programme.

“It’s a fantastic achievement but my message is simple — we can and need to grow those apprenticeship numbers well into seven figures to compete with other developed economies.”
Mr Hoyle was 66 years old when his retirement was announced in March. Around two months later, his successor, Stewart Segal — a former chief executive of a major national training provider — was unveiled.

Q&A with the new AELP chief

The Association of Employment and Learning Providers is just over a month away from being headed by new man Stewart Segal. FE Week reporter Eleanor Radford spoke with him to find out his thoughts on all things FE.

What are your thoughts on the new Education and Training Foundation (formerly known as the FE Guild)?
It’s a very positive move which shows the sector and government agencies have more confidence in involving all representative bodies in developing and delivering higher standards of performance. It will mean the sector bodies work closely and will be different from previous organisations because it’ll be owned by training providers of all types.

How would you like to use AELP’s influence on the foundation’s board?
It’s very important it doesn’t have a set of standards and processes for colleges, another for employers and a third for training providers. There should be a common set for all.
We will be a strong voice representing both employers, third sector and independent training providers in that discussion.

Do you feel the level playing field with colleges has been achieved?
There’s been a huge amount of progress. However, we still need to ensure a fair and free choice for learners and employers. There should be no reason why a learner or employer should chose to go with any particular type of provider — they should have a free choice. Areas that need improving are ensuring budgets and contracts are following demand. There are still ways in which independent training providers and colleges are treated differently.

We understand the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) is debating ‘abnormal profit’ for training providers. What do you think about its interest in this?

We don’t think measuring profit is an effective way of looking at the quality and sustainability of what’s being delivered. It’s just one factor which inevitably they will look at, and we’ve always had to declare these figures. It shouldn’t be singled out with particular levels that are scored.

What are your thoughts on Ofsted and how it inspects independent training providers?
The Ofsted framework is quite difficult when ensuring both academic institutions and organisations that are jobs-focused are inspected fairly. It’s always been a struggle to ensure the framework is appropriate for all types of providers. There’s been a lot of progress, but work needs to be done so everyone understands exactly what Ofsted is looking for when it comes.

How could that be achieved?
AELP needs to do more work with Ofsted and at the same time support training providers so we can be very clear about what Ofsted is looking for. And that the SFA and Education Funding Agency’s (EFA) success measures are coherent with Ofsted, so bodies know where they stand. We have plans to do that going forward.

How do you view apprenticeships right now?
I would say they are in as good a shape as they have ever been. There’s never been such wide acceptance of the scheme — we’ve never been in a stronger place as we are now. There’s seems to be support for all age apprenticeships which we support — you’ve got to focus on a whole age workforce development to build the credibility that will allow you to develop entry points for young people.

What do you think of the apprenticeship reviews such as those carried out by Doug Richard and Jason Holt?
They have meant employer involvement will become more of a reality. But there should be a greater acceptance of the role of training providers and they should be a part of these reviews. There’s an element of trust where they should be asked to sit down and asked, with all this experience, what they think will work and won’t work.

From left: Retiring AELP chief executive Graham Hoyle and new AELP chief executive Stewart Segal, showing off a gift from FE Week: a framed ‘level playing field’ cartoon that appeared in FE Week in March

What is your view of traineeships?
A programme that’s a stepping stone for young people is absolutely a long time coming and we’ve been pushing for this. We’ve been disappointed that it’s limited in age and the type of employers who could provide it. We need to be proactive in this and give SFA and EFA the confidence to extend this to 19 to 24-year-olds.

If you were a government minister, what would be at the top of your to-do list?
I would focus on the one million young people out of employment and so would traineeships and apprenticeships would be at the heart of my work. I would ensure they were more coherent and put more resources on those programmes, making sure they are as flexible as possible.

When your time as AELP chief executive comes to an end, how would you like to be remembered?
I would like to be remembered as having ensured training providers have been a part of delivering vocational training as a real option for young people and that the programmes delivered form the basis of an all-age, all-workforce development that sits at the core of ensuring that UK industry is world class, based around skills and training.

Using technology to improve apprenticeships

We need to use technology in many different ways to improve apprenticeships says Matthew Hancock

Following the Association of Employment and Learning Providers’ annual conference I want to encourage some of our most important providers of apprenticeships and other work-related training to be open to the potential of new technology to transform their efforts to deliver knowledge and skills.

E-learning is more widely used in schools, colleges and universities than it was when the government took office. Many have already discovered how, in our digital age, it has the potential to communicate with young people especially through a medium with which they are already more comfortable than the traditional chalk-and-talk. They are seeing, too, how it can free more of educators’ own valuable time to deploy their expertise to maximum effect.

Simply put, e-learning is one of a growing range of educational strategies which institutions these days cannot afford to be unaware.

Already, three-quarters of businesses which train their staff make some use of electronic media in doing so. I want the FE and skills sector — public as well as private — to take the lead, to embrace innovation and make the most of new technology.

Understanding the different ways that diverse learners in FE can use technology and making sure that it is used in a way that improves the quality, breadth of their learning and the impact is paramount. The way in which online learning is now being used to assist the rehabilitation and reintegration of offenders, and all the challenges in terms especially of safeguarding that have had to be overcome in the process, are good examples of what I mean here.

The key will be harnessing knowledge and expertise to identify and make sense of a complex and fast-changing environment”

The culture change required to see technology harnessed more widely and more successfully is not easy. FE is innovative and responsive. Of course this needs leadership, but it also involves teachers and support staff, too — making sure they are supported, and if need be, challenged. The price is clear: better learning for students. And that, after all, is what FE is all about.

From the ways in which qualifications are funded and the rules around delivery are implemented, to the way qualifications are regulated, we must all ensure that barriers to innovation are confronted and broken down.

To understand which, if any, technologies to use is a real challenge that I’ve heard before from colleges and other providers The key will be harnessing knowledge and expertise to identify and make sense of a complex and fast-changing environment.

And we need to use technology to ensure that relevant information about apprenticeship training is readily available to such companies.

The launch of a new search tool on the National Apprenticeship Service website has been developed in response to a recommendation in last year’s Holt Report on making apprenticeships more accessible to small and medium-sized enterprises. It will enable employers of any size to access directly information about which training organisations support what apprenticeship frameworks and job roles in their area. This will make it much easier for employers to make an informed choice about which provider will best meet their needs and those of their apprentices.

Over the last century and a half, FE and skills providers have confronted innumerable challenges successfully. The challenge of seizing the opportunities offered by new technologies and of reacting to how it is changing their customer base is the latest but by no means the least significant.

Matthew Hancock, Skills Minister