I am at risk of offering platitudes by stating employers play a crucial role in the success of apprenticeships. Their ability to be either custodian or antagonist of quality is profound. When we talk about their role, the emphasis often sways towards the policy expectation that places them in the ‘driving seat’ of programme design. Yet in my experience, employers (except those with their own contract) are at their most impactful when sitting in the training provider’s passenger seat during programme delivery.

Research from The St Martin’s Group backs up the outcome of low involvement. Unsurprisingly, it shows the most common reason apprentices cite for leaving their programme as lack of employer support.

‘Support’ manifests in different ways: giving apprentices time off the job to learn, actively participating in progress reviews, challenging training provider practices when left wanting, noticing when apprentices are overwhelmed or demotivated, encouraging achievement of functional skills, giving formative feedback, and appreciating why careers guidance really isavaluable part of an apprenticeship. 

Ensuring this jigsaw pieces together requires a relationship between employer and provider that is multifaceted and dynamic. It’s more like rally driving than F1: it needs a driver and a co-pilot in the car – and employers make better co-pilots.

Successfully managing this relationship demands the dedication and expertise of delivery staff, whose responsibilities extend beyond just their apprentices. It is not uncommon for their duties to include guiding a line manager on providing constructive feedback or confidently holding them accountable when they fail to meet the needs of their apprentice.

Leaders who cultivate these skills within their teams understand the pivotal role they play in the success of an apprenticeship. This is because the employer’s commitment, which is crucial if we are to reduce withdrawals or delays beyond the planned end date, needs much more than just a signature at the outset.

As an SME ourselves, we have noticed a shift in expectation and demand on our time. We respond to this in accordance with our values and will continue to do so, but it would be wrong to understate the effort it takes by us and the providers we work with each year to make it work in practice.

Whatever comes for FE on the other side of an election, the direction of travel for active employer participation is unlikely to be reversed and nor should it. We have experienced first-hand the significant impact our team has on developing T Level placement students and are proud of the role we play in creating meaningful apprenticeships.

Yet in truth, we have experienced mixed fortunes when it comes to the effectiveness of how well we partner with providers, with challenges on both sides. What we have noticed is the Ofsted grade has not always been a useful proxy for our experience and I am left curious as to why that is the case.

‘Employers’ are referred to just once in the inspection framework under the ‘quality of education’ aspect, highlighted under ‘Intent’. Further detail appears under the apprenticeship section but I am unconvinced that this is keeping up with a sector where employers are increasingly integral to implementation.

My aim here is not to create more work for providers; rather, it is to ensure there is regulatory recognition for the effort needed to build and manage complex relationships with diverse employers beyond the design stage.

Ofsted is a powerful voice in a system that struggles to access the funding to match the political narrative that technical education is Very Important. It is a voice that I hope can demonstrate through its thematic research that if we want FE to be successful, there are hidden costs and capabilities involved. And I hope it is a voice that will be heard by new ministers from the outset of their tenure, because big turns in the road will need to be navigated, and that’s best done with our eyes wide open.

The Labour party has created for itself a potentially serious election wedge issue on apprenticeships which will get aired on the doorsteps in red wall seats unless it has a rethink.

At the Annual Apprenticeship Conference (AAC), shadow skills minister Seema Malhotra doubled down on Labour’s proposed ‘growth and skills levy’ in spite of concerns it will “destabilise” apprenticeships. This follows government ministers claiming that the proposals would halve the number of apprenticeships and would take us “back to square one” – a Conservative attack line that appears to be central to their approach to other wedge issues during the election campaign.

An ongoing lack of transparency over apprenticeship levy funding means that it is difficult to judge impartially. But it won’t be difficult for the proposal’s opponents to make a convincing case that reserving ‘at least half’ of the levy for apprenticeships will translate into a halving of our 337,000 annual programme starts.

Bearing in mind that levy receipts and the apprenticeship programme budgets across the UK’s four nations are not the same thing, several key factors need to be taken into account. These include whether the devolved nations will still receive their respective share of the £3.7 billion pot according to the traditional Barnett formula and whether the Treasury under Labour would maintain its habit of top-slicing the levy by approximately £500 million each year to spend on other priorities. Currently, this results in the DfE being allocated an apprenticeship programme budget of £2.7 billion to manage for England.  

Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said recently that it will be good to have someone in charge of the Treasury who can do maths. So, leaving aside for a moment devolved nation allocations and top slices, let’s do some maths of our own based on Labour’s proposals.

Half of the £3.7 billion levy receipts is £1.85 billion which might be reserved for apprenticeships. This is considerably less than the 98 per cent of the £2.7 billion apprenticeship budget which has been spent on apprenticeships annually in England over the past two years. In fact, it would mean almost a billion pounds less being allocated to the programme each year.

This implies either significant cuts to apprenticeship starts under Labour unless the treasury agrees to a larger levy to keep the same annual apprenticeship budget before the receipts can be used for other skills programmes. It also assumes that the shadow education team has reached an agreement with the shadow treasury team that they will end the top-slicing, but has it? Given the widely predicted doomsday scenarios for public expenditure after the election, a new chancellor might decide that the money is still required elsewhere.

For Labour, the alarm bells must start ringing every time Seema Malhotra refers, as she did at the AAC, to £3 billion of unspent levy money since 2017 as if the money were still available to fund Labour’s wider skills levy. But the levy underspends were simply an outcome of the Covid pandemic when the lockdowns prevented employers from recruiting apprentices. In 2019, the National Audit Office predicted an overspend of the apprenticeship budget, and in the two years following the pandemic, the underspends rapidly disappeared.

Ms Malhotra also talked again about the large levy-paying employers who complain that they cannot spend all of their entitlement on apprenticeships. But the levy was designed for this probability in order to fund SMEs’ apprenticeships. And when asked, she wouldn’t repeat her predecessor’s promise that apprenticeships for smaller firms would be protected by a ring-fenced budget.

Labour is reportedly “bombproofing” its election manifesto against Conservative attacks. Therefore, it should follow the recent example of the Australian Labor government of committing to a thorough review of apprenticeships with a view to reform but without any predetermined outcomes such as widening the levy’s scope.

This summer, 60 years after they were cut, passenger services will resume on the Newcastle to Ashington railway with the Mayor of North Tyne saying this week that young apprentices will now be able to travel to take up opportunities on the programme. It would be ironic if the actions of a Labour government were to limit the number of opportunities available.