The Labour Party will commit additional spending for a ringfenced budget for apprenticeships in small businesses, the shadow skills minister has confirmed.
Toby Perkins told the Association of Employment and Learning Providers national conference in London this morning that an “additional spending commitment” had been agreed with the shadow treasury team to fund apprenticeships in small and medium-sized businesses.
The opposition announced plans to replace the apprenticeship levy with a skills and growth levy at its annual party conference last September.
Should it win the next general election, levy-paying employers will be able to spend up to 50 per cent of their contribution on non-apprenticeship courses. At least 50 per cent would need to be spent on apprenticeships.
With employers therefore likely to spend more of their levy contributions, sector and provider leaders have been concerned that Labour’s plans would leave no funding for apprenticeships in small and medium-sized businesses, which are currently funded from unused levy funds.
“There will be no reduction in the amount of funding available to fund non-levy payers’ apprenticeship funding” Toby Perkins, Labour’s shadow skills minister, said today.
“One of the big failures of the apprenticeship levy and the apprenticeship reforms more generally has been the reduction in apprenticeships in SMEs. Both the uncertainty of funding and the complexity of bureaucracy are barriers that prevent SMEs from taking on apprentices,” Perkins said.
“So I repeat, if we’re successful in helping levy payers spend more of their levy, this will not reduce the budget set for SME apprenticeships.”
Pressed from the conference floor by Crawford Knott, managing director of Hawk Training, about safeguarding SME apprenticeship spending, Perkins said that supporting levy payers to use more of their levy will mean “an additional spending commitment” adding, “they’re tough to get out of our shadow treasury team.”
Elsewhere in his speech, Perkins said that funding for the flexible non-apprenticeships side of the skills and growth levy should be spent on courses that benefit “the employability of the learner in general, not just to their usefulness to their current employer.”
Perkins reiterated Labour’s plans to launch Skills England, a new body which would oversee the new levy and decide what non-apprenticeship courses employers could spend their levy funding on.
The shadow minister would not be drawn on whether Skills England would replace the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, but told delegates: “We are exploring what the role of these different organisations will be.”
The Student Commission on Racial Justice will soon publish its 2023 Manifesto for Action. Over five weeks, its commissioners will set out its five key priorities and recommendations exclusively for FE Week.
I’m 19, I study performing arts at college, and I’ve experienced racism since primary school. I remember being verbally abused by grown White men who called me racist slurs. Since then I’ve experienced microaggressions and other racially motivated behaviours, not just to me but to friends and family. These sorts of behaviours are not acceptable, and education must do more to be part of the solution.
One of the key areas of investigation for the Student Commission on Racial Justice was a crucial aspect of college life: events, social life, and college culture. Our recommendation is a simple one: Celebrate diversity and normalise racial justice conversations.
But just telling you how to improve the culture within colleges doesn’t matter without understanding why it is important, especially for minority students. The truth is that colleges throughout lack in cultural education. Despite living in a diverse country, there is poor cultural visibility, making minority students feel that their voices do not matter. This same lack of cultural and racial visibility leads to harmful and uneducated mindsets.
The cultural life of a college affects us all. It forms a sort of invisible curriculum, and what that curriculum is teaching many minority students is that they are not safe, that they do not matter, and that perpetrators’ lack of education is an excuse for their racist words and actions.
Too many of us have experienced verbal or physical abuse within education settings, from students and staff. We are victims of stereotypes and worse, which add up to a common experience of living in a discriminatory culture.
One ongoing refrain is that things are “not as bad” as they were fifty years ago. Fine, but this tells us more about how bad things were then than it does about how good they are now. And besides, we didn’t experience it. This is the baseline from which we are striving for improvement.
Our society is becoming more culturally and racially diverse, but our understanding and respect is not keeping up. The majority find it to be a “difficult conversation”, and all of this goes back to education. Educating people in their formative years about different cultures and racial backgrounds fosters more understanding, and a willingness to tackle that difficult conversation. We found that students want more opportunities to do this, as well as more visibility for their own cultures.
We also found that education institutions need to do more to eliminate racist behaviours. On my performing arts course, we often learn about different cultures and perform stories that represent many different walks of life. We have deep conversations about identity, society and culture. This is not a common enough experience. In fact, only 50 per cent of students surveyed by our commission said staff encouraged them to talk about major events related to race in the news. This should be a given, no matter what you study.
Improving college culture isn’t restricted to the classroom. We recommend targeting your events and activities also. You could create a calendar of significant cultural events that reflect the diversity of modern-day Britain, and involve your students in the design and delivery.
You could hold regular, visible awareness campaigns on racial justice issues, exploring topics from current affairs to the impact of microaggressions. Black History Month is a good start, but remember that celebrating Britain’s diversity is everyday work.
Having said that, celebration days work. My personal favourite recommendation is to establish a culture day, which many students reported as a positive part of their college experience. A culture day creates a space for students to celebrate their own cultures and those of their peers. At my college, students help to organise it. We attend in clothing that represents our cultures, wave our many flags, and enjoy food and music from around the world.
In the end, there is nothing invisible about racism – only what we choose not to see. To create a genuinely inclusive society, we have to choose to see it, and each other.
Outsourcing company Capita has lost its government contract to administer the Teachers’ Pension Scheme (TPS) after 27 years.
A contract notice published by the Department for Education (DfE) on Friday shows Indian IT company Tata Consultancy Services will now administer the scheme under a 10-year, £233 million contract.
It comes despite Capita, which recently withdrew from delivering the government’s flagship teacher training and development programme to teachers, tendering to regain the contract.
DfE said it would “transition” the scheme to Tata over a two-year period from this October, with the new contract beginning in October 2025.
Capita took over the administration of teachers’ pensions in 1996 and was reappointed in 2011 under an £80 million contract.
The same year, the DfE published a contract notice for the administration of the TPS. It is not yet clear why the process to award the contract took two years.
Retender follows failures in pension administration
FE Week’s sister publication Schools Weekrevealed in 2020 that teachers’ pensions could be tens of thousands of pounds short because of administrative failures.
The investigation found some teachers were missing up to 80 per cent of their pensionable service, finding gaps from almost 30 years ago.
Others struggled to find information from schools and colleges that had closed, with the growth of academy rebrokers said to increase the “risk of errors” in the system.
At the time, DfE admitted it had no idea how big the problem was as it did not record how many corrections were made.
The TPS is managed by the department and administered under contract by a supplier.
Capita confirmed that it had bid to continue delivering the scheme.
Last month, however, Schools Week exclusively reported that it would cease to provide early career framework (ECF) courses starting from September after deciding not to continue.
The firm, which is currently one of six founding providers overseeing the rollout of the national scheme, declined to comment on why it made the decision.
But figures from Ofsted inspections in the ECF’s first year show Capita had much lower take-up of its training course compared to the five other providers.
New contract will provide more ‘automated’ service to teachers
Capita oversees several schemes on behalf of the department, including most recently a flexible working programme.
TPS is one of the largest pension schemes in the country. Tata already administers the government’s workplace pension scheme Nest.
In a statement, Tata’s president for financial products and platforms, Vivekanand Ramgopal said it was “delighted” to partner with the DfE to “digitally transform” the administration of the TPS.
“Enhanced customer service has been the cornerstone of our platform’s value proposition to clients in the UK pensions industry,” he added.
The DfE said the new contract would “provide a more automated, digitalised and personalised service to our members and employers”.
FE Week asked it to expand on how this would be delivered. Capita has also been contacted for comment.
A college principal has been picked by government as its preferred candidate to take over from Katharine Birbalsingh as chair of the Social Mobility Commission.
“The Commission has been working hard for two years to build a solid foundation for some new thinking about the focus and priorities of policy,” Francis said.
“This is a tremendous opportunity to bring this work to fruition. I especially hope to draw on my experience of working in further education, and my knowledge and understanding of so-called ‘left behind’ people and places, to make a positive contribution.”
Francis’ appointment will be subject to a pre-appointment hearing with the House of Commons women and equalities select committee.
Equalities minister Kemi Badenoch said Francis had “demonstrated the knowledge, skills and expertise which are necessary to lead the Social Mobility Commission, maintaining the organisation’s position as a champion of social mobility across the UK.”
Baroness Stowell, an FE college alumna from the Midlands who has led the House of Lords, has also been appointed a commissioner on the board.
She would provide “further insight and understanding to the already diverse and accomplished SMC board”, Badenoch added.
The commission is expected to publish its final State of the Nation report later this year.
Two popular adult care apprenticeships have received a 33 per cent funding uplift this week, but training providers have warned that won’t be enough to keep up with rising costs.
Skill minister Robert Halfon revealed the long-awaited outcome of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education’s exceptional funding band review (which has been beset with delays) at this week’s Association of Employment and Learning Providers national conference in London.
Announcing funding increases for ten apprenticeships standards, Halfon said: “We know that inflation is hurting our whole economy, and I know this is putting pressure on you as you deliver high-quality training. It is affecting the costs of energy, materials, food, and tutor salaries.
“We are alive to the cost pressures you are facing to deliver high-quality apprenticeships, and I hope I’ve shown we will take action to support you,” he said.
Twenty apprenticeships were initially in scope for funding uplifts through the exceptional review when it was finally launched in January, having been originally announced last November. IfATE then passed its own planned end date for the review. It was supposed to have concluded in May.
AELP said lessons must be learned over the process.
Simon Ashworth, director of policy, said “The increase in adult care level 2 and level 3 by a third is most welcome. However, there are still lessons that must be taken from this process. It has simply taken far too long to get an outcome to a process that was meant to enable a speedy decision to be taken against the backdrop of unprecedented inflation rates.”
In March it was revealed that 10 of the twenty apprenticeships were opted out of the review by their employer-led trailblazer groups who instead wanted a full review including content, funding and assessment.
One of those that had opted out was the level 3 heavy vehicle service and maintenance technician apprenticeship. However, that apprenticeship, alongside the level 2 adult care worker and level 3 lead adult care worker, received one of the largest funding increases this week.
From Monday, when the announcement was made, funding for heavy vehicle apprentices increased from £15,000 to £20,000 and the two adult care standards increased from £3,000 to £4,000.
Apprenticeships for production chefs, senior production chefs and commis chefs were increased by one funding band. As were other popular apprenticeships, such as the level 2 engineering operative, level 3 motor vehicle and maintenance technician, and the level 2 large goods vehicle driver.
IfATE chief executive, Jennifer Coupland, said while the funding uplifts “should have a positive impact on providers and learners” she was “sorry the process has taken longer than anyone would have hoped for.”
It was also revealed that trailblazer groups for two of the remaining ten standards have opted out entirely because “they decided they didn’t need funding” according to Coupland.
Those are the level 2 maritime mechanical and electrical mechanic apprenticeship and the level 2 autocare technician, both funded at £12,000.
HGV apprenticeships funding row
Heavy vehicle service and maintenance was a surprise entry, considering it had been removed by its employer trailblazer group from the exceptional review in favour of a normal review.
An IfATE spokesperson told FE Week that this apprenticeship had completed a full standard review “at pace” alongside the other ten standards.
“This sector literally keeps our economy moving. It is right that we mitigate the significant cost increases it is facing, and recognise the critical contribution it makes to productivity,” Halfon said.
However, one training provider said it was “hugely disappointed” that the apprenticeship didn’t receive a larger increase to account for the standard being subjected to under-funding “by mistake” for the last four years.
Sue Pittock, chief executive of Remit Training, told FE Week that the funding band should be £26,000, similar to other advanced engineering apprenticeships, to run “a quality HGV programme safely”.
Pittcok also took aim at the minister’s claim that funding for that apprenticeship was increasing by 33 per cent.
“The funding band for HGV was in fact £18,000 back in 2010, but was reduced to £15,000 in 2019, based on an error which IfATE acknowledge it made. In reality, at £20,000, we are behind where were back in 2010 once you add EPA costs and inflation.
“Things have changed materially in the 13 years since 2010 and our costs of delivery have increased exponentially,” Pittock said.
An IfATE spokesperson said that the organisation is “satisfied that its published processes were followed at all times and the decision to reduce the funding of HGV tech in 2019 to £15,000 was based on the evidence presented.”
However, in 2022, the spokesperson added, IfATE “became aware some of the information put forward in 2019 could have been inaccurate.”
“The most appropriate response was to re-run the funding band process using refreshed evidence, which has now been concluded,” they added.
Time to care
Inadequate funding for adult care apprenticeships has long been criticised by the health and training sectors. Several training providers that have specialised in care training have gone bust in recent times, notably Qube Learning, Quest Vocational Training, and GP Strategies Training
News of the £1000 funding increase this week was welcomed by the sector, but some have said it is still not enough.
Ian Bamford, chief operating officer at Paragon Skills and an AELP board member, told FE Week the adult care uplift was “really positive for the sector” but suggested a further increase to £5,000 was needed.
“We’ve had to increase staff salaries, so we’re now having to pay probably in the region of £28-£30,000 for an adult care tutor. A year to 18 months ago, that was £24-25,000, and we’ve had to swallow that cost.
“We’re also looking for a more digitally rich and innovative curriculum. On £3,000 you just can’t do that. So, this [uplift] allows us to be able to put investment in our programmes,” Bamford said.
Bamford said he believed there are discussions about a further review for a new care apprenticeship standard being pitched at a £5,000 funding band, “which is where it needs to be.”
Another large training provider in the care training sector, Lifetime Training, said the increase was “a step in the right direction.”
Matt Robinson, Lifetime’s commercial director, told FE Week that the “increased funding bands will greatly benefit our apprenticeships, allowing us to invest in delivering high-quality programmes despite mounting inflationary cost pressures”.
Jane Hickie will officially stand down as chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers at the end of this week.
A statement confirming Hickie’s departure was read to delegates at AELP’s national conference, which began in London today, on behalf of the association’s board.
According to the board’s statement, Hickie has decided to stand down to “pursue new opportunities”.
It comes a month after FE Week revealed she had been suspended pending an investigation.
[UPDATE – FE Week has since learned the AELP investigation was dropped following Hickie’s departure from the organisation.]
Hickie’s seven-year tenure at AELP, two as CEO, will come to an end this Friday, June 30.
The board’s statement said: “We announce that after seven years of service, Jane Hickie has taken the decision to step down from her position as chief executive at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers on 30th June 2023 to pursue new opportunities.
“We are grateful for her contribution to the success of the organisation over recent years.
“We thank her for all her work and wish her well in her future plans and endeavours.”
FE Week reported that Hickie had been suspended from her role, pending an investigation, on May 23. AELP did not comment on the suspension at the time, confirming only that Hickie was taking “a short leave of absence”.
Since then, AELP chair Nichola Hay and vice chair Rob Foulston have been supporting the association’s remaining senior leaders.
Plans to appoint a new chief executive have yet to be announced.
An apprenticeship training provider for eye healthcare specialists is “astonished” at its “inadequate” Ofsted rating after inspectors claimed its training was “more akin to CPD programmes” and therefore “not sufficient to claim public funds.”
The Association of Health Professions in Ophthalmology, which had 14 adult apprentices studying the two-year level four healthcare science associate apprenticeship, was handed the rating after an inspection at the end of March.
Ofsted shed doubt over the association’s ability to claim public funds for an apprenticeship, as the apprentices “do not develop substantial new knowledge, skills and behaviours” beyond what they knew before they started, as many have already worked as ophthalmic technicians for five years.
“The knowledge that they do acquire is not sufficient to claim public funds for an apprenticeship and is more akin to continuous professional development (CPD) activities that should be funded by their employer,” the report added.
Ofsted said the association’s apprentices “do not receive any teaching” during their apprenticeship, and they pass at the end of their apprenticeship “due to their extensive experience and knowledge of the sector” accrued before the apprenticeship began.
Inspectors gave the association “inadequate” ratings in four of the five judgements. Behaviour and attitudes scored a “requires improvement”. That gave it an overall “inadequate” rating.
The association has appealed against the rating, saying that it was “quite frankly astonished that Ofsted inspectors, who do not have knowledge, skills or experience in our sector, believed they were competent to determine the training of staff in our sector”.
They said the National School of Healthcare Science, part of the NHS, had designed the apprenticeship’s curriculum, and that prospective apprentices always have a “comprehensive skills scan” before they are accepted onto the program to show they do not yet have the required knowledge, skills and behaviour which they would then learn as an apprentice.
But in its appeal to Ofsted, the association said only three of the 14 apprentices had completed the first year of the apprenticeship at the time of the inspection meaning “these comments are unsurprising” as it delivers the ophthalmic-specific skills in the second year of the apprenticeship.
They said apprenticeship standards specify “we should develop apprentices as independent learners and we have designed our delivery accordingly”.
A spokesperson for the association told FE Week that they were “dumbstruck” by Ofsted’s comments. They said there is a difference between being able to press buttons on a machine, as any apprentice would be able to do before the apprenticeship, and “knowing how to assess the quality of the test result, how to identify patient difficulties and artefacts, and how to identify unexpected outcomes and report these to a more senior member of the team.”
But, since the inspection, the association has “introduced recorded reflective reviews” after every unit of teaching so that a learner’s progress can be recorded at every stage of an apprenticeship, to address some of Ofsted’s concerns. They also accepted that “our data collection [on the strengths and weaknesses of the apprentice] has not been perfect and requires improvement”.
The association joined the register of apprenticeship training providers (RoATP) in 2018.
Ofsted rejected the association’s appeal, but the organisation is preparing to appeal against any apprenticeship ban, as is often the case when a provider gets an “inadequate” rating.
Tracy Brabin greets me with a broad smile and bubbly manner that masks the fact she is a political force to be reckoned with.
The first mayor of West Yorkshire Combined Authority spent much of her life playing on-screen personas in shows including Coronation Street, Eastenders and Emmerdale, which has given her a knack for wearing a big smile at opportune moments – also an advantage in her political life.
Our interview is around one of her priority areas, the skills agenda, but she has to resort to paper notes as backup when the technical details evade her. This is understandable, given the wide scope of her mayoral role; her combined authority oversees regional transport, housing, planning, finance and policing matters, as well as controlling the adult education budget.
But she is keenly eyeing more levers of power.
Despite being the current chair of the M10, a cross-party group of English metro mayors who work together on policy issues, she watched from the sidelines as fellow mayors Andy Burnham and Andy Street, of Greater Manchester and the West Midlands respectively, recently clinched even more powers in their new landmark “trailblazer” devolution deals.
Brabin pulls no punches as she warns there will be “hell on if we’re not next” for such a deal.
Brabin reveals that the M10 mayors have approached the government with an “off the shelf” trailblazer option for the other combined authorities that are “mature enough” for it. They could then have “further conversations about particular bolt-ons” which she believed the government could feasibly sign off this year.
Brabin would like to get her hands on a single funding settlement for skills, which is currently split into five different streams: skills bootcamps, AEB, Multiply, Skills Connect and the UK shared prosperity fund.
But those enhanced trailblazer deals, which act as blueprints for other areas to follow, did not extend Burnham and Street’s powers that far. They did gain sway over which level three ‘free courses for jobs’ and skills bootcamps they can lay on in the future, rather than being dictated to by the government on such matters.
Brabin indicated she would use flexibilities to address chronic care worker shortages.
“We’re told we have to run a [skills] bootcamp within certain restrictions when we know that locally, there’s a real crisis in recruitment for care workers. Let us get on with what we need to deliver for our communities,” she says.
Burnham and Street can also now form post-16 skills “joint governance boards”, which Burnham hopes will facilitate the launch of his proposed ‘MBacc Greater Manchester Baccalaureate’ of technical qualifications to meet local skills gaps.
Brabin “agrees with the principle” behind Burnham’s MBacc proposal but would not commit to such a move herself.
Tracy Brabin
Achievements so far
Brabin claims that having devolved power over her region’s £65 million adult education budget has provided “strategic thinking” to “ladle [funding] between communities and identify areas of deprivation for big interventions”.
This approach seems to be working. In the year after the combined authority was formed in 2021, it boosted adult learner numbers by six per cent to 43,000, partly by expanding free training access to those on the real living wage rather than the minimum wage.
Adult learners in the most acutely deprived neighbourhoods rose from 37 per cent to 41 per cent.
West Yorkshire has also saved money by cutting back on subcontracting which, before devolution, took up £9 million a year of AEB funding.
Monitoring and scrutiny was ramped up, saving £1.4 million in management fees in the first year which was “woven back into delivery”. But Brabin is not totally averse to subcontracting, claiming it can “help us with that community base”.
Tracy Brabin at YouTube Hub event, Bradford
Devolution and dinners
Brabin, whose region covers Bradford Wakefield, Huddersfield, Halifax and Leeds, has “regular dinners” with local college principals.
The decision by West Yorkshire to raise its AEB funding rate for providers by 10 per cent in line with inflation “came out of our last dinner” as Brabin was told “really vividly about the challenges facing colleges, given their underfunding for decades”.
But because AEB funding from the government did not rise accordingly, money earmarked for future projects had to be used to pay for it.
When asked if the uplift has led to a lowering of overall learner numbers, Brabin responds “let’s hope not”.
Level two courses have seen growth this year, with demand coming through particularly strongly in employability programmes and English and maths.
Tracy Brabin at Mayors Big Bus Chat Afghan Womens Group
Distance dilemmas
The combined authority wants to ensure that in giving the uplift, a “quality provision” is being provided.
Now, provision which is mainly online receives the same funding as classroom courses where resource and staffing costs are much higher. The combined authority has been concerned that some providers are running courses with significantly lower guided learning hours than recommended.
Last July, Ofsted denounced some providers for retaining remote learning after the pandemic. West Yorkshire raised the issue in its discussions earlier this month with the Association of Employment and Learning Providers.
Brabin is concerned some providers are providing “100 per cent distance learning provision … where a learner has no contact with a tutor”, with even marking being automated.
Her combined authority is preparing a paper for its members to vote on proposals to ensure funding matches the number of guided learning hours being provided.
Multiplying difficulties
Brabin has been “really pressing the government to be next in line for the trailblazer deal” because of her frustration at having to roll out prescriptive national schemes like the £559 million Multiply scheme to improve adult numeracy rates, which have mountains of red tape attached to them.
“We’ve got to have that autonomy, we can’t be left behind picking up the 19-year-olds, trying to resolve problems from Multiply that come from the centre,” she says.
West Yorkshire was allocated £12.4m across three financial years, with its spending plans approved in June 2022 and accepted by DfE in August.
But part of a £3 million pot allocated for ‘business focused activity’ was held up because a tender open from December to January was unsuccessful and had to be republished, leading to an £816,000 underspend for the programme’s first year.
West Yorkshire asked DfE to rollover the unspent funds to the second year, but it has not agreed to this.Other areas are understood to face the same issue. “That’s a big issue beyond us. It’s a national issue, and it’s been frustrating,” says Brabin.
“We’re held to account as mayors. Yet we can’t press government to be timely in delivery.”
She doesn’t “think the centre understands” how much work is required to get learners “ready for learning”, with “so many who are so far away from even stepping into the classroom”.
Just under 2,000 people engaged in Multiply in its first year in West Yorkshire, which was under target. But Brabin is “really confident” of hitting targets for years two and three.
Female students at Leeds College of Building
Women and girls
Perhaps it is because she is England’s first woman to be elected as a metro mayor that Brabin has made championing the rights of women and girls a key theme of her leadership.
West Yorkshire recently helped fund a project which saw 300 women come together to build a barn as part of Leeds’s first WOW (woman of the world) event, only half of whom already had construction experience, to help encourage more women to consider a career in the trade.
Construction courses run in the barn afterwards were five times oversubscribed, and Leeds College of Building is now looking at putting on women-only construction, painting, decorating and plumbing courses after an upsurge of interest from them, according to Brabin.
Some women offered their services to teach at the college, which is currently bearing the brunt of an acute nationwide shortage of construction teachers.
Furthermore, Brabin’s apprenticeship levy transfer scheme, which helps apprenticeship levy-paying employers transfer up to 25 per cent of their apprenticeship levy funds to smaller businesses and training providers, has seen Asda’s unspent levy pivoted to training up police community support officers to work on buses, helping to ensure the safety of women and girls.
Brabin also claims she “persuaded” local bus companies struggling with recruitment to take on part-time drivers, to attract more women into the profession.
With forecasters hedging their bets that the next government will be a Labour one, Brabin has one eye on the shadow cabinet’s plans. Brabin believes there is now a “devolution arms race” taking place, “led by Michael Gove and the Labour Party”.
Labour’s commission on the UK’s future, led by Gordon Brown, published a landmark report last year which advocated merging centrally run adult education funding streams such as Multiply with the existing AEB budget, as well as giving mayors more powers to decide which FE courses should be funded.
Ben Houchen
LSIPs
Local skills improvement plans also came in for criticism from Labour’s commission for “side-lining democratically elected local leadership in favour of local Chambers of Commerce”. Brabin would agree.
She has a good relationship with her region’s two chambers of commerce. But the combined authority “talks to businesses all the time” and the chambers are “often coming to us for the knowledge, because we store the data”.
“It just feels like another lack of understanding. We could help the chambers with [LSIPs], we could work together. But it feels like it’s a disconnect with what’s happening on the ground.”
Brabin points out with a note of sarcasm in her voice how “it wouldn’t be fair for me to say” whether Conservative mayors currently get a “seat at the table” with government (Tees Valley’s Ben Houchen, who often appears to hold the ear of ministers, was recently handed a peerage in Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list).
But, under a Labour government, Brabin might hold similar sway with ministers.
She clearly already holds influence within Labour. She was “able to feed back” to her party how on a recent India trade mission, and she could guarantee a “talent pipeline” through her AEB budget to “co create a programme” in return for investment.
She has also spoken to Ed Miliband and Rachel Reeves about the party’s Green New Deal.
Two days before it was announced that Labour had watered down its commitment to invest £28 billion a year in green industries upon becoming elected, Brabin seemed already aware of the move, warning that it is “going to be important … for Labour that we have a focus on the green economy”.
West Yorkshire is a staunch Labour stronghold with its five Labour-controlled councils and Labour MPs, and Brabin believes they can “get a lot done” together if her party wins power nationally.
“If we had the resources that are in the South for research and development, or for infrastructure, West Yorkshire could turbocharge the national economy. We just need that investment, and that flex to deliver for our community.”
Apprenticeships are a powerful tool for bridging the skills gap in the pharmaceutical sector – essential if we are to keep one of the UK’s most innovative industries globally competitive.
With constant advancements in technology and medical research, the skills required within the industry are always changing and evolving. The demand for skilled workers has never been greater, and apprenticeships provide a win-win solution.
They allow employers to access a skills development pipeline across a wide range of roles, including those where priority skills gaps have been identified. At the same time apprentices get an opportunity to ‘earn while they learn’ and further their journey in a fulfilling career.
Traditionally, apprenticeships have been associated with skilled blue-collar or artisanal jobs. However, in recent years, the apprenticeship model has been gaining traction in many professional services roles and in the science and technology sectors, including pharmaceuticals.
Through a combination of on-the-job training and classroom learning, they provide a unique and flexible opportunity for people to develop relevant skills while directly contributing to the workforce.
Research by the ABPI has shown that the number of apprentices hosted by the biopharmaceutical industry in 2022 had increased year on year since 2015 (287.5 per cent) over that period. And encouragingly, apprenticeships are being delivered from level 2 to level 7 across a range of disciplines, and with increasing flexibility on duration.
This highlights increasing sector employer confidence in using apprenticeships, although to develop a skilled workforce for the future it is crucial we align skills supply with employer demand to secure have a talent pipeline suitable for the industry. To do this, we need closer collaboration between industry, educational institutions and policymakers.
More pharmaceutical standards
First, there must be consultation to identify the specific skills and competencies that the pharmaceutical industry needs, and where the skills gaps exist. The ABPI’s latest skills gap report analyses the skills gaps and trends within the UK pharmaceutical industry based on survey data from over 30 different employers.
The report includes past examples of using the apprenticeship route to take action on identified skills gaps, including the development of the Level 7 Bioinformatics standard, and of the Level 7 Clinical Pharmacology Scientist standard which launched in September last year.
So we know that actively involving employers in the design and delivery of apprenticeship programs is our best bet to achieve the outcomes we need. It ensures that teaching plans align with industry needs and that apprentices are actively prepared for the roles and challenges they will face in their careers.
What we need now is to replicate that work for more of the sub-sectors within the pharmaceutical industry, and to target efforts where there are the greatest shortages first. We also need clearer pathways to those Level 7 apprenticeships, so that younger people can understand more about their route into the industry earlier.
More flexibility
Next, the skills sector must be agile and responsive to the evolving demands of the industry. That means that any new and existing apprenticeship frameworks and qualifications must be flexible enough to quickly incorporate emerging technologies and research breakthroughs.
Employers would also like to see the government do more to increase flexibility in how the apprenticeship levy can be used to ensure that businesses of all sizes can benefit.
And if apprenticeships are going to deliver on their promise, they need to recognise the greater flexibility of today’s workforce too. We need a clearer and more coherent careers guidance system, and its focus can’t be only on young people as has traditionally been the case. Adults increasingly need careers guidance too, and we need to reach those sections of the population who tend not to see the sector as accessible to them.
Addressing the skills gap in biopharmaceuticals is vital for the UK’s continuing place as a sector leader and for our continued economic prosperity. We welcome the Department for Education and the Office for Life Sciences’ support for employers to tailor apprenticeship delivery to meet the needs of employers and their apprentices’.
There is a lot more work to be done to ensure our system competes with the best.
