Autumn statement: silence on skills funding ‘criminal’

Further education was offered no extra funding in today’s autumn statement despite pleas for more resources to relieve hikes in costs and staffing challenges.

It was better news for other parts of the education sector, however, as chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced the schools budget will receive a £2.3 billion boost in 2023-24, and then again in 2024-25. The extra £4.6 billion will restore per pupil funding to 2010 levels in real terms, the government said.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has said this announcement will mean that school funding is expected to exceed school costs.

But the only announcements for FE were a new government skills adviser, and an increase to the apprentice minimum wage.

Refusal to extend the schools funding boost to colleges triggered a scathing response from the chief executive of the Association of Colleges David Hughes.

He estimated that extending the funding increase awarded to schools to the college sector would cost “only” £240 million. It was “criminal to overlook colleges once again, deeply disappointing and wrong” and a “levelling up failure”, he tweeted.

Forecasts by the IFS had predicted that total spending on adult education was already set to be 25 per cent lower in 2024-25 that in 2010-11.

The institute also calculated that per-student funding in colleges was already 15 per cent lower in real terms in 2021-22 than in 2020-11. 

IFS director Paul Johnson said: “Despite making much of the education secretary’s background in vocational education, the chancellor has done nothing in this statement to reverse the long-standing squeeze on resources for further and adult education.” 

Extra funding awarded at the 2021 spending review has been protected in cash terms for the remaining two years of the spending review period. 

This included an increase to the national base rate for 16 to 17-year-olds, which kicked in this August. However, that was in return for delivering 40 additional teaching hours for students, and comes as inflation, energy and staffing costs take their toll on budgets. 

Jane Hickie, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, described the chancellor’s speech as “little more than warm words” in the face of no extra cash.

“It’s positive to hear department spend will be honoured until 2024-25 – the situation could have been much worse,” she said.

“However, we cannot escape the fact that there has been systematic under-investment in the system for a number of years now.”

Hughes meanwhile has attacked the education secretary for her “hollow” words at this week’ AoC annual conference.

“The education secretary Gillian Keegan joined me on stage and assured college leaders that they are a priority for this government and that she understands skills,” he said.

“Those words will ring hollow today for college leaders trying to absorb soaring energy prices and wider inflationary pressures while also funding the cash to pay college staff what they need to live and what they deserve.”

The word “college” was not mentioned once in Hunt’s speech or the autumn statement documents.

Another adviser to advise on skills 

Sir Michael Barber
Barber

Public administration supremo Sir Michael Barber was announced as the latest wonk to advise the government on skills policy.

Barber, a former chief education adviser to awarding giant Pearson, has been appointed to advise Hunt and the education secretary Gillian Keegan on “maximising the impact” of the government’s flagship skills reforms.

He was the head of the first delivery unit at Number 10 Downing Street under Tony Blair, and is currently the chancellor of the University of Exeter. He’s written several books on policy implementation.

The chancellor told the House of Commons that “there are many important initiatives” in the skills space but “as chancellor I want to know the answer to one simple question: will every young person leave the education system with the skills they would get in Japan, Germany or Switzerland.”

Treasury documents provide little extra explanation on Barber’s role and remit, only that he will be asked to advise on “maximising the impact” of existing reforms, including the rollout of T Levels, expanding higher technical qualifications, growing skills bootcamps and the introduction of the lifelong loan entitlement. 

While it’s not clear how much, if any, of Barber’s work will be done in public, it will give ministers some flexibility to deflect or delay decisions on challenging or controversial issues. 

Professor Alison Wolf told FE Week she will retain her role as a Number 10 adviser on skills policy, a position she has held since February 2020. Barber’s role will be in addition to Wolf’s.

More skills powers for some mayors

Over half of England will soon be covered by a devolution deal, according to the chancellor today. 

A deal for a new elected mayor of Suffolk was announced and further deals for Cornwall, Norfolk and “an area in the north east” were re-confirmed. Those deals were supposed to be wrapped up this Autumn.

The chancellor also recommitted to the trailblazer devolution deals for the Greater Manchester and the West Midlands combined authorities. Those deals will be signed by early 2023 and promise even more devolved powers over skills, transport and housing. 

Earlier this year FE Week revealed that the Greater Manchester Combined Authority was seeking a co-commissioning role with DfE for 16 to 19 courses and the West Midlands wanted “greater influence” to join up local technical education, employment support and careers service. 

None of those details, nor any specific powers for the other county deals, were confirmed today. 

Adult education and apprenticeships

The only commitment around adult education was restating plans to introduce the lifelong loan entitlement from 2025 and there were no new measures reforms to the apprenticeship levy. This is despite a claim made in March, when then-chancellor Rishi Sunak, said the levy would be reviewed to check it is funding “the right kind of training.” The outcome was supposed to be announced this Autumn, according to Sunak’s spring statement.

The apprentice minimum wage will increase by 9.7 per cent to £5.28 an hour from April 2023. The national living wage will increase to £10.42 an hour at the same time.

We don’t know about energy support 

Colleges, training providers and other non-domestic energy users, including businesses, are currently able to receive help through the government’s Energy Bill Relief Scheme.

The scheme reduces rates to £211 per megawatt hour for electricity and £75 for gas between 31 October this year and 31 March 2023. 

But the government is reviewing what support they can offer beyond this date, saying it is “not sustainable” to continue supporting large numbers of businesses.

Public sector organisations will “not be eligible for support through the review”, meaning it is currently unclear what support they will receive from April next year. 

Any extra support would most likely have been announced today, so this does look ominous. 

If there is no support forthcoming, then this would leave colleges and training providers facing a big hit in extra costs.

One college, South Essex, confirmed it would apply a four-day week across its campuses earlier this year.

Autumn statement: Apprentice minimum wage to rise to £5.28 an hour

The apprentice national minimum wage will rise by 9.7 per cent to £5.28 from April 2023, the Treasury has announced as part of the autumn statement.

Treasury documents have confirmed that the rate, recommended by the Low Pay Commission, should be accepted, and will mean a 47p increase on the current £4.81 apprentice minimum wage rate.

It comes as chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced the national living wage for those aged 23 and above will increase by 9.7 per cent to £10.42 per hour, expected to help more than two million low paid workers, with an increase of £1,600 to the annual earnings of a full time worker on the national living wage.

Elsewhere, the national minimum wage for 21- to- 22-year-olds will go up by 10.9 per cent to £10.18 per hour, while 18- to- 20-year-olds will get a 9.7 per cent increase in the minimum wage to £7.49 per hour.

Those aged 16 and 17 will also get a 9.7 per cent uplift in their national minimum wage to £5.28 per hour.

All rises will take effect from April 2023, the Treasury confirmed.

The Treasury said it remained “committed” to tackling low pay, and continued its ambition for the national living wage to reach two-thirds of median earnings by 2024.

Ex-minister Robin Walker elected as education committee chair 

Robin Walker has been elected as the chair of the parliamentary education select committee.

The former schools minister, who resigned in July over Boris Johnson’s leadership, received 228 votes in a ballot on Wednesday. 

It comes after Robert Halfon, who had served in the role since 2017, returned to the Department of Education (DfE) last month as skills minister. 

Fellow former schools minister Jonathan Gullis, former committee member and ex-chair of the Local Government Association children and young people board David Simmonds and current committee member Caroline Ansell were also nominated. 

Walker said he was “honoured to receive the support of some of the people I respect most in parliament from opposition and government alike”. 

“Nothing can be more important than education, which unlocks opportunity. The work of the education select committee is more relevant and important than ever.

“I am looking forward to working with the committee on issues such as childcare and the cost of living, to keep up the great work which former chair Robert Halfon started on attendance, safeguarding, skills, careers and SEN and to hold ministers to account.”

Nominations for the position ran from October 31 and ended at noon on Tuesday. Only Conservative MPs were able to stand for election.

Each MP needed to gather at least 15 signatures from fellow Conservatives to be nominated.

Walker had been backed by MPs including David Davis. In his candidate statement, he said: “I am informed enough to hit the ground running, but independent enough to hold ministers to account.” 

He added that alongside continuing Halfon’s “excellent” work on skills, SEN, attendance and levelling up, he wanted the committee to do more on “safeguarding, and the cost pressures facing schools and families”. 

The results of the ballot were announced in the House of Commons on Wednesday afternoon. 

Gullis left his DfE role after just 50 days in October following the announcement that former long-serving schools minister Nick Gibb had returned.

Socio-emotional skills are a priority to build a fairer society

Social and emotional skill development at our college is the fundamental building block that underpins learning and relationships. We are not alone in this belief. The Education Endowment Foundation and a significant body of research have evidenced the long-term impact of socio-emotional skills across the life of young learners.

In Pearson’s School Report, the characteristics teachers felt learners needed to thrive in today’s society were resilience, kindness and self-esteem. These don’t happen by accident, but through an intentional and considered implementation of observable quality practice.

Take diversity. It’s important to “meet all people where they are” and promote diversity through considering, exploring and centring others’ experiences and emotions, whilst reflecting on our own responses.

The equity effect of this learning, where in high-quality provision those with the lowest levels of socio-emotional skills develop the most alongside supporting the learning of their peers, means there is much to gain for colleges, students and society.

Socio-emotional learning has always been, to some extent, at the mercy of fashion and politics. Shared language and practice across schools, FE and out-of-school provision has been weak, and as a result we have arguably failed to recognise that young people “transfer” learning into and across all the domains of their lives – a failure that needs to be addressed if we want young learners to build a fairer society.

Creating the right environment

At YMCA George Williams College, we have an evidence-informed approach to socio-emotional skill development that connects all these domains, including a theory-informed outcomes framework and a suite of measures to help organisations understand how well they are promoting this development. One of our key tools is the social and emotional learning programme quality assessment (PQA), developed by the David P. Weikart Center for Youth Programme Quality in the US.

The PQA helps to structure how we centre “quality” in socio-emotional skills development. In the same way that these skills develop across all areas of young people’s learning, the staff practices that support them should also be present. Creating environments that promote socio-emotional skills development is the most important step we can take as managers of educational spaces.

Establishing a safe space

At the foundation of all this is “safe space” – building environments of emotional and psychological safety for all students. This involves using positive and warm language to convey inclusion and mutual respect, showing genuine interest in young people’s wellbeing and proactively managing group work to create opportunities to talk and listen to others.

Supporting learners

“Supportive environments” build on “safe space”. They include educators naming and acknowledging young people’s emotions and supporting them to name them too. They also include discussion about how we handle our emotions, and what can create certain emotional responses.

Becoming interactive

“Interactive environments” focus on fostering teamwork and facilitating the development of shared goals. They include group process skills, promoting responsibility and leadership, and encouraging young people to mentor one another. They also include formal opportunities for young people to learn about and value difference.

Engaging proactively

And finally, “engaging environments” focuses on setting plans and goals, offering support for student interests and furthering learning. This could involve providing all students with opportunities to take responsibility, developing peer mentoring schemes or group leadership opportunities.

Each of these tips may seem small and potentially fleeting, but evidence shows they are not. The PQA guidance equips us with a checklist of simple and practical ways in which we can enhance our learning environments to also be socio-emotional environments. This ensures our classrooms are supporting all students to learn, grow and reflect on their relationships with themselves, their peers and the world around them.

The staffroom: How study skills can help learners to succeed

Vocational learners at level 3 can sometimes struggle with written work and the related study skills needed to achieve their qualification, such as referencing. While these skills should be embedded throughout their programme of study, they can fall by the wayside as this embedding is not usually required by the awarding body. Time and money are also limited in FE, so KPIs can take precedence over the ‘hidden’ curriculum that helps learners succeed.

However, if study skills are integrated into your scheme of work, they will support students at every stage of an assignment and have a beneficial effect on their achievement. You should have staff in your setting working as librarians and/or learning support practitioners who can help with ideas, resources, and delivery to embed study skills. These skills include decoding command verbs in assignment briefs, structuring written work, referencing, and proofreading.

Firstly, do your learners understand what you’re asking them to do? Try asking them to explain the difference between ‘analyse’ and ‘evaluate’ and you’ll probably have your answer. If your learners don’t have a good grasp of command verbs in assignment briefs, the danger is that they will write too much when it isn’t needed and vice versa. Spending time during induction to begin covering this kind of ground will prevent problems later.

Secondly, did you notice that I previewed the content of this article in the last sentence of my introduction when I talked about ‘decoding command verbs in assignment briefs, structuring written work, referencing, and proofreading’? What about the fact that I’m trying to be persuasive, so I’m using rhetorical questions, albeit liberally? Each of my paragraphs also encapsulates the topic of that paragraph in the first or last sentence. I’m also using discourse markers like ‘firstly’ and ‘secondly’ to highlight the flow of ideas in this piece.

If study skills are integrated, they will support students at every stage

Structure-related skills will make writing easier, so do support your learners with outlining, paragraphing, purposes of texts, literary devices, and so on.

Thirdly, I’ve lost count of the number of times when I’ve seen a student in tears because they haven’t been referencing as they go or they can’t get their heads around the required referencing standard. Luckily, there are a number of technological solutions available to simplify referencing. Evaluate these and use the right one to make your students’ lives easier.

Your setting may already have access to tools to help with referencing, but they simply haven’t been publicised widely. Talking about referencing is also a good opportunity to talk about researching with good quality sources and why plagiarism must be avoided. Referencing is also a valuable skill to teach which prepares your students for the transition into higher education.

Finally, proofreading can’t be left entirely to spell checkers when you’ve used the wrong word, but it’s spelled correctly. While your learners may get a kick out of inadvertently writing about the ‘Grate Exhibition’, external verifiers and Ofsted will take a dimmer view. Having a fresh pair of eyes is a great way to proofread too, so get your learners supporting their peers by checking each other’s work. Having a good understanding of spelling, punctuation, and grammar still matters despite technology and will allow students to thrive in so many ways.

In conclusion, level 3 vocational learners need support with study skills, but don’t always get the input they need. Resource constraints can make embedding them difficult, but the positive impact on learner attainment means it’s worth investing in.

Decoding command verbs helps learners to understand exactly what they need to do. A mastery of structure ensures learners understand exactly how to plan and execute their writing. A good knowledge of referencing will encourage your students to research more widely and avoid plagiarism. Focusing strongly on proofreading also enhances learners’ knowledge of spelling, punctuation, and grammar.

Study skills, embedded in the right way, can help students see that written work doesn’t have to be an ordeal.

This article is one of a number of contributions to The Staffroom from the authors of Great FE Teaching: Sharing Good Practice, edited by Samantha Jones and available from SAGE.

T Levels need time to meet our expectations

With the roll-out of T levels well underway, I’ve been working with the Baker Dearing Educational Trust on reviewing how well they’ve been working across University Technical Colleges – 20 per cent of which now offer the courses.

What I’ve found, pleasingly, is that T levels are already popular among students. One UTC told me that more than six times as many of their young people had opted to study a T level in engineering than the BTEC.

What attracts students is the industry placement. They aren’t worried about the policy issues. They like that they are going to be getting a 45-day minimum placement with an employer.

While some of the BTEC programme can be quite generic, the T level’s occupational specialism also helps students focus on a particular area that they are passionate about.

The ‘Achilles Heel’ of employer engagement

I’ve seen some fantastic examples of how companies have engaged with the delivery of T levels and where teachers have been able to include them in course delivery.

What worries me though is those providers which do not have as strong a relationship with employers as UTCs do, so do not have networks of local employers to, for example, help advise on the curriculum.

Where providers have a weak relationship with local firms or have partners which make little input, employer engagement will be the Achilles’ heel of their T level provision.

Involving employers with T levels works when teachers invite them to do sessions with the students. Employers can also take students on trips and visits, even prior to the work placements.

What attracts students is the placement. They aren’t worried about policy issues

Companies can furthermore supply technicians to train staff on using specialist equipment to deliver T levels.

What also needs to be addressed is how, despite the government’s marketing efforts, there are many small-to-medium-sized enterprises out there who are not engaging with providers on T levels.

So at a local level, providers should directly engage with their local SMEs by, for instance, holding business breakfasts so SMEs can come to the table to talk about T levels.

Teachers still wary

The UTCs I have visited ensure those staff who don’t teach T levels but teach related skills like maths, English and science are being involved in delivering aspects of the T level.

In many cases, students are still required to have passed maths and English before they start the T level. This is despite the government axing this requirement last year and is because teachers have realised T level content, projects, and examinations require students to have a higher level of literacy and numeracy.

In some cases, students who have achieved a grade three are being steered towards BTECs – which teachers are reluctant to stop delivering.

BTECs offer much greater flexibility and I have seen UTC students using them if they want to also do an academic programme: A couple of A-levels and then one BTEC alongside.

Another pull factor of BTECs is that when UTCs are marketing to parents, they know if a student gets a merit or a distinction, they’re going to have an opportunity at university.

While T Level students going onto university will be a minority, universities are reluctant about them because they know the courses were meant as a route into skilled employment. I think there’s a fear that students would start a degree programme and not stay on it.

T levels need time

To draw out this reluctance towards T levels, there needs to be more data, especially on student destinations.

Once we get a lot more information around the T level destinations showing that students are getting onto higher and degree apprenticeships, then I think that will definitely ease some of these fears.

T levels, like any successful qualification, need a couple of years to bed in to develop the data and the positive outcomes to win over educators as well as employers.

Despite challenges, skills bootcamps can still be a success

Last Wednesday, Ofsted published its thematic review into wave two of skills bootcamps. This was a welcome opportunity to take stock of this relatively new programme and I’m pleased the review highlighted the positive experience that learners generally get from these bootcamps.

More widely though, the report made for tough reading at times – including raising concerns over the quality of training where providers had little track record of delivery. However, I’m confident providers are ready to take this challenge on board. Lessons will be learned.

Promising early signs

Skills bootcamps are a great way to help employers quickly fill skills gaps. Their shorter nature means they offer a way for learners to get an accelerated boost to their skills – and we’ve already seen them being used to good effect in tackling the HGV driver shortage. They also provide an important link to other forms of work-based training down the line.

It was positive to read that most learners are satisfied with the content and quality of their training, and that providers have responded effectively to the aims of the programme. However, we should be cautious about the report’s wider findings, given the sample group used by Ofsted only includes a very small percentage of providers. In fact, many providers with a strong track record of delivery were not included in the study.

Nevertheless, we must acknowledge that the report has identified significant areas for improvement. This includes the need for better quality across provider types, better employer engagement, better oversight of subcontractors, and more measures to be put in place to identify learners’ prior experience.

Many providers with a strong track record were not included

We have seen similar challenges in other parts of the sector, and although they can be addressed, it’s frustrating to see them again. I know from speaking to providers – including Mark Dawe from the Skills Network – that the lessons learned in wave two are already being applied to wave three. The review itself was early on in the programme, so provides a great checklist for the future.

Dawe also pointed out that it takes time for employers to engage with new skills programmes and for them to work out how they would fit into their talent and workforce strategies. We only need to look to recent experiences with T Levels for evidence of that.

More scrutiny will help

Although Ofsted’s remarks shouldn’t detract from the many positive outcomes learners and employers have seen from skills bootcamps, we do need to put in place more safeguards and scrutiny.

Skills bootcamps sit outside mainstream established provision and are an outlier in terms of rules, compliance, reporting and quality when compared with other programmes. Giving Ofsted the power to inspect all bootcamp providers from April next year is a welcome move; we’ve long called for this, and at our recent autumn conference, 84 per cent of attendees agreed it was the way forward.

Having said that, though, the government must allocate Ofsted the right resources for this to work! Bringing skills bootcamps within its remit means these programmes will now be properly scrutinised and ensure they are reaching the high standards we all expect. The next step should be to add bootcamp subcontracting to the Department for Education’s existing rules and approaches, and ensuring the next round of procurement takes providers’ track record properly into account.

This report has been challenging. But we should welcome this sort of challenge. Lessons have been learned and we must now redouble our efforts to make the programme a success.

Let’s celebrate skills training for what it is, not what it isn’t

It was joyful to hear King Charles and Jay Blades commending the importance and value of skills education and apprenticeships when they appeared in a recent episode of the BBC’s The Repair Shop.

Those of us working on technical education hear such comments almost daily; apprenticeships and technical qualifications are increasingly widely recognised as a great way for individuals to set themselves up for rewarding careers.

Whenever I tell people what I do for a living, the response is almost always a wish for more apprenticeship and training opportunities, better promoted to school leavers.

But despite overwhelming enthusiasm, something strange happens when people define the skills system. Instead of unpacking the benefits of learning employer-specified knowledge, skills and behaviours as a preparation for working life, the implicit message seems to be that no one who could follow a high-prestige “academic” pathway would choose vocational education and training instead.

Indeed, the King mentioned on The Repair Shop that technical education is vital because “not everybody is designed for the academic”. It’s a familiar refrain, often emanating from government sources themselves. And it worries me, because what people hear is that there’s a hierarchy of educational pathways in which technical education is second-rate.

Likewise for T level qualifications. They cover the knowledge and skills employers say are necessary, and provide learners with a much-loved substantial industry placement to build workplace know-how. But it’s rare for T levels to be promoted on the basis of these characteristics. Rather, we are told that they are “equivalent to 3 A levels”. Similarly, degree apprenticeships are described as “equivalent to” a full bachelor’s or master’s degree.

Apprentices are not refugees from an academically straitjacketed alternative

We must call time on this tendency to spotlight what apprenticeships and technical qualifications are not when seeking to explain what they are. Nearly 90 per cent of 2,000 apprentices surveyed by IfATE are confident that what they are learning will benefit their career. There’s no need to trade on the borrowed prestige of other pathways to convey the allure of what’s on offer.

Besides, the comparisons don’t stand up. Degree apprenticeships aren’t “equivalent to” bachelor’s or master’s degrees: they combine a very real, full bachelor’s or master’s degrees with the additional benefit of workplace experience and accountability, and a salary for each apprentice. Likewise, T levels give students access to real, sustained workplace experience that sets them apart from their peers – something no A Level replicates.

So it’s not asking too much of those considering these qualifications to appreciate the additionality – not the equivalence – of what’s on offer.

The whole range of technical qualifications and apprenticeships approved by IfATE aren’t merely for those for whom the “academic” pathway is not a good fit. They are for anyone whose aspiration is to train confidently for a rewarding career in any of more than 650 occupations.

Consider the range of pre-apprenticeship experience in IfATE’s apprentice panel, who published the results and recommendations from its national apprentice survey last week. They include a national handball player who earned straight grade 9s at GCSE and moved straight into a civil engineering apprenticeship, a former Paralympian, now apprentice solicitor…

What connects them is not that they are all refugees from an academically-straitjacketed alternative pathway. Rather, it’s that they were driven and ready enough to get out into the workplace to achieve their ambitions. They’ll have learned alongside experienced colleagues, earned a wage and developed workplace know-how that will form the basis of flourishing careers.

I don’t think anyone needs reminding that “the academic route is not for everyone” to discern the deeper wisdom of their choice.

The apprentice minimum wage must be reviewed

There is increasing evidence that the apprentice minimum wage is acting as a barrier to the qualifications acting as powerful engine of social mobility they can be. With the success and growth of apprenticeships in recent years, this raises important questions.

Apprenticeships and technical education play a special role in our education system, often offering a second chance, a route back into training or retraining to get back into employment. Given they are a critical rung on the ‘ladder of opportunity’ (in Rob Halfon’s words), we need to take this evidence seriously, avoiding the sort of social media outrage that accompanied Jonathan Gullis, MP’s  advertisement for an apprentice communications officer.

Twitter thundered its indignation at a salary of £12,285 a year and yes, it feels very low, especially as the median average income in Stoke-on-Trent where the role is based is about £24,000. However, the apprentice minimum wage of £4.81 per hour means Gullis is actually paying about £4,000 a year more than required.

That doesn’t excuse that the salary is too low. If the apprenticeship was in more expensive cities like Manchester or London, it would be unliveable without independent wealth or the bank of mum and dad, ruling out low-income families, adults wanting to do an apprenticeship, and many of the very people who would benefit most from an apprenticeship. So yes, apprentices aren’t the finished article and are still training, but we can’t make quality training inaccessible for the less-well off.

I’ve heard personally from apprentices (prior to the cost-of-living crisis) about the financial pressures they feel. One was an inspiring young carer who loved her apprenticeship but struggled financially as a result of doing it. She told stories of fellow apprentices who had dropped out of their apprenticeship as they couldn’t rely on family financial support. Just travelling to their place of work was proving financially crippling, let alone affording food and somewhere to live.

Many employers already pay above the apprentice minimum wage

The case for change is clear. It cannot be right that a single parent in their thirties looking to get back into employment is presented with living on £4.81 an hour if they train, or £9.50 if they just get even the lowest-skill job. Getting rid of the apprentice minimum wage and instead aligning apprentice wages from the start with the government’s national minimum wage (while keeping £4.81 for under-18s) would strip out red tape for businesses and see apprenticeships remain a rung on the ladder of opportunity.

The social mobility commission is already picking up warning signs that apprenticeships are becoming inaccessible to those from disadvantaged backgrounds. And the new education secretary and former apprentice, Gillian Keegan already expressed concern about those from disadvantaged backgrounds being “squeezed out” when she was skills minister a few years ago.

Some will say that the UK already tends to pay apprentices higher than other countries – and there is evidence to suggest this is true. They then argue that giving apprentices a living wage would create too much of a burden on employers, and that’s where we differ.

Employers I meet worry about not being able to spend enough of their apprenticeship levy, and they’re desperate to fill their skills gaps. It doesn’t strike me that they are looking to cut corners on investing in talent – quite the opposite. Indeed, many forward-thinking employers already pay above the apprentice minimum wage.

For smaller firms where cash flow is a real issue and wage bills tend to be a greater proportion of a firm’s cost base, bringing back the £3,000 government cash incentive Rishi Sunak rolled out as Chancellor during the pandemic would address this immediately. The incentive was hugely effective and a cost-effective intervention with 195,590 claims made over nearly two years, nearly 80 per cent of them for apprentices aged 16 to 24.

With such incentives in place, the case to pay apprentices a living wage is powerful. If we want apprenticeships to be prestigious and sought after, sticking with such a low minimum wage sends the wrong signal – especially considering higher education has easy access to student finance, maintenance support, and often subsidised accommodation too.

If employers and government want to fill skills gaps, why quibble over a few thousand pounds per year for an apprentice given the huge impact a liveable wage would have?