The HGV & Bus and Coach Standards Trailblazer Group has been working with IfATE to rectify a serious funding mishap in 2019 that reduced the funding band from £18,000 to £15,000 for the three-year HGV technician apprenticeship.

Like many other industries, we are operating in a very tight labour market. It takes nearly four years to qualify as an HGV mechanic and the job is not only safety critical but essential to our economy to keep our supply chains moving.

The core issue lies in IfATE erroneously categorising virtually every vehicle component, batteries and training rigs as capital funded items even though our trailblazer group has confirmed that the items do not last longer than the duration of the individual apprenticeship.

Contrary to IfATE’s view, most of the items are destroyed through constant use by the apprenticeship within a couple of years. Common sense says that if you strip down and rebuild something 12 times a day – when it was only designed to be stripped down once in its lifetime – it does not last very long. Yet no amount of evidence, engineering reports, photographs or even repeat invoices seem to be able convince officials.

According to IfATE, the required specialist buildings and training rigs such as engines and gearboxes are all ineligible cost items. Funding rules state that a provider can claim for premises if mandatory to run the course, but IfATE are refusing to add these costs. Instead, they say that the costs are covered by the 20 per cent non-teaching costs, which they themselves calculate. As a result, we are left with insufficient funding to pay for specialist training centres. 

Skimping on kit literally endangers the public. And the fact that the programme is a loss-maker has resulted in most providers exiting this provision altogether.

The funding process is supposed to be transparent and fair. Our experience is that it is opaque, bureaucratic, and slow. I would go as far as to say it is not fit for purpose and is not providing good value for the taxpayer’s money.

The question we ask ourselves as a trailblazer group is what happens if the training providers do not want to or cannot provide this eye-wateringly expensive equipment. What happens to the day release local college courses that do not have a manufacturer who is willing or able to fund all the training equipment for their apprentices to learn on the right kit?

If those courses exist, the reality is that learners are more likely shown how to do things on cars only, or taught ‘in theory’ and left to do the practical back at the workplace. This is not good enough. It fails our apprentices, our businesses and our economy.

We have invited IfATE officials to come along to a training centre, but they have declined saying ‘they already know’. We have offered them to come to a meeting of our 50-strong trailblazer group to hear the views of the manufacturers, employers, training providers and EPA organisations, but they don’t feel they need to.

The sector route panel may be well-intentioned, but it has no heavy vehicle experience. More than that, the route is enormous and no one panel can really make good decisions in these circumstances.

This has been a very difficult process since the latest review began in October 2022, when it was supposed to be a simple costing exercise driven by an IfATE error. More than six months on, we are left asking ourselves what the point of a trailblazer/employer lead group is if IfATE do not trust and respect the industry and insists it knows best.  As wealth creators for the economy, we do not feel valued or listened to.

As we stare down the worst shortage of skilled technicians our industry has ever experienced, it is easy to conclude that apprenticeships, led and funded as they are, are no longer our go-to source of high-quality future talent.

After 30 years of supporting apprentices, that makes me extremely sad. Everyone else should be worried about the implications.

The post-pandemic recovery in apprenticeship starts has stalled during the current academic year with the biggest fall (8.3 per cent) in the first two quarters occurring in the 19-to-24 age group. The fluctuation in start numbers is largely determined by employer demand and there is no doubt that the slowdown in the economy since last summer has had a negative impact on what had been an encouraging post-lockdown recovery for the apprenticeship programme.

So how can we go about reinvigorating the apprenticeship brand? Here’s a summary of the main points I put forward at the recent FE Week Annual Apprenticeship Conference 2023.

Responsiveness and relevance

First, more needs to be done to bring apprenticeships in line with the needs of business. In particular, the employer trailblazer structure under IfATE is not functioning as it should. Employers can make recommendations to make apprenticeships more attractive to other businesses, but too often IfATE won’t accept them, such as allowing flexibility in the off-the-job training rule.

Then, as I wrote in FE Week in March, the apprenticeship requirement for attaining functional skills in maths in its current form is putting off a lot of businesses and would-be apprentices from engaging in the programme.

Remit Training has since conducted an online poll in which household-name employers and many training providers participated. Of these, 88 per cent of participants agreed that the maths aim needs reform. The key objective should be to reduce and achieve contextualisation of the curriculum to be more relevant to the apprenticeship.

Funded for success

The same proportion of respondents agreed that the separate funding rate, unchanged since May 2017, requires a significant uplift.

Our calculation is that the rate needs to be £1,800 to adequately cover monthly taught sessions with each apprentice. Without it, lower functional skills attainment will remain a major factor in the disappointing apprenticeship completion rates overall, which undoubtedly damages the brand.

Apprenticeship funding in general has not increased over the past six years, and in some cases has gone down. Over the same period since March 2017, the rate of inflation (Retail Price Index, RPI) has increased by 36 per cent in absolute terms.  It is hardly surprising therefore that we hear almost weekly stories of providers going bust or withdrawing from apprenticeships.

Some observers may not care about providers, but they should at least care about the futures of thousands of young apprentices who are left in the lurch. An announcement on remedial action since promises on funding were made in early November cannot be delayed any longer.   

The DfE’s apprenticeships director, Peter Mucklow recently visited Remit Training’s automotive apprentice academies in Derby. There, he saw the high level of investment needed to provide good quality training as the UK responds to the surge in new electric vehicle registrations.

We emphasised that we had to generate commercial training income in order to pay for our apprenticeship provision and grow it, adding that inflation has turned our HGV technician apprenticeship programme into a loss-maker. It means that Remit has to find alternative ways to raise funds to establish more academies when the economy needs these vital skills to keep our supply chains moving.

Consistent messaging

Lastly, the mark of any successful brand is its attractiveness to potential consumers. But apprenticeships are still not competing with other sectors on a level playing field. To attract more young people to apprenticeships, we should review how best to work with schools on the Baker Clause requirements for providing information and guidance to pupils.

Instead of potentially lots of providers trying to come into schools carrying different messages, a collaborative approach is needed to agree a manageable programme of visits. The government should also commission some bite-sized videos featuring apprenticeship completers talking about opportunities opened, career progression and increased earnings. 

The key point emanating from independent training providers is that boosting the apprenticeship brand is not just about government funding. There are other changes with the potential to make the programme much more attractive to employers and young people, which all need government vision and leadership.

And of course, funding has to be addressed urgently too.