Ministers must consider boosting minimum apprentice pay

The cost of living crisis means the government must act quickly to tackle the barriers to apprenticeship uptake, writes Suzanne Straw

Apprenticeships are a key training route to help young people enter the labour market. They also have the potential to act as a vehicle for social mobility.

However, our latest research highlights myriad barriers that young people – particularly those who are the most disadvantaged – face in accessing intermediate (level 2) and advanced (level 3) apprenticeships.

As the current cost of living crisis will only amplify a number of these barriers, it is more important than ever that they are addressed effectively.

On the money

Drawing on 20 interviews with employers in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), our research highlights that apprentice wages are a significant barrier to some young people undertaking and completing apprenticeships.

Even where employers pay above the minimum apprenticeship wage, they reported that this is insufficient for young people to survive on.

Employers gave examples of past apprentices who had struggled financially, undertaking additional jobs in the evening and at weekends.

This barrier disproportionally impacts young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, who are unlikely to be able to rely on families for financial support. In some cases they may be required to make an important contribution to their family’s finances.

This barrier will only be exacerbated by the current cost of living crisis. While the national minimum wage for apprentices was recently increased from £4.30 to £4.81, it remains very low and most of this increase is likely to be absorbed by current high levels of inflation.

In addition, as apprenticeship wages are considerably lower than those young people can earn elsewhere, this is likely to further deter young people from considering them.

Costs of travel

There are substantial geographic differences in the availability of apprenticeships, particularly in certain sectors.

So while it is possible to do a health and social care apprenticeship in most parts of England, apprenticeship opportunities in manufacturing technologies are much more localised.

This would mean young people seeking to work in this sector would have to reconsider their options, move to a new part of the country or travel considerable distances.

Again, this is likely to prevent young people, particularly those from disadvantaged groups, from accessing these opportunities.

A longer-term view

SMEs also said that young people’s poor awareness of the longer-term earning and career progression potential of apprenticeships can be a key barrier to recruitment.

Some employers felt this lack of awareness can lead young people into more highly paid, low-skilled jobs, rather than apprenticeships with greater prospects but which pay less in the short term.

To overcome this barrier, it is important that the long-term benefits of apprenticeships are highlighted to young people when they are considering their post-16 options.

Overcoming barriers

There are a number of actions that could be taken to support young people, particularly those who are most disadvantaged, to overcome these barriers. These include:

1.         Consider boosting apprentice pay

The government should revisit the appropriate level of the minimum apprenticeship wage and extend the 16-19 bursary fund so that it can be used to fund travel costs for apprentices from disadvantaged backgrounds.

2.         Promote positive apprentice role models

Providing work experience and positive apprentice role models could encourage young people to consider apprenticeships, by highlighting the longer-term benefits of this route.

3.         Improve awareness of intermediate and advanced apprenticeships

Drawing on effective practice, the government could find ways of raising awareness of intermediate and advanced apprenticeships and promoting positive messages to young people, parents, carers and teaching staff.

While these solutions will not fix all of the challenges faced by disadvantaged young people, they constitute a necessary and important step towards helping more of them to access and complete apprenticeships.

Sixth-form students’ art exhibition explores challenges facing the environment 

More than 180 students from 64 colleges will display their artwork as part of a national exhibition that explores challenges facing the environment.  

The ‘Planet Future’ online exhibition is to be launched this Friday and will run until July 22.

The exhibition is being coordinated by the Sixth Form Colleges Association and all pictures can be viewed on the SFCA gallery website. 

“This online exhibition is a way of celebrating the arts and recognising excellence in sixth-form colleges,” said Bill Watkin, chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association. 

“The artwork ̶ all produced by 16-to-19-year-old students in sixth-form colleges across England ̶ indicates how young people are feeling about our climate and the environment, and how they view the wider sustainability agenda.  

“But the exhibition also offers an opportunity to celebrate the importance and power of art in education, as well as the artists’ quality, creativity and talent.” 

Skills minister Alex Burghart said that SFCA’s Planet Future exhibition highlights the “extraordinary artistic talent” in the sixth-form college sector.  

“My congratulations go to all the students involved. The sustainability agenda has never been more important, and the exhibition highlights students’ hopes and fears about the future, while also showcasing their enormous creativity and innovation,” he said.  

Student artists didn’t shy away from taking on difficult subjects, such as the war in Ukraine and finding a balance with nature is tackled by students. 

Nobody Wins a War by Arin Awojobi explores the human tragedy of the war in Ukraine. 

“This composition takes up the theme of the wandering traveller and introduces a semantic field of desolation,” said Awojobi.  

“It deals with feelings of present loneliness and future desolation, especially with the Russia-Ukraine conflict that started this year, and the realisation that nobody wins in a war. 

The children that become orphans have to keep fighting as everything crashes around them.” 

Existential themes about humanity’s survival were also explored by Trinity Fairman, who was studying a BTec level 3 art and design, with her work Finding a Balance (feature image).

“This piece is about Mother Nature versus mankind and reflects how the balance needs to be found to stop doing damage to our planet,” Fairman said.  

Other works include Wrapped by Angelika Specht, focussing on how the use of plastic is destroying the natural world, and challenges the viewer to look at themself and consider the effect they are having on the world.  

“The three-layer screen print was printed on a recyclable material to highlight that we must start using alternatives to save our planet,” Specht said.  

There were some slightly lighter pieces that took a more positive spin on the issues faced by humanity, such as Hope for the Future by Ruby Currie. 

“I chose to reflect on ideas I want to see in the future for the theme, the future that I would like to see and hope for, as a young person,” Currie said.  

“I thought especially about problems that have the potential to put our future in jeopardy. Instead of focusing on the scary side, I decided to create it as what we can do to change, rather than what will happen if we don’t.”

Soaring inflation wipes out skills budget boost

Unexpected spikes in inflation are set to wipe out up to £850 million of the government’s skills funding increases over the next three years, FE Week can reveal. 

Sector leaders have warned that student numbers could be massively reduced as a result, as colleges and training providers face increased staff shortages and cuts to course provision. 

Ministers have been urged to immediately add an extra £350 million a year in skills funding on top of planned rises to mitigate the impact or risk damaging their levelling-up agenda. 

Chancellor Rishi Sunak pledged in his 2021 spending review to increase skills funding by 29 per cent in real terms over the next three years compared to 2019/20, predominantly driven by the rollout of the national skills fund and further growth in apprenticeship funding.

The chancellor said the investment would form the most “wide-ranging skills agenda this country has seen in decades”. 

However, since then, there have been significant rises in inflation, which have in part resulted from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

Following these increases, the Office for Budget Responsibility updated its forecasts in March 2022 and the Bank of England did likewise in May 2022. 

New analysis by the Learning and Work Institute, shared exclusively with FE Week, said the upshot is that prices may be 4.3 to 8.6 per cent higher in 2024/25 than expected at the spending review. 

The research body predicted that the loss due to inflation over the next three years combined would be £850 million. Some £350 million is predicted to be lost in 2024/25 alone. 

Stephen Evans, chief executive of Learning and Work Institute, said that while it is good to see skills funding increasing after a decade of cuts, the bigger than expected spike in inflation is set to eat up a substantial amount of that increase. 

“We need greater investment to avoid that. Investment that will pay off given high-quality learning contributes to economic growth,” he said. 

L&W predicts that the adult education budget and national skills fund would be harder hit, with apprenticeship funding somewhat cushioned by higher-than-expected employment and growth in nominal earnings. 

The institute warned that the quality of learning, or up to 250,000 adult learning places, could be at risk over the next three years under Bank of England inflation forecasts. 

One of the government’s 12 levelling-up “missions”, as outlined in their flagship levelling-up white paper, is to increase the number of adults in training by 200,000 more people every year between now and 2030. 

L&W said that if funding rates per learner are not increased, providers will find it increasingly difficult to provide high-quality learning and that difficulties paying higher salaries and increases in “precarious work” could lead to staff shortages. 

“Larger class sizes might not work for some provision or some learners. Curriculum content could be limited. Some provision or learner support may be cut altogether. This could feed to lower-than-expected learner numbers and underspends in skills budgets,” L&W said. 

David Hughes, chief executive of the AoC, said the analysis “lays bare the glaring gap” between investment and what is needed for people and employers. 

“With the tightest labour market on record and skills shortages across the economy, investment in adult skills at all levels should be rising significantly. The government talks a good game on this, but the investment is sadly lacking,” he said. 

And the Association of Employment and Learning Providers said L&W’s research reflects the concerns that its members are raising on a daily basis. 

“Rising costs will put enormous pressure on our sector’s ability to deliver the high-quality training provision that our learners and employers sorely need,” Jane Hickie, chief executive of AELP told FE Week. 

High inflation puts ‘massive’ pressure on providers 

An investigation by FE Week revealed that independent providers and colleges are already coming under huge financial pressure because of inflation ̶ with some resorting to cutting courses.  

One provider who did not want to be named told FE Week that in the past two weeks they have made the decision to stop offering three courses (in HR support, healthcare assistant practitioner and associate project manager) mainly due to the cost of travel and matching staff salary expectations. 

There were around 200 students on these courses. 

The provider said that in addition to this they have reduced the amount of employers they are working with for adult care worker and lead adult worker training from 217 to just 20, which they said demonstrates a significant reduction in provision in a sector that has extremely high staff shortages because of financial viability. 

A spokesperson for the provider called the financial pressure caused by inflation “absolutely massive”. 

“We’ve gone from a reasonable margin to now, we have no margin. It is literally cancelled out. Half of our provision is around adult care. We had a conversation where we seriously considered just not doing any more care qualifications. 

“If you are in those lower funding bands, there is very little wriggle room… We’re going to see a lot of providers fold… and how many displaced students are we going to have to deal with?” they said. 

Mark Currie, chair of Greater Manchester Learning Provider Network and chief executive of the National Logistics Academy (a provider that teaches HGV drivers and wider logistics skills), explained that increases in the price of fuel have caused problems for his business. 

“Clearly, we’ve seen the price of fuel go from £1.30 a litre to £1.90 a litre, for diesel. Not far off going up by 50 per cent in less than six months…. Fuel in driver training is a very substantial 25 per cent part of the cost. It’s about half the labour cost. So, if 25 per cent of your cost goes up by 50 per cent, that is kind of critical,” he told FE Week. 

Colleges are also being impacted. Martin Harrison, executive director of finance at The Sheffield College, said they have been bit by rising costs for curriculum materials, particularly for construction. 

“We’ve seen costs of things like wood triple…  because that is coupled with the scarcity of supply, so all of these things are hitting us at once,” he said. 

The Sheffield College is planning for their utilities to increase significantly next year, probably around 50 per cent, according to Harrison.

He said another key area where inflation is having an impact is with the food, both in terms of curriculum (for culinary qualifications) and in-house catering services. 

“In the past we have worked on the basis that whatever we sell might cost us 50 per cent, give or take a little bit,” he said.

“That’s now costing us nearer to 60 per cent to 70 per cent… All of our prices that we are getting seem to be shooting up one month to the next. It makes it challenging in the sector, when you are trying to deliver college meals to students, who need that support.” 

Another concern is that the college has put in bids for capital works, which were made three months ago. Harrison said that the costs associated with those bids will have increased due to inflation, if the bids are successful. 

And Andrea Webb, managing director of Profile Development and Training Limited in Kent,  which specialises in education and training and early years sectors, said that between 2018/19 to 2021/22 her business running costs had gone up by 83 per cent. 

Funding rates haven’t changed in years 

AELP’s Jane Hickie said that funding rates for skills programmes need to be reviewed at least annually to reflect the true cost of delivery. 

She also called on the government to directly fund any necessary increases resulting from these reviews. 

“Fundamentally, if the government is serious about delivering a world-class skills system, they should reflect the true cost of delivery in funding made available for delivering skills programmes,” she added. 

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We are targeting support where it is needed most, investing in high-quality training that is delivering the skilled workforce employers need to grow, while plugging skills gaps in our economy and helping more people into jobs.” 

Gdańsk to host EuroSkills 2023 following Russia suspension

WorldSkills leaders have selected Gdańsk, Poland to replace St Petersburg as the host city for the 2023 Euroskills competition, it has been announced. 

Germany and Luxembourg were also successful in their bid to co-host EuroSkills 2027, which will take place in Düsseldorf.

Next year’s European competition had originally been scheduled to take place in St Petersburg, Russia. However a decision was made to suspend Russia and Belarus from WorldSkills International Board back in March at emergency meeting citing Russia’s “enormous breach of the WorldSkills code of ethics and conduct” following its invasion of Ukraine.

“We applaud WorldSkills Poland for their courage and commitment to organise a EuroSkills Competition, especially at such short notice” said Teija Ripattila, chair of the WorldSkills Europe board, which met yesterday afternoon to ratify decisions on future host cities.

Next year’s competition will be the eighth EuroSkills competition, which take place every other year, with 600 young people from 31 countries expected to take part. Competitors will be battling it out for medals in up to 50 different skills areas. 

Organisers expect around 100,000 visitors to descent on the Polish city over the duration of the competition, scheduled to take place between September 5-9, 2023.

The UK has welcomed the move to Gdańsk.

Neil Bentley-Gockmann, the chief executive of WorldSkills UK, said: “There is no denying that the past few years have thrown up many challenges for young people selected to represent their country but unable to test their skills against the best of the rest.

“EuroSkills 2023 is a really important opportunity for our young professionals to benchmark their skills against the best in Europe.”

A ‘pipeline of international skills events for young professionals’

WorldSkills Europe’s board have also announced that Düsseldorf will host the 2027 EuroSkills competition today following a successful joint bid by WorldSkills Germany and WorldSkills Luxembourg. 

This completes a busy five-year calendar of skills events for UK competitors to test their skills against the best in Europe and the rest of the world.

“With EuroSkills 2023 confirmed in Gdańsk, WorldSkills Lyon taking place in 2024, EuroSkills 2025 in Hernig, Denmark and EuroSkills 2027 in Düsseldorf, it’s great to have a pipeline of international skills events for young professionals in the UK to aspire to” Bentley-Gockmann said.

International skills competitions have inevitably faced major disruptions due to Covid-19 restrictions over the last two years.

The global WorldSkills Shanghai competition was supposed to take place in 2021 but was postponed to October 2022 because of the pandemic. It was finally cancelled recently due to ongoing Covid-related controls and restrictions in China. 

£8m fund to expand degree apprenticeships announced

The government has pledged to invest an extra £8 million to help universities “rocket-boost” degree apprenticeships – but it appears officials are yet to flesh out what the funding can be used for.   

Joint FE and HE minister Michelle Donelan announced the fund on Twitter this week before telling MPs on the education select committee the pot is designed to incentivise greater numbers of degree apprenticeships.   

The minister revealed that the fund would help with “start-up costs” but failed to provide any further detail.   

The Office for Students, which will administer the fund, was unable to shed any further light at all on how the fund will be used specifically at the time of going to press.  

Donelan claimed there are now over 39,000 degree apprentices in England – which is double the number since she came into her ministerial position in the DfE in February 2020.   

Her ambition is for every university in England to offer the programmes.   

University representative organisations welcomed any additional funding to further grow degree apprenticeships but questioned how the £8 million would be dished out to effectively incentivise more of their members to offer the courses.   

They also warned that raising awareness of degree apprentices among prospective learners and encouraging more employers to offer the jobs need to be focused on in tandem with university capacity.   

MillionPlus chief executive Rachel Hewitt said: “While degree apprenticeships have seen steady growth in recent years, key challenges continue to hinder expansion, including excessive bureaucracy and a relative lack of student demand.  

“Efforts to address these issues need to go hand in hand with extra funding if the increased growth of degree apprenticeships that the government, providers and the public want to see is to be achieved.”   

University Vocational Awards Council chief executive Mandy Crawford-Lee said she is unclear what the DfE refers to when it talks about an unmet degree apprenticeships demand.   

“Do they mean particular types of standards? Is it actually gaps in the market where we need the creation of new potential work-based roots into some of the professions that have yet to be explored?”   

Crawford-Lee told FE Week that the “race has already started” for start-up costs as there are now almost 100 universities actively delivering apprenticeships.   

She said the fund should be used to support universities in diversifying their degree apprenticeship offer. “So moving into areas that potentially they haven’t moved into before, expanding their curriculum offer or their apprenticeship portfolio offer into new areas, new disciplines, new occupations, for example, and what that means in terms of building capacity.”   

Crawford-Lee said some degree apprenticeship programmes are more expensive than others to deliver, particularly in STEM subjects, where the funding bands on offer to universities from the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education are unviable to match delivery costs.   

The government has also handed a further £8 million to the OfS in 2022/23 to encourage greater provision of level 4 and 5 qualifications.   

This is to be “allocated to providers with eligible learners on level 4 and 5 qualifications, through formula funding”, according to a letter from education secretary Nadhim Zahawi.   

“As part of the HE reform consultation we are seeking views from the sector on how to support growth of high-quality level 4 and 5 courses and the possible role of grant funding in this, and responses will inform the detail of any allocations in future academic years,” his letter added.   

No further information about the fund has been published yet. 

Apprentice feedback to trigger provider intervention

Apprentice feedback will soon be used to trigger intervention in training providers, the Education and Skills Funding Agency has confirmed.   

Views from apprentices about the quality of their training experience are set to be gathered through a new Tripadvisor-style review tool that was launched last week.   

The results will generate an overall star rating on the government’s Find Apprenticeship Training website and be used as a quality indicator under the ESFA’s new accountability framework that came into effect in April.   

Those with poor scores will be placed in a “needs improvement” category and become subject to “enhanced monitoring”, which could include management conversations with government officials, the development of “improvement plans” and potential referrals to Ofsted.   

The ESFA told FE Week that a quality threshold for apprentice feedback will be announced in due course, once the data has “sufficiently matured”.   

Employer feedback, gathered via a similar tool launched in 2018, currently triggers intervention if a provider’s average feedback is “less than 2.5” stars out of four.   

News that apprentice feedback will be used as an accountability measure has been welcomed by the National Society of Apprentices, which bemoaned the government’s “inherently unbalanced” apprenticeship system that “values the views of employers over the views of apprentices”. 

But Ian Pryce, chief executive of Bedford College, questioned the decision. He said he is not a fan of using feedback as a performance measure as it “distorts how we approach employers and apprentices”.   

“It becomes about the result, not the insight,” he told FE Week. “Also, it implies a simplistic view of learning as the sole responsibility of the provider, when apprentices and employers also have responsibilities. Education is not an Amazon purchase.”   

The ESFA’s digital service originally planned to launch the apprentice feedback tool in September 2018, with then-skills minister Anne Milton speaking in strong favour of its value over Ofsted inspections. However, it suffered a number of setbacks.   

In an update to the sector last week, the agency said apprentices can now give anonymous feedback from their ‘My Apprenticeship’ account. The results will appear on each training provider’s Find Apprenticeship Training webpage for employers and prospective learners to view once ten responses have been submitted.   

The apprentice will be asked to agree or disagree with 12 questions in the feedback survey before being asked to rate their training with one of four stars: very poor (1), poor (2), good (3) or excellent (4). An average of all the results is then calculated to generate a provider’s overall rating.   

The same process is used for employer feedback.   

However, the government does not publish or hold a central list of all training provider ratings for employers and apprentices to make comparisons.   

The ESFA told FE Week: “The apprenticeship service infrastructure is currently configured to process and present data at a summarised provider view in Find Apprenticeship Training. We do not therefore hold the data in a format that would allow comparison between providers outside of the service.”   

Jane Hickie, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said there is a place for feedback from learners and their employers when assessing the quality of apprenticeship training and agreed with the ESFA that this “should be measured as part of a framework that assesses a wide range of quality indicators”.   

However, she added, “As apprenticeship feedback is new, it is important that ESFA takes time to ensure any threshold linked to intervention is realistic and proportionate.”   

Ofsted also confirmed to FE Week that it will use apprentice and employer feedback as one data tool to inform inspections. 

Do Apprenticeships hold the key to Levelling Up the UK?

The Levelling Up agenda outlined by the government has been devised to address stark inequalities across the country, both geographically and in terms of people’s social and economic backgrounds.

London and the South-East remain the wealthiest areas with a highly educated, highly skilled workforce and well-paying jobs, with many other parts of the country left behind.

In their February whitepaper, the government outlined the steps that they intend to take to address these inequalities, with a focus on improving transport infrastructure, creating well paid jobs to boost salaries and living standards across the UK and rolling out high speed broadband nationwide.

These goals are certainly laudable and ambitious, and achieving them will depend, in no small part, on ensuring that people have access to the skills and training necessary to develop infrastructure and to take on the highly skilled jobs that the government aims to create.

We know that many of the sectors essential to meeting the infrastructure goals of the Levelling Up agenda are facing significant skills shortages, with more new job openings set to appear in the coming years.

In addition to playing a vital role in developing the infrastructure needed to achieve the government’s Levelling Up goals, these sectors also have the potential to offer sustainable, well-paying jobs with the potential for career progression and professional development.

The role of apprenticeships

The question, of course, is how to equip people with the skills needed to fill them?

Apprenticeships have historically been an effective way for people, particularly those from deprived backgrounds, to achieve higher wages and social mobility, as well as creating a talent pipeline for key industries and sectors. However, since the introduction of the apprenticeship levy in 2017, this career pathway has actually become less accessible for many people.

The vital role of apprenticeships in addressing inequality is arguably becoming even more important in light of the rising cost of university education (£9,250 per year), excluding many from low-income backgrounds who are wary of taking on debt early in their careers. Apprenticeships, offering the opportunity to ‘earn while you learn’ represent a valuable alternative offering financial security and strong career prospects.

At City & Guilds we have been championing apprenticeships for many years, and fully supported the switch to employer led standards in 2017.  Since then we have supported, assessed and certified over 40,000 apprentices in conjunction with colleges, training providers and employers.  Central to our approach is to help and support our delivery partners to provide each apprentice with the resources they need from start to finish.  By offering a range of digital learning and assessment preparation resources, we are able to provide apprentices the best chance of success.  

Success stories:

Lewis Postlethwaite – Started with Gen2 in 2006 as a Mechanical Apprentice

Lewis Postlethwaite is a determined individual who started his career as a mechanical apprentice at Gen2 at 16 and has gone on to have an amazing engineering career across the world, despite being diagnosed with dyslexia.

Following his completion of a 2 year apprenticeship programme with Gen2 where he developed his fundamental engineering skills, Lewis went on to complete an ONC, HNC and HND before going on to complete a four year master’s degree in mechanical engineering.

From there he went on to secure a position on the Morgan Advanced Materials graduate programme, a role which took him first to North Wales, then onto the USA and currently to South Korea where he is working as a technology manager.

Lewis is an example of what can be achieved through drive and determination and the potential apprenticeships have of helping people into outstanding careers.

Reskilling opportunities for a broader range of Adult workers

If the Levelling Up goal of tackling economic inequality is to be achieved, then apprenticeships will have to offer an accessible route to a better future for people from all economic and social backgrounds. A review of the current Levy system to expand the use of funds to include other forms of workplace training would be an effective way to open up opportunities for a wider range of people.

Apprenticeships are, of course, not the only potential solution when it comes to equipping the workforce with the skills needed to tackle the levelling up agenda.

Particularly for older workers in declining industries who are looking to move into a new sector, long term training which is either unpaid or paying a lower wage may not be suitable. In addition, people in this position may well have extensive skills and experience which can be applied to a new industry with relatively little additional training.

City & Guilds ‘Step Into’ courses and our wider Skills Bridges initiative aim to cater to people in this position, offering them the opportunity to acquire sector specific skills to build on their existing experience. These courses are delivered in a bite-size formant and make use of hybrid classroom and online learning to make them as accessible as possible while still offering valuable face to face training.

This kind of bite-size training to help people develop key sector-specific skills and knowledge is particularly important when considering the findings of our Great Jobs report. Older workers, those aged 55+, were the least likely to feel positive regarding the skills they had attained offering them positive future career prospects (44%). The same group was the most likely to have gone more than 10 years without receiving any workplace training.

Efforts and funding to create career paths for younger people will form a vital part of achieving the government’s levelling up goals. However, older workers must not be neglected when it comes to putting pathways in place to develop the skills to transition into growing industries. Short-term, accessible training can provide a vital stepping-stone towards achieving this.

Short, sharp learning interventions – introducing Skills Bootcamps

Skills Bootcamps offer a similar short-form approach to equipping people with skills to provide them with a leg-up into high-demand sectors, or to enable employed people to upskill themselves to qualify for a higher-skilled role. Again, these provide a training solution for people who are not in a financial position to take on longer-term full time training, while still providing skills training in high growth technical fields, such as electric vehicle maintenance, construction and retrofitting.

Our own Rail Bootcamps, delivered in partnership with South Rail Systems Alliance, have helped learners to develop core competencies in the rail industry, with roles such as Plant Operator, Trackman and Track Operative available for learners who completed and passed the assessment.  With the government’s ambitious plans to develop infrastructure and transport links as one of the key goals of the Levelling Up agenda, these short, intensive courses have the potential to train people with the necessary skills to achieve them as well as helping them move into well paid, sustainable careers.

Fostering social mobility

If the issue of economic inequality across the UK is to be successfully tackled, then a strong skills foundation will be vital to growing the industries and creating the infrastructure that can achieve this goal. Apprenticeships have played a vital historic role in fostering social mobility and growing regional industries, and they have the potential to do so again. By adopting hybrid digital delivery, not only for apprenticeships but for other short-form training, in tandem with a review of the funding model for skills training to ensure that it is truly available for all, the Levelling Up agenda can be made a reality.

To learn more about how City & Guilds can support you with apprenticeships visit www.cityandguilds.com/apprenticeships

Times Education Commission adds voice to calls for new ‘baccalaureate’

A high-profile education commission has added its voice to calls for a new baccalaureate that mixes academic and vocational qualifications – estimated to cost the government an extra £1.2 billion a year.

Ministers are also being called on to open more “satellite” university wings in colleges in deprived parts of the country, as well as to launch the technical equivalent to “elite” academic sixth forms outlined in the levelling up white paper.

The recommendations are part of a 12-point plan from the Times Education Commission following a year-long inquiry, which has been backed by ten former education secretaries and two former prime ministers.

The commission, chaired by Times columnist Rachel Sylvester, said it found that the British education system is “failing on every measure” from early years to lifelong learning and is in dire need of overhaul.

First on the commission’s 12-point plan to “fix” the system is a “British Baccalaureate”, which would offer “broader academic and vocational qualifications at 18”. This would include “parity in funding” per pupil in both routes, and a “slimmed-down” set of exams at 16.

The idea of introducing a baccalaureate-style system in place of or alongside A-levels and T Levels has gathered pace in recent years. Various types of baccalaureates have been suggested by education select committee chair Robert Halfon, think-tank EDSK and the National Baccalaureate Trust.

Kirsti Lord, deputy chief executive at the Association of Colleges, said the idea for a British Baccalaureate is worth exploring “so students are not pushed into a binary choice between technical training and academic study at 16”.

Under the Times Education Commission’s proposal, the British Baccalaureate would be a customised version of the “tried and tested” International Baccalaureate, which is which has almost two million students around the world including about 4,500 in this country.

Students studying for the academic diploma programme would take six subjects — three major, three minor — covering both humanities and sciences as well as units on critical thinking, communication and creativity. Those on the career-related programme would combine learning, which could include BTECs or a T Level, with work experience, the commission proposed.

There would be the option for students to “mix and match” elements of both programmes to “create the qualification that best suited them”. All students would do an extended project, community service and some literacy and numeracy through to 18. Digital skills would be woven through the whole curriculum.

At 16, the commission suggests that pupils would take a slimmed-down set of exams in five core subjects, with continuous assessment as well as online tests contributing to their grade.

This would “allow children to progress to the next level and provide accountability for schools, but lower the stakes and reduce the amount of time spent on preparing for and taking exams”, according to today’s report.

The commission claimed that their proposed British Baccalaureate would introduce greater breadth and flexibility to the post-16 curriculum while also ending the “sheep and goats” division between academic and vocational education.

There would be a cost attached because the number of teaching hours would have to go up, however the commission has been advised by Whitehall sources that this could be met by equalising the per-student funding of 16 to 19-year-old education with the budgets for 11 to 16 education.

This would cost about £1.2 billion a year, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and would also “remove a historic anomaly in the funding mechanism that dates to the time when the school leaving age was 16”.

‘Career academies’, satellite uni wings in colleges, and better FE staff pay also recommended

The commission also wants a new cadre of “career academies” to be introduced — elite technical and vocational sixth forms with close links to industry, mirroring the academic sixth forms that are being established under the government’s levelling up plans.

Career academies would have a focus on creativity and entrepreneurialism.

The AoC opposed this idea however, saying that the focus should be on providing better funding for colleges which “already deliver cutting edge skills for 1.7 million students day in, day out”.

New university campuses have also been called for in f­ifty higher education “cold spots”, including satellite wings in further education colleges.

The commission gave the example of how Nottingham Trent University has opened a campus in West Nottinghamshire College, offering courses in nursing, sports science and business.

“It is already recruiting students who would not otherwise have considered going to university and the local hospital is also grateful for the supply of qualified nurses who live in the area and so are more likely to stay,” according to the report.

“The government is setting up a false choice between higher and further education and there should be more collaboration rather than competition between the sectors,” commissioners said.

But Lord said there are already strong links between colleges and universities so rather than reinventing the wheel, the AoC would “urge government to work with colleges which already have an established reach into their communities to promote lifelong learning”.

The commission also called for improved pay and conditions in the FE sector and a transferrable credit system like the upcoming lifelong loan entitlement.

After the commission pointed out that lecturers in colleges are paid more than £9,000 less on average than teachers in schools, former Conservative education secretary and chancellor Lord Ken Clarke of Nottingham said FE colleges have always been the Cinderella of the education service.

“The teachers do an equally important job,” he said. “Their status and pay and conditions should roughly match that of people of the same quality in the school system.”

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We thank the Times Education Commission for its report and always welcome new ideas and views from the sector and education experts.”

Strike votes open at 33 colleges

Strikes are on the cards at another 33 colleges as a dispute over low pay and “unmanageable” workload rages on.

Industrial ballots were opened by University and College Union branches across England (see full list below) today and will close on July 15.

It comes a month after the Association of Colleges recommended that its members offer staff a 2.25 per cent pay rise in 2022/23.

This was the highest pay recommendation since 2014, but well below the call from unions for a 10 per cent rise.

The UCU said that since 2009 college staff have seen their pay fall behind inflation by more than 35 per cent and three in four from a survey of more than 2,232 college staff say their workload has increased significantly over the past three years.

It is estimated by the joint trade unions that extra FE funding announcements in recent years mean that colleges now have an “additional £400 million that is completely free to spend on staff compared with 2019-20”.

But AoC chief executive David Hughes said that colleges cannot afford anything more than a 2.25 per cent pay rise next year because his members are “reeling from a decade of cuts and are now being hit by soaring inflation which has eaten away at any recent uptick in funding”.

Six colleges in the north west faced disruption during exams last month as staff took to the picket line to strike over pay. But two were called off after last-minute pay offers worth up to 7.5 per cent at Hopwood Hall College and 6 per cent at Bury College were accepted.

UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: “Our members must not pay the price of sky-high inflation. We will not accept staff having pay held down whilst the cost of putting petrol in the tank, heating the home and feeding loved ones soars. With three in four staff also facing dangerously high workloads we have no choice but to proceed to a ballot for strike action.”

The 33 colleges being balloted are:

  1. Abingdon and Witney College
  2. Bath College
  3. Blackburn College
  4. Bournemouth and Poole College
  5. Bournville College of FE
  6. Bridgwater and Taunton College
  7. Carlisle College
  8. Chichester College Group – Chichester
  9. Chichester College Group – Crawley
  10. City College Plymouth
  11. City of Bristol College
  12. Croydon College
  13. Derby College
  14. East Sussex Cllege Group – Hastings
  15. East Sussex College Group (SDC)
  16. Exeter College
  17. Halesowen College
  18. Hereward College of FE
  19. Lambeth College
  20. Lewisham College – Deptford
  21. Lewisham College – Lewisham Way
  22. New College Swindon
  23. Newcastle College
  24. Sandwell College of FHE
  25. South & City College Birmingham
  26. Southwark College
  27. Sparsholt College Hampshire (inc Andover College)
  28. Strode College
  29. Truro and Penwith College
  30. West Lancashire College
  31. Weston College
  32. Wiltshire College
  33. Yeovil College