Sunak extends apprenticeship employer incentives and Kickstart scheme

The chancellor Rishi Sunak has extended cash incentives for hiring new apprentices as well as his flagship Kickstart scheme as part of a £500 million jobs support package.

Bonuses of £3,000 for every apprentice a business hires ended in September, but Sunak has prolonged the scheme by four months until the end of January.

And Kickstart – which subsidises job placements for young people on universal credit – was due to end in December but will now be extended by three months to March 2022.

In his speech for the Conservative Party Conference today, Sunak said he is “ready to double-down” on his promise to “do whatever it takes” to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The job is not done yet and I want to make sure our economy is fit for the future and that means providing the support and skills people need to get into work and get on in life.”

The extensions to his Plan for Jobs schemes, first announced in July 2020, comes shortly after figures revealed how they have struggled to reach the numbers first hoped.

A progress report for the Plan for Jobs was published last month and revealed that “more than 85,000 apprentices have been newly hired under our new incentive payments”.

Funding for around 100,000 new starts was set aside in the Plan for Jobs.

The cash incentives were first introduced by Sunak in August 2020 and offered firms £2,000 to take on apprentices aged 16 to 24, while those that employ new apprentices aged 25 and over are paid £1,500. They were increased to £3,000 for all apprentices in February.

And only 76,900 young people have actually started Kickstart jobs, according to latest figures, with 196,300 roles in total made available to date.

The scheme launched in September last year with £2 billion set aside to create 250,000 jobs by the end of 2021.

An FE Week investigation, published on Friday, revealed how businesses had found the scheme overly “complex, bureaucratic and slow” to use.

The government said as part of its Kickstart extension, it will continue to accept applications from employers and gateway providers until 17 December 2021.

Specific funding for each measure extended by the chancellor today will be confirmed at the Spending Review on 27 October.

Colleges owe it to their students to get involved with the Turing Scheme

There are some logistical challenges to an international placements scheme during the pandemic, but they’re solveable, writes Sam Parrett

With Brexit spelling the end of the successful Erasmus scheme for the UK, the launch of the Turing Scheme as a replacement was positive news.

Under the scheme, the government funds international placements between two weeks and 12 months long. FE applicants receive up to £1,360 for travel costs and up to £109 per day for living costs.

Unlike Erasmus, the funding is available to go anywhere in the world that a college can set up a partnership. There is no funding available for a return trip from students in the host country to come to the UK: they must secure that funding from their own governments.

However, for us the Turing Scheme is set to be a really important part of our mission to help our students develop a range of employability, communication and social skills. We did not previously belong to Erasmus, so this is our first move into international placements.

But with a global pandemic, we’ve had to find a way to get the programme up and running.

We also know that uptake in FE has varied. In August the Department for Education revealed 110 further providers had won £22 million of funding. But £35 million had been allocated to FE, meaning not all the money was dished out.

The DfE also anticipated 10,000 FE students would be involved. However, colleges applied for funding to cover only 6,000 students.

Here’s how we overcame some challenges, so you can too.

We have initially focused on establishing our programme within Europe; utilising country contacts we already have, with partners we can trust. This will ensure high quality placements in Dublin in Ireland, Seville and Valencia in Spain, Lisbon in Portugal and Larnaca in Cyprus. We plan to develop further partnerships outside of Europe over the course of this year.

Six groups of 20 students (120 in total) will participate in the first year. Placements will happen between February and July 2022, with each one lasting two weeks, plus a six-week placement in the summer.

These students will undertake placements in vocational skills sectors, including cybersecurity, digital marketing, healthcare and early years.

Our students were identified for placements via their vocational area, and their profiles shared with relevant employers in the target countries. Over the next three months a member of our college placement team will visit the employers in each country.

This will help us to ensure their safety and agree on working practices.

The benefits to every student will be immense – albeit not quite on the ambitious global scale we would have aimed for pre-Covid. But that will come.

And by building our programme in a realistic way during extraordinary times, we are giving ourselves the scope to expand.

Positively, 57 per cent of the 120 learners going on placements this year are from disadvantaged groups, of which 10 per cent are from SEND groups. This is higher than the government expectation of 48 per cent of disadvantaged students.

In terms of logistics, managing a multi-country placement programme requires local, specialist knowledge and high levels of quality assurance. Each of our partners has a track record of working with UK VET organisations.

Our head of student placements manages the relationships with partners. With their team, they will accompany the trips physically “in country” as well as coordinate arrangements.

It is a shame that not more colleges are currently taking part

We are keen to establish links further afield in time and hope to work with the Association of Colleges to develop these once we have scoped out this early work.

It is a shame that not more colleges are currently taking part. It is perhaps due in part to the concerns over travel in the current climate.

So although the full scope of the scheme can’t currently be maximised, with careful planning colleges can still hugely broaden our students’ horizons.

At a time when young people have missed out on so many important experiences, educators must now work harder than ever to help fill gaps wherever possible.

Don’t scrap BTECs. Raise the rate. Leave us alone.

Here is a 16-19 manifesto in nine words. Follow it, and ministers can’t go wrong, writes James Kewin

It is important for membership bodies to talk to their members, but it is much more important to listen to them. 

And even over the din created by Covid and exams, concerns about three issues have been heard loud and clear.

The first is the future of applied general qualifications. A two-year phoney war ended in July when the Department for Education revealed that it would ignore the views of most respondents to its consultation and press ahead with plans to remove funding for the vast majority of BTECs. 

A levels or T Levels will become the level 3 “qualifications of choice” for 16-19 year olds. Virtually nobody outside of Sanctuary Buildings believes this is either achievable or desirable. But that’s the plan and that’s what everyone in 16-19 education must prepare for, unless of course we can convince ministers to chart a different course. 

To that end, SFCA is co-ordinating the Protect Student Choice campaign, now backed by 18 organisations, and we are delighted to include FE Week in that number. 

Don’t scrap BTECs is the simple message (we use BTEC as shorthand for all applied general qualifications) and it is one we hope the new ministerial team will listen to and act on. 

The second issue is funding. 

Again, there is a simple message (the base rate of 16-19 funding is insufficient and must be increased) and a co-ordinated campaign (Raise the Rate). 

The campaign had a degree of success in 2019 when the funding rate was increased from £4,000 per full time student to £4,188 (although third year students are still inexplicably funded at a lower rate). 

But since then, investment has once again been limited to small uplifts in funding linked to particular subjects or initiatives. These modest interventions can look good on a government press release, but they have no impact on the vast majority of students. 

The mundane reality is that raising the rate is the only way to ensure 16-19 funding is sufficientand made available in a way that institutions can tailor to the individual needs of their students. 

Covid has strengthened the case for boosting core funding. Education recovery cannot be micro-managed from Whitehall, and colleges are best placed to ensure funding is targeted at the right students, in the right way. 

The third issue is one that has proved to be the final straw for many colleges desperately trying to hold things together during the Covid maelstrom. Audit. 

It is important that public money is spent correctly, and no institution should be above scrutiny. 

But any regime that spends weeks challenging an institution on how it has made free college meal and bursary payments to students during a pandemic has surely lost its way. 

New requirements are added to the regulatory and accountability system each year, but it is rare for existing requirements to be withdrawn. 

The theme that runs through all three of these issues is trust, or more specifically, a fundamental lack of trust. Government knows best. 

Replace these popular and well-respected qualifications with our preferred suite of very different qualifications. 

Let’s hope the new ministerial team is listening

Like a well-meaning but distant relative, we’ll provide you with the post-16 equivalent of gift vouchers to ensure funding is spent on the ‘right’ things. 

And we’ll keep looking over your shoulder to ensure you comply with every aspect of the terms and conditions! 

There is another way. Trust the experts. Give institutions the tools to do the job and let them get on with it. 

Sometimes governments can do more by doing less: don’t scrap BTECs, raise the rate, leave us alone. 

Boring and unfashionable perhaps, but these three ideas would do more to improve the prospects of 16-19 year olds than every well-intended initiative combined over the past 10 years. 

Let’s hope the new ministerial team is listening.

The FE Week Podcast: Kickstart, 2022 exams and new ministers

In this week’s episode, former skills minister Anne Milton and Central Bedfordshire College CEO Ali Hadawi give their take on the failing Kickstart programme, the 2022 exams announcements and what the HE/FE ministerial split means for the sector.

Listen to episode one below and hit the subscribe button to register for updates.

Pearson’s spotlight on workforce skills report: The key recommendations

Post-16 education reforms must be “agile” and help learners reskill as well as upskill to meet employers’ needs, according to a new report by education giant Pearson.

Former skills minister Anne Milton was commissioned by the awarding body behind BTECs to chair a series of roundtable discussions between April and March 2021, and the report also draws on polls of several thousand vocational learners, parents and employers.

It found that two thirds (62 per cent) of business leaders are worried about their ability to find recruits with the right skills for their vacancies. A third (36 per cent) of them revealed they have not been able to expand as a result of the skills gap.

The Association of Colleges, the Federation of Small Businesses and several MPs were among the attendees to roundtables, which discussed 16 to 19 qualifications, higher technical education, the lifetime skills guarantee and the lifelong loan entitlement.

Today’s report, Spotlight on Workforce Skills, contains a series of recommendations for those policy areas. Here are four key proposals…

1. Extend training funding to those looking to reskill, not just upskill

The government’s lifelong loan entitlement, due to roll out in 2025, should enable learners to access funding for single modules of a qualification, as well as the full course.

pearson
Anne Milton

This, it is reckoned, will “allow learners to reskill/upskill to support their career development,” and means they can “build up to full qualifications over several years”.

Funding will need to reflect this flexibility, the report adds, as the student finance system is not currently arranged to support a break in learning, to encourage learners to participate in learning more flexibly, or to enable “credit accumulation”.

A poll of working-age adults run for this review found over a tenth cited financial and time concerns as their reasons for not learning.

“Rigidity of funding” has driven people straight from level 3 to degree programmes, “and will require not just significant change to the system of finance, but also the behaviour and expectations of learners,” says the report.

2. Learners who already have a level 3 qualification should be able to access funding to take another to reskill

A roundtable covering Yorkshire, the south east, London and East Anglia found that retraining the economy “requires” the government’s new lifetime skills guarantee to “include those with existing level 3 qualifications”.

The guarantee – announced last year by prime minister Boris Johnson – includes an offer to a free, full level 3 qualification for every adult without one.

Pearson’s report warns “many adults who achieved a level 3 qualification several years ago want to reskill, but are prevented from doing so”.

This is due to the Department for Education’s equivalent or lower qualification review, which mandates that anyone with a level 4 to 6 qualification cannot receive public funding to study an equivalent or lower course, except for part-time technical degrees and certain subjects such as healthcare or teaching.

This rule ought to be relaxed, the report says, to “help adults develop new, relevant skills”.

3. Give local leaders more say over cash for training

Two roundtables covering the north west and south west and looking into 16 to 19 qualifications found providers and employers want flexibility to develop solutions for their local skills and labour market needs.

National funding rules prevent them from achieving this goal, which “would improve local talent retention and development”.

Overall, the report reads, the “balance between national oversight and local autonomy needs to be better aligned”.

So, a “broad” policy framework would be set at a national level, with flexibilities allowing providers and employers to deliver strategies based on local circumstances.

Through the Skills for Jobs white paper, and the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill currently being passed into law by parliament, the government is piloting local skills improvement plans to make colleges align courses with local employer need.

Pearson says the plans could support the report’s aims, but “their emphasis needs to be on local need rather than accountability”.

4. The post-16 system needs to be more agile to respond to shifting skills and employment patterns

Ministers have pledged to introduce new higher technical qualifications (HTQs) from September 2022, which will have to address employers’ skills needs and meet employer-led occupational standards.

Pearson says HTQs will “need to be agile enough to remain relevant in the face of rapid change,” citing the risk occupational standards “could become the reflection of a point of time,” so HTQs do not “equip learners for the jobs of today and tomorrow”.

Concerns have also been raised around government reforms to level 3 qualifications, following a two-year consultation on level 3 and below courses concluded this year, which could mean courses such as Pearson’s own BTECs become “rare” if they overlap with T Levels.

The Pearson report says the level 3 reforms “could exacerbate” a misalignment between the demands of the labour market and the need to be more agile to meet shifting skills and employment patterns.

This is because the “high-quality” qualifications, recognised and valued by employers, could lose public funding, Pearson says.

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: EDITION 364

Lynette Leith, Vice principal for curriculum, Hull College

Start date: July 2021

Previous job: Assistant principal for technical education, Newham Sixth Form College

Interesting fact: She enjoys charitable work and has spent a few summers teaching children in Africa.

Fiona Aldridge, Head of skills insight, West Midlands Combined Authority

Start date: October 2021

Previous job: Director for policy and research, Learning and Work Institute

Interesting fact: She started learning to skateboard for last year’s Lifelong Learning Week, but after just one lesson she ended up in a neck brace for four weeks and hasn’t been on a skateboard since.

Sharon Smith, Principal and deputy chief executive, DN Colleges Group

Start date: August 2021

Previous job: Vice principal for higher, vocational and professional education, York College

Interesting fact: An avid fan of Lord of the Rings, her “beloved” labradors, Samwise and Rosie are named after two hobbit characters.

Ranjit Singh, Vice principal for quality and learner experience, Hull College

Start date: August 2021

Previous job: Director of curriculum and cross college teaching and learning, West Thames College

Interesting fact: He has represented his county in football, cricket and athletics.

Inclusivity and diversity apprentice panel helps provider gain top Ofsted marks

A network of apprentices leading discussion groups on women’s issues and multiculturalism has helped earn its international training provider an ‘outstanding’ from Ofsted.

Multiverse Group Limited, formerly known as WhiteHat Group and operating out of the UK and US, is the brainchild of its chief executive Euan Blair, son of the former UK prime minister Tony Blair.

Inspectors were impressed by the “kind and inclusive” environment at the London-based provider, which has 3,000 apprentices.

Inspectors report that apprentices felt part of a “vibrant community” of their peers, through the provision of an online networking platform, which hosts both a women’s forum and a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender network.

There is also a multicultural group which has provided the opportunity for a range of panel discussions on diversity in the workplace.

The platform, called the Community Hub, is accessible through an app where apprentices can create a profile, join interest groups and sign up for events such as speed networking and seminars on self-promotion.

FE Week understands the platform to be almost, if not completely, unique for a private provider.

Leaders ensure ‘comprehensive’ community opportunities, says Ofsted

ofsted
Clare Sutcliffe

Multiverse’s vice president of community Clare Sutcliffe said the provider’s mission had been to build a “outstanding alternative to university”. That included “creating an experience that rivals the one you’d get at top universities and colleges,” and the hub with its interest groups “exists to deliver this experience”.

The community is “having a tangible impact” on attainment, she says, with apprentices who are active in the group being “more likely to achieve a merit or distinction as their final grade”.

Apprentices have found groups like the women’s and multicultural network are “vital for their professional and personal development and they really enable us to stand out as a provider”.

Ofsted reports Multiverse’s leaders ensure a “comprehensive set of online community opportunities” for apprentices to develop “personal and professional attributes”.

They also arrange high-profile guest speaker events, industry panels and apprenticeship forums to help learners explore possible careers.

Groups present ‘amazing networking opportunities’

Women’s group co-chair and Multiverse project management apprentice Niamh Briody told FE Week the group had been set up last year because it was a “topic of discussion apprentices found really interesting and obviously resonated with”.

It already has around 300 members, including male allies of women, and those who identify as female, and some of the provider’s US learners.

It has run events on personal safety following the killings of Sarah Everard and Sabina Nessa, in collaboration with the women’s safety volunteer group Strut Safe.

Niamh’s co-chair, digital marketing apprentice Eleanor King, said the “main thing” about the group “is inclusivity and to communicate with people who share similar beliefs to you,” but it also presented “amazing networking opportunities”.

Evelyn Koon, who is studying a level 4 data fellowship with Multiverse for the NHS, says she wants her group to “create a sense of psychological safety so people feel free to be themselves”.

Her group has a similar number of members and set up around the same time as the women’s group.

She is looking to have people from the NHS come in to speak about their experiences; and, during the joint interview between her, the women’s group and FE Week, suggested the two groups hold a film night together.

Inspectors also praised Multiverse’s “highly qualified” coaches, close collaboration with its 295 employers to build a curriculum to give apprentices “substantial” new skills, as well as its safeguarding.

Pictured top: Eleanor King, Evelyn Koon, Niamh Briody

Spending review: will it be trick or treat for the sector?

Sector stakeholders are waiting to see if it will be trick or treat in this month’s spending review but hope that individual learning accounts and an expanded lifetime skills guarantee will be announced.

The deadline for submissions to the spending review was Thursday, and chancellor Rishi Sunak will outline to MPs the next three years of government spending on October 27.

FE and skills bodies, as well as employer groups, are among those that have made submissions.

For instance, the Association of Colleges called for a 50 per cent increase in total revenue spending on further education and skills in their submission, which they published last week.

FE Week has found that other sector bodies’ submissions ask for a return of individual learning accounts (ILAs), more cash for adult education and an expansion to the lifetime skills guarantee.

Here is what each body has asked the chancellor for:

Association of Employment and Learning Providers

AELP is one of the organisations pushing for a policy similar to the ILAs, which were introduced by the New Labour government in the early 2000s before being scrapped amid widespread fraud.

“Individual skills accounts”, as the association calls them, “are the ideal vehicle” for improving productivity and personal growth “by focusing on employer and individual choice”.

The training provider representative group also wants procurement of training services opened to all registered providers.

Also, it calls for apprenticeships and traineeships to remain nationally contracted and not devolved.

As the adult education budget has shrunk by “just over half” since 2010/11, going from £3.6 billion to £1.3 billion, the AELP argues the government should triple the current AEB to £4 billion every year.

Publicly funding 16-to-19 apprenticeships, unfettered access to the apprenticeship levy budget for levy payers and a standalone budget for nonlevy payers, plus extending incentives for employers to hire apprentices beyond September, are some of AELP’s other requests.

Confederation of British Industry

The CBI, which represents 190,000 businesses across the UK, has used its submission to the spending review to repeat calls for the apprenticeship levy to be turned into a lifelong learning levy.

The organisation called for the levy to be replaced in a report from October 2020, so businesses could use the money for short modular courses, pre-apprenticeship programmes, product training, professional courses and soft skills training.

Individual training accounts, similar to ILAs, are another of its asks. This £3.9 billion programme would be used by unemployed people and those needing retraining to access “accredited courses”.

The government should also align the lifetime skills guarantee and National Skills Fund, which includes the entitlement to an adult’s first, full level 3 qualification, and the skills bootcamps with occupations where there are shortages.

The lifelong loan entitlement, giving people four years’ student loan funding for
further and higher education, should be rolled out this parliament rather than in 2025, the CBI adds.

HOLEX

Adult provider network HOLEX wants Sunak to announce a lifelong learning levelling-up plan, a “framework for devolution of skills and education budgets and support for the post Covid-19 recovery”.

Government-wide strategies for skills training at level 2 in shortage areas such as healthcare, service industries, transport and basic skills in areas such as English as a second or other language is another ask.

The submission also calls for a national entitlement for maintenance grants for adults eligible for working tax credits, for level 3 and below courses – again, similar to how ILAs handed out grants for people to use on educational courses.

HOLEX also wants a £5.2 billion injection of funding for adult education, with a ten-year budget, an adult education centre in every town, and for that sector’s providers to be given access to the £1.5 billion DfE capital funding scheme.

Adult and community learning institutions, HOLEX argues, should also become the “funding vehicle” for the new UK Shared Prosperity Fund, which is replacing European Social Funding.

Sixth Form Colleges Association

The SFCA has made two big demands for this year’s spending review.

The first is that it wants funding for 16-to-19 education providers to rise with inflation each year.

The second is for funding per 16-to-19-year-old student to rise from £4,188 to £4,760, in line with the demands of their Raise the Rate campaign.

The latter is “the most efficient and effective way to ensure every young person receives a high-quality education,” SFCA’s submission reads.

The “most important” part of the first demand, however, is for the government to continue to provide grant funding for FE providers to “meet the increased employer contributions to the Teachers’ Pension Scheme”.

The government has been providing this grant funding since 2018/19 and the SFCA wants ministers to “mainstream” this funding, just as they have with schools.

University and College Union

While the UCU was unable to send FE Week its full submission, the union said it will be calling on government to close the £9,000 pay gap between schools and college teachers.

This gap caused staff to take strike action, coordinated by the union, at colleges across the country this week.

The union also wants the government to move away from using student loans to fund further education provision and to ensure the lifetime skills guarantee included funding for subjects such as the creative arts.

“Proper” investment for independent careers information, advice and guidance is another of their demands.

City & Guilds

The awarding body is asking the Treasury to fund new, local “employment and training hubs” to “address urgent labour-force challenges, at the same time as establishing a more consistent, joined-up and agile local/regional approach to meet immediate local skills needs”.

This comes after the big local focus of the skills and post-16 education Bill (with the local skills improvement plans and college business centres), which City & Guilds says is a “patchy” approach that is “yet to translate into a clearly understood operational framework which is responsive and easy to navigate”.

The hubs ought to be located on high streets, as well as online, to provide a “shop window for skills”, to bring together jobseekers, employers and training opportunities.

City & Guilds also wants the National Skills Fund and adult education budget to focus on transport and construction, areas that “will make a real difference in reducing our carbon emissions” and ensure the labour force is “developing at the pace of ambition and innovation”.

National Union of Students

The NUS wants the base rate for 16- and 17-yearold students raised and adult education
funding to be ringfenced.

“Future college structures” should “prioritise the needs of learners and potential learners by protecting the status of small and specialist colleges and discouraging large-scale mergers and the formation of academies of colleges,” says the union’s vice president for further education, Salsabil Elmegri.

Clumsy, complex and slow: business puts the boot into Kickstart

Businesses have slammed the government’s flagship Kickstart scheme as overly “complex, bureaucratic and slow” – as new figures reveal less than two-fifths of jobs created have been filled. 

Numbers released by minister for employment Mims Davies showed that of the 196,300 Kickstart jobs made available across the UK, just 76,970 (39 per cent) had been started by September 22. 

Sectors heavily impacted by the pandemic, such as hospitality, travel, retail and care, are among those that have struggled most to fill the wage-subsidised placements for the unemployed. 

The north-east – the region with the highest unemployment rate in England – is the area with the lowest take-up. 

Employers who spoke to FE Week described the process of signing up to the scheme as “clumsy” and surrounded by red tape, which has led to troublesome delays with payments and in some cases caused firms to walk away from it completely. 

There is a cut-off date of December 31, 2021 for young people to start a Kickstart job. It means an average of over 8,500 young people will need to start on the scheme each week between September 22 and the end of December to fill all available roles. 

That is more than double the average number (3,600) taking up a place on the scheme between August and September. 

A target of 250,000 new jobs was set for the £2 billion scheme when it was first announced by chancellor Rishi Sunak in July 2020. 

Federation of Small Businesses national chair Mike Cherry said Kickstart is a “great initiative” but there “remains work to be done”. He called for the scheme to be extended into 2022 and eligibility broadened to all ages who are long-term unemployed. 

The Department for Work and Pensions refused to comment on the figures. A spokesperson would only say: “Kickstart continues to deliver vital jobs to help young jobseekers get on track and we’re providing local support to employers to help them apply and recruit.” 

Kickstart was launched in September 2020 and offers six-month paid work placements to those aged 16 to 24 who are on universal credit and deemed to be at risk of long-term unemployment – with the government picking up their wage bill. 

Initially, small employers had to seek help from “gateway” providers – which include colleges, chambers of commerce and hundreds of private companies – to sign up to the scheme where they have fewer than 30 vacancies. 

Gateway providers in turn receive a £300 per-job placement fee and up to £1,500 for every young person they put through the scheme if they continue to help with job support and training. 

However, a previous FE Week investigation revealed how firms based outside the UK or with no trading history had managed to become approved gateway providers – an issue that led to the DWP scrapping the requirement for small employers to use them from February 3, 2021. 

Many smaller businesses continued to use gateway providers owing to the substantial and complex administrative task the Kickstart scheme encompassed. 

Davies’ figures show that social care is the sector with the lowest Kickstart job starts (1,220) compared to available posts (4,800) – a recruitment rate of 25 per cent. 

Raj Sehgal, managing director for ArmsCare Ltd (a group of care homes in Norfolk) and a board member of the National Care Association (NCA) which became a gateway provider, has not been impressed with the DWP’s handling of the scheme and was “surprised” the figures aren’t lower. 

He worked with “somebody quite high up in DWP” on the NCA’s submission to onboard Kickstarters, but to “both of our surprise” the bid was initially rejected. 

“We couldn’t understand why because I had followed the guidelines and even got somebody from the DWP to look it over and he said it was perfect, yet the powers that be refused it.” 

His bid was put through again with “minor tweaks”, such as adding full stops to some sentences, and with the help of the DWP official it eventually got through. 

But it took months from start to finish and required “incredible amounts” of information, such as locations, company names and registration numbers, number of Kickstart posts and for each, a job description. “We had to rewrite the book basically, and during the pandemic it was nearly impossible,” Sehgal said. 

Philip Price, founder of recruitment firm WorkAdvisor (which has five Kickstarters itself and helped 240 others get on the scheme as a gateway provider), found other small employers “giving up” because of the complexity. 

He told FE Week: “For some employers it is taking months to get approval, which is a big problem for sectors like travel and tourism that needed urgent customer service help.  

“Then once your business is approved, there’s a next step where you have to get the job approved. Lots of small employers don’t know how to write a good job description that is going to pass DWP credentials. So the job gets refused as well, which is another barrier. 

“Businesses have given up in some cases. It is very bureaucratic.” 

UK Hospitality – a trade association for a sector that has filled 6,060 (28 per cent) of the available 21,900 Kickstart jobs – echoed Sehgal’s and Price’s testimonies. 

“We’re hearing reports of poor screening of candidates, an overly slow process of putting candidates forward and businesses having to look elsewhere, or candidates looking elsewhere or losing interest as the process drags on,” a spokesperson said. 

“It’s particularly bureaucratic for multi-site operators, who have to deal with individual job centres rather than having a central platform.”  

The spokesperson added that given the “acute nature” of the staff shortages in hospitality, the low take-up is “concerning and frustrating”. 

One example of bureaucracy that faltered Kickstart was shared by Price. He said: “We were approached by a very large travel business, one of the biggest organisations in travel to join the Kickstart scheme, with some excellent jobs. They were declined by the DWP because of a very specific tax situation. They would have been a brilliant Kickstart employer.”  

Price also said there were delays to payments for his Kickstart youngsters when they were first hired in April, but this issue was eventually fixed by the DWP. 

Some sectors have simply struggled to find the time to engage with the scheme or find willing unemployed young people to take part. 

Claire Steiner, director and chair of education and training at the Institute of Travel & Tourism – a sector that has filled 230 (38 per cent) of the available 600 Kickstart jobs – said: “There are a handful of businesses that have taken advantage of the Kickstart scheme. However, the last 20 months have not been conducive to opportunities or training programmes for young people as travel and tourism companies have been focussed on survival, with limited business and income being generated. 

“We are now seeing a change as international borders open up and businesses start to look at recruitment again, but there is limited time left on the scheme.” 

Kickstart is trying to reinvent the wheel and buckled it

Raj Sehgal

Sehgal calculated that his own group of care homes could take on around 50 Kickstarters but has only been able to fill half a dozen places. 

He explained that candidates and employers were confused by the scheme and questioned why the government didn’t try to develop the recognised apprenticeship schemes for the sector instead. 

“Kickstart is trying to reinvent the wheel and buckled it slightly,” he said. 

The retail sector has made 30,400 Kickstart jobs available but only managed to fill 12,580 (41 per cent). 

Andrew Goodacre, chief executive of the British Independent Retailers Association, said that since retailers reopened following the third national lockdown, footfall has “never recovered to 2019 levels”, which has resulted in “more on furlough and no motivation to recruit”. 

“The scheme states any Kickstart role cannot be at the expense of an existing employee. This makes sense, but limits the choice for retailers,” he told FE Week. 

“I cannot see retailers turning to this scheme until they have more confidence in sales and footfall. I would like to be more positive but I just do not think this is a good scheme for retailers, especially independents.” 

The north-east has the highest unemployment rate in England, according to the latest data from the Office for National Statistics. A geographical breakdown of DWP’s Kickstart figures shows the region has the lowest number of people starting a kickstart job (3,610). 

The North of Tyne combined authority, led by Labour mayor Jamie Driscoll, is acting as a gateway provider but refused to say whether or not it was disappointed by the figures for the region.

 A spokesperson did say the authority has this week launched a campaign featuring some of their 100-odd young people and businesses who have benefitted from the scheme to “encourage more employers to come forward and apply for Kickstart placements”. 

Sam Windett, deputy director at Learning and Work Institute, said issues in “rollout and focus” have “frustrated” Kickstart’s potential to date. “Whilst employers struggle to fill record levels of vacancies, the number of long-term unemployed 16- to 24-year-olds has risen by a third over the pandemic,” she added.  

“This points to the need to ramp up, not dial down, support for young people to move into work.” 

The DWP did warn that the published Kickstart figures “might be subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system, which has been developed quickly”. 

They have also “not been subjected to the usual standard of quality assurance associated with official statistics, but is provided in the interests of transparency”.