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5 things we learned from DfE’s final apprenticeship reform review

The Department for Education has today published its final review of its apprenticeship reform programme.

Officials established the programme, which has seen the launch of the levy and introduction of standards among other changes, in 2015 and was scheduled to be delivered by the end of the financial year 2020-21.

Today’s report reveals the government’s progress against key performance measures such as its 3 million starts target, diversity goals and public sector apprenticeship objectives.

FE Week has pulled out the five main findings.

1) 3m target missed by 600,000 starts

In the 2015 manifesto, the Conservative Party set an ambitious target of 3 million apprenticeship starts between 2015 and 2020. A target they kept in the 2017 manifesto.

Since the apprenticeship reforms began in May 2015, by January 2021 there had been 2,373,100 starts, representing 79.10 per cent of target.

The DfE’s report says that while the 3 million target was missed by 626,900 starts, over the same period apprenticeships have “become of longer duration and are now co-designed with employers” meaning that the starts now made on the programme are “into higher-quality training”.

2) Diversity and inclusion targets met

The DfE set a target to increase the proportion of apprenticeships started by people of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds by 20 per cent by 2020. This would result in 12.1 per cent of starts being by apprentices of BAME backgrounds.

This was exceeded, reaching 13.3 per cent starts from people with BAME backgrounds by 2019/20, which is higher than the BAME employment rate of 11.7 per cent, according to today’s report.

The DfE also set a target to increase the proportion of apprenticeships started by those declaring a learning difficulty or disability (LDD). They aimed to increase LDD starts by 20 per cent, uplifting starts to 12.5 per cent.

This was achieved in 2019/20, with 12.5 per cent starts declaring an LDD, the report states.

3) ‘More to do’ on achievement rates

The achievement rate for apprenticeship standards sat at just 58.7 per cent in 2019/20.

While this is an 11.8 percentage point increase from 46.9 per cent in 2018/19, the DfE admits “we know there is more to do”.

Additionally, official government data published in March showed that just 60.2 per cent of apprentices training on new-style standards stayed on their programme until the end in 2019/20. This figure sat at 48.3 per cent the year before.

Skills minister Gillian Keegan told FE Week’s annual apprenticeship conference in April that she has ordered an investigation into the “astonishingly” high drop-out rate.

4) Skills Index for apprenticeships falls – again

The principal measure the DfE uses for monitoring productivity impact is the Further Education Skills Index.

The Index estimates the aggregate value of the skills supplied by the FE system each year by aggregating earnings returns for all adult learners and apprentices who successfully complete their courses.

For apprenticeships, the Index increased every year from 2012/13 to 2017/18 but fell by 26 per cent in 2018/19 and a further 17 per cent in 2019/20.

The DfE blames this recent decline on a “fall in participation, resulting in lower achievement volumes”. Activity in 2019/20 was also “impacted by Covid-19 restrictions, which led to an increase in breaks in learning and fewer achievements than expected”.

However, the average value-added of individual apprenticeships has increased each year, with each learner who completed an apprenticeship in 2019/20 generating 27 per cent more value than in 2012/13.

This has been driven by a shift from Intermediate towards advanced and higher apprenticeships, and towards sector subject areas associated with higher returns (engineering, construction, and ICT), the report says.

5) Public sector target missed

Public sector bodies in England with 250 or more staff have had a duty to aim to employ an average of at least 2.3 per cent of staff as new apprentices over the period 2017 to 2021.

Between that period, public sector employment of apprentices sat at an average of 1.7 per cent.

Following failure to hit the target and in “order to build on this success and continue to encourage public sector bodies to invest in apprenticeships”, the DfE has extended the public sector apprenticeships target for a further year from 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022.

100 jobs at risk as combined authority rejects WEA’s adult education bid

Around 100 jobs are at risk at one of England’s largest charitable adult education providers after a mayoral combined authority chose to defund it.

The WEA, formerly the Workers’ Educational Association which was founded over a 100 years ago, says it will see a cut of £1.7 million after the South Yorkshire Combined Authority rejected its bid for an adult education budget (AEB) contract.

The authority, known as the Sheffied City Region until this year, will take responsibility for more than £36 million of devolved AEB from August 1, 2021 and recently tendered for training providers to deliver the funding on its behalf.

Despite almost 2,500 adults being taught by the WEA in south Yorkshire in 2019/20, including people with learning disabilities, women fleeing domestic violence and refugees and asylum seekers, the authority chose to deny the charitable provider an AEB allocation.

It also chose not to recognise WEA as eligible for grant funding even though other combined authority’s have.

A spokesperson for the provider said it employs nearly 100 south Yorkshire residents, from education specialists to tutors and support workers, whose jobs are now under threat.

‘The MCA needs to act now’

Simon Parkinson, chief executive of WEA, said he has personally tried to plead with South Yorkshire Combined Authority’s mayor Dan Jarvis MP to “ensure this avoidable scenario did not occur”, but he has had “no direct response and his office seem to be determined to delay any contact”.

This is “despite the fact that they are duty bound to consult with us as a grant funded provider under the terms of their devolution deal”.

Parkinson added: “Community learning is a lifeline for local people and a line of defence against poverty and inequality. Instead of this lifeline being supported, it is now being put at risk by the MCA failing to address their routine funding needs.

“The pandemic has tipped the balance for too many communities in Sheffield, Rotherham, Doncaster and Barnsley and the MCA needs to act now to resolve this funding issue so we can continue to provide these essential services for those in jeopardy.”

Six combined authorities signed devolution deals alongside London to take control of AEB spending in their regions from 2019/20. North of Tyne followed a year later and next month will see two more – South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire – combined authorities have their AEB devolved.

The WEA warned back in the 2018 that it would be heavily impacted by devolution, and estimated it could see an estimated £7 million drop in funding as a result.

Ofsted rates the provider as ‘good’ and it delivers over 6,600 part-time courses for more than 39,000 people each year in England and Scotland.

The WEA hit out at the South Yorkshire Combined Authority for snubbing it in favour of commissioning a range of providers which “include for-profit companies and some with poor quality ratings or little prior experience”.

‘We ran a fully open and transparent procurement process’

A spokesperson for the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority said: “As part of our newly devolved powers over adult education funding, we ran a fully open and transparent procurement process to identify the most suitable education providers against a range of criteria.

“It was a competitive process, and all providers were judged against a fixed set of criteria which were set out beforehand and fairly applied. Unfortunately, for this round of contracts, the WEA was not successful.”

She added: “We understand that the results will be disappointing to WEA, and will cause disruption to their staff. But we have an obligation to follow the process impartially, and that’s just what we’ve done. Further opportunities are likely for providers to get involved in the delivery of AEB provision in South Yorkshire.

“We’ve appointed an able group of providers to deliver adult education in South Yorkshire, and local residents will be able to access services that are better tailored than ever to their needs.”

Target apprenticeships at most disadvantaged, Social Mobility Commission tells government

Apprenticeships are failing to reach their social mobility “potential” and must be better targeted at the most disadvantaged, the Social Mobility Commission has said.

In its state of the nation report for 2021, published today, the commission says government should do this by using the levy to incentivise employers to provide more traineeships and level 2 to 4 apprenticeships, while also moving higher level apprenticeships into social mobility coldspots.

It comes just two months after skills minister Gillian Keegan admitted the Department for Education is still worried about a “middle-class grab” on apprenticeships – where typical university-goers are squeezing out those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Today’s Social Mobility Commission report states that policymakers and employers alike often talk about apprenticeships as if it is an “incontestable social mobility tool helping the disadvantaged”.

But “this is not the case”, the commission, which is an independent advisory non-departmental public body, warns.

It continues: “Poorer apprentices were less likely to get onto schemes and were more likely to be clustered in lower returning and lower-level apprenticeships than their peers from higher socio-economic backgrounds.

“Disadvantaged apprentices face gaps at literally every stage of the system – from access to levy funding, quality to attainment and progression to pay.”

And when Covid-19 hit, younger apprentices from lower socio-economic backgrounds were particularly likely to have been in sectors which saw apprenticeship declines, for example in hospitality.

The pandemic has further exacerbated the pre-existing trend towards higher apprenticeships, with higher apprenticeships rising from 18 per cent of starts from August to January in 2018-19 to 32 per cent in the same period in 2020-21. This further reduces opportunities for learners from low socio-economic backgrounds who are less likely to be on these courses, the report warns.

The commission slams the DfE for its lack of “monitoring data” which is needed to provide further analysis on apprenticeships.

“The levy should no longer be used as an alternative route for degree qualifications for more privileged staff,” the report concludes.

Responding to the report, Association of Employment and Learning Providers chief executive Jane Hickie said: “The case is growing to extend the employer incentives for recruiting young apprentices as part of a more targeted approach.

“The government confirmed yesterday that Kickstart won’t accept any more new starts after December but this still leaves a 6-month window in the first half of 2022 when we should be progressing the final cohorts of Kickstarters on to apprenticeships or traineeships and here a continuation of the incentives could make a really positive difference.”

Also recommended for further education in the report is a “Student Premium” for those aged 16 to 19, which would mirror the pupil premium currently used in schools.

The report goes on to label technical education as the “unsung hero of social mobility” and hits out at the government for allowing the sector to be “under-resourced, over-balanced with disadvantaged students and tasked with catching students up on basic academic qualifications (primarily English and maths) while also administering high quality trade-based courses”.

It says the government’s package of £400 million in 2019 for 16 to 18 education fell “far short of what the sector needs” and criticised the white paper for exhibiting “siloed ways of working” which cuts out other government departments.

A DfE spokesperson said: “To help businesses offer apprenticeships, we have increased our incentive payments to £3,000 for newly recruited apprentices and extended this until the end of September 2021, as part of the Plan for Jobs.

“We continue to pay additional funding to employers and training providers to support them to take on young apprentices, apprentices with learning difficulties and disabilities, and care leavers.”

Provider-level achievement rates to return in 2021/22

Next year’s provider-level qualification achievement rates (QARs) will be published following a two-year suspension.

The Department for Education has today confirmed school and post-16 accountability arrangements for 2021/22.

It said results from key stage 4 and post-16 qualifications in 2021/22 will be published in school and college performance tables using the government’s “normal suite of accountability measures, as far as that is possible”.

For QARs, which have not been published at provider level since 2018/19, the update said: “Institution-level qualification achievement rates for post-16 providers will be published for education and training, traineeships and apprenticeships.

“These will be published through Explore education statistics.”

QAR data, which is used to measure providers’ performance and hold them to account, was scrapped for the 2019/20 academic year following the Covid-19 outbreak. Providers were not able to receive the data themselves and it was not shared with Ofsted.

While provider-level QARs were again not published in 2020/21, some of the data was produced and shared with providers, the DfE, and the inspectorate.

The DfE said it was reintroducing league tables for school, college and FE provider qualifications because “after two years without publication of performance data, it is important that this information is publicly available to parents and students to support them when choosing schools and post-16 institutions, given the importance of qualification outcomes to student progression”.

However, it said it recognised the “uneven impact on schools and colleges of the pandemic” and will “ensure clear messages are placed on the performance tables to advise caution when drawing conclusions from the 2021/22 data”.

Qualification results achieved in 2021/22 “will also count towards school and college performance measures in future years”.

The DfE said it would need to “adjust the way that we calculate some performance measures at both key stage 4 and 16 to 18 stages for 2021/22 to take account of the fact that results of qualifications achieved in 2019/20 and 2020/21 will not be included”.

The changes to methodology “will be designed to minimise the impact of gaps in data for schools and colleges”. For example, at 16 to 18 level, the government “will not be able to use KS4 baseline data from 2019-20 or 2020-21, which will affect the 16 to 18 value added measure and the English and maths progress measure in 2021-22 and future years”.

“We will need to confirm whether these measures can be produced. Details of these adjustments will be available in technical guidance in due course.”

University apprenticeships to be externally assessed

Degree apprenticeships will have to assessed with an industry expert who is independent of the university, under new proposals published today.

The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education has launched a consultation on changes to how degree apprenticeships are created, run and examined.

One of their proposals is for the end-point assessments of all degree apprenticeships to include input from a “trained individuals with appropriate occupational and industry expertise,” independent of the higher education institution.

That EPA will also have to be integrated with the degree assessment, following concerns from skills minister Gillian Keegan the two forms of examination were separated “by a long way”.

Plans to let employers mandate degrees in apprenticeships where graduating is necessary for the occupation, and safeguards to stop existing programmes being “rebadged” as apprenticeships are also covered by this consultation.

Keegan today said IfATE’s proposals “will help make sure degree apprenticeships continue to meet the skills needs of employers and create even more opportunity to earn while you learn for people across the country”.

Assessor changes will ‘address conflicts’ in apprenticeship assessment

The current rules on degree apprenticeship assessments do not insist assessors come from outside the higher education institution.

They do not even force universities to use someone from a different department to the apprentice.

IfATE hopes their proposed tightening of the rules around external assessors will “address the conflicts inherent in integrated degree apprenticeship assessment,” the consultation document reads.

Integrating degree examinations and EPA is intended to reduce the burden on apprentices while also providing a single check of their competence and whether they have met the requirements for the degree.

It is also meant to “achieve better alignment between the on- and off-the-job training”.

IfATE does not intend to prescribe how employers and providers integrate the two assessments, but will set a principle, provide examples of best practice and support trailblazer groups when they are developing a standard.

Yet the institute does insist it “not be possible to pass either the degree or the apprenticeship in isolation from one another”.

University Vocational Awards Council chief executive Adrian Anderson said his organisation had “long championed” the integrated model, including the use of individuals with appropriate occupational and industry expertise.

He says the model “is being used for some of the most significant apprenticeships,” including the level 6 police constable course.

Employers mandating degrees could flood apprenticeship market

The consultation also proposes employers be handed powers to “mandate degrees in apprenticeship standards” if graduate status is a labour market requirement for an occupation.

Under the current system, apprenticeships can only include degrees if specific bachelor’s or master’s qualifications are needed for the occupation.

It could lead to a further flooding of degree apprenticeships onto the apprenticeship market.

The report notes how degree apprenticeships have swelled since they launched in 2015, with over 30,000 starts on apprenticeships at levels 6 and 7, including over 20,000 starts on degree apprenticeships, in 2019/20.

In just the first six months of 2020/21, there were 5,853 starts on the level 7 senior leader degree course, 1,731 on the level 6 police constable degree programme, and 1,434 on the level 6 chartered manager course.

Level 6 and 7 courses which currently do not have a mandated degree may be able to become degree apprenticeships if their trailblazer group “considers it appropriate,” the impact assessment report states.

Over the past few years, Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman has frequently expressed concerns about a trend she raised in her 2018 annual report of “existing graduate schemes being rebadged as apprenticeships”.

IfATE hopes to ‘rule out rebadging’

In the consultation, IfATE says it will publish guidance on how providers can ensure off-the-job training (the degree) complements their on-the-job work to combat this.

The quango will also make providers validate degrees which are specifically for an occupation against IfATE’s “employer-specified” knowledge, skills and behaviours for that occupation.

“The idea is to rule out degree apprenticeships that amount to no more than rebadging of existing full-time or part-time degree programmes,” the institute has said.

IfATE chief executive Jennifer Coupland has said since her organisation launched in 2017, “we’ve seen lots of examples of good practice, which we want to make the norm across the whole programme”.

The consultation is being run through IfATE’s website and closes at midnight on 16 September.

New ‘skills measure’ would trigger Ofsted inspections

Colleges that fail to align their provision with local and national needs will trigger Ofsted inspections in the future, under plans announced today by the Department for Education.

Officials are proposing to introduce a new “skills measure” that will capture how well a college is delivering courses that the economy needs as part of its funding and accountability reforms – a consultation on which was launched this afternoon.

While the metrics for this new measure are yet to be developed, the DfE “expects” that Ofsted will want to “consider the new skills measure when deciding which colleges to inspect, by taking the new measure into account in its risk-based assessment for planning inspections”.

According to the consultation, this will “ensure that inspections have a greater focus on how well providers support individuals into good jobs and meet the needs of the local labour market, alongside evaluating the quality of education and training”.

The DfE makes clear that inspecting how well a college is meeting skills needs should be in addition, and not substitute for, the “important job Ofsted already does to inspect the quality of education and training”.

Officials are currently working with the watchdog to “explore how its approach to inspection – which currently assesses meeting local skills needs through ‘leadership and management’ and ‘quality of education’ judgements – can best be enhanced”.

Options currently being looked at include increasing the frequency of full inspections from a five year to a three-year cycle; and making meeting local skills needs a “more prominent feature within Ofsted’s inspection framework so that it can reach a clear judgement on how well a college is performing on this objective”.

‘Performance dashboard’ for colleges proposed

The DfE says that where there are concerns regarding performance, it believes that formal intervention should only take place after a “qualitative, human judgement” and not on the basis of the skills measure alone.

Therefore, if a college is underperforming on the skills measure in between inspections, the FE Commissioner “will support the college to improve”. The FE Commissioner will “also want to support colleges in formal intervention in improving their performance against skills needs”.

The skills measure will be one part of a new proposed “performance dashboard” for colleges, which would be made publicly available.

READ MORE: Simplifying FE funding and accountability consultation launched by DfE

According to the consultation, the dashboard will provide a “performance snapshot” of individual colleges “for all interested parties and public scrutiny, as well as an overview of how well the local and national further education system is performing”.

The DfE proposes the dashboard is structured in two parts:

Part 1: core performance measures:

Quality – a provider’s current Ofsted rating.

Financial health – a provider’s current ESFA rating.

Skills – a new measure to capture how well a college is aligning its technical provision with local and national skills needs.

Part 2: supporting performance indicators:

A longer list of performance indicators that reflect what excellent delivery looks like. The DfE envisages that these performance indicators will consist of student outcomes (including the needs of different cohorts), employers’ and students’ experience, and how well a provider is engaging with meeting local skills needs, including the balance of provision across different sectors, for example through local skills improvement plans. The DfE will also look to include academic provision.

You can read about the other funding and accountability measures proposed in today’s consultation here.

National Skills Fund consultation launched

A consultation has been launched on the government’s new level 3 qualifications offer, its skills bootcamps programme and how it can “meet critical skills needs”.

The consultation on the offers, all run through the £2.5 billion National Skills Fund, was originally meant to begin in the spring but was pushed back.

The Department for Education has invited providers, awarding bodies, employers, local authorities, regulators, representative bodies and the public to take part before the September 17 cut-off.

“The responses from this consultation will help shape the provision which is currently funded through National Skills Fund investment,” the consultation document explains.

FE Week has pulled out the important information from the document’s three sections: free level 3 qualifications for adults, skills bootcamps, and meeting critical skills needs.

Free level 3 qualifications for adults

The DfE is eager for the entitlement for a first, full, free level 3 qualification for anyone aged over 24 to “be delivered in a way that works for them, helping adults overcome barriers to accessing learning”.

This section focuses on such barriers, including financial ones, and asks respondents for their thoughts on how barriers can be overcome. Perhaps through flexible start dates, breaks in learning, or weekend and evening classes, it poses.

Officials are also looking for answers to how adults can access the level 3 entitlement without that level of learning.

“We recognise that for some adults accessing the free level 3 qualifications may prove challenging as they may lack some of the prior learning or experience needed to engage in learning at level 3,” the consultation document reads.

How employers can “benefit from this offer and the skills it provides” is also explored in this section.

Skills bootcamps

The new short courses in digital and technical skills are being rolled out to every region of England, following pilots across the nation last year.

Ahead of the wider introduction of bootcamps, the DfE is asking providers what they find most valuable about the courses.

It is also questioning what challenges providers face delivering them and how the courses could be changed, including by asking them for their thoughts the current 16-week maximum period for bootcamps.

“Some further education colleges and other providers have said to us that they have held back from delivering skills bootcamps because – while they have been delivered on a smaller scale – skills bootcamps have been funded through a separate procurement process,” the consultation reads.

While employers are already being asked to pay 30 per cent of course cost for training their own employees, the consultation is also seeking views on non-financial contributions employers could make.

This may include giving up space for training, providing equipment, or allowing their workers time to learn.

Additionally, “to ensure that adults can easily move onto other training or learning after completing a skills bootcamp” the consultation wants answers on how the courses can fit into progression routes.

Respondents are asked what further learning bootcamp participants should progress onto, ranging from no further learning to an apprenticeship or other further training or learning opportunities.

Meeting critical skills needs

The consultation highlights a “growing employer demand for higher technical skills which is not being met,” in industries such as manufacturing and construction, on top of a shortage of STEM skills.

To meet this problem, the DfE is asking respondents for skills gaps below degree level they think will not be met now or in five years’ time.

One possible solution the government is seeking views on is shorter courses lasting under 12 months in areas of emerging technologies or industries in a period of transition.

The consultation asks if there are particular sectors or occupations which short courses may help, or if short courses might help adults overcome barriers to learning.

Employers and providers are also asked if they have funded or delivered short courses.

Simplifying FE funding and accountability consultation launched by DfE

The government has launched a consultation on proposals to simplify funding and accountability systems in further education.

As promised in the ‘Skills for Jobs White Paper’, the reforms aim to give colleges and providers more autonomy by relaxing ringfences, introducing a multi-year funding regime, and holding them to account for the outcomes they deliver.

You can read the 68-page consultation document here. It will be open until October 7.

The reforms to funding will only apply to adult streams and not 16 to 19 or apprenticeships.

Plans for simplifying the funding system that the government is seeking views on, in the words of the Department for Education, include:

Establishing a new Skills Fund to bring together all direct funding for adult skills.
Ensuring the system can support both qualification-based provision and non-qualification provision so adults can retrain and upskill in the most effective way.
How a needs-based approach could be introduced to distribute funding across the country.
How funding can be most effectively distributed between colleges in non-devolved areas, in particular:
O What a simpler formula might look like if a system based on funding learners is retained
O Moving to a lagged funding system
O Delivering a multi-year funding regime

What entitlements and eligibility rules should apply in a new system.
How funding for Independent Training Providers and other non-grant funded providers would work in a reformed system.

The accountability reforms will focus on “outcomes and will take a strategic approach to support and intervention”. Views, in the words of the DfE, are being sought on the following areas:

Specifying the outcomes we expect colleges to deliver through a new Performance Dashboard.
Introducing a new skills measure that will capture how well a college is delivering local and national skills needs.
Introducing a new Accountability Agreement that will reinforce colleges autonomy while providing a clear sense of mission.
Exploring an enhanced role for Ofsted to inspect how well a college is delivering local and national skills needs.
Enabling the FE Commissioner to enhance its existing leadership role, with a renewed focus on driving improvement and championing excellence.
Improving data quality and reducing the requirements we place on providers through student data collection and financial reporting.
Retaining the necessary regulation and oversight to ensure the effective operation of the market, including providing assurance on the use of public funds.

Revealed: The local skills improvement plans trailblazers

The employer representative bodies that will lead pilots for new local skills improvement plans (LSIP) have been named.

Eight different chambers of commerce will spearhead the development of the plans in eight trailblazer areas this year, backed with £4 million of revenue funding.

First mooted in the FE white paper, the plans will aim to make colleges to align the courses they offer to local employers’ needs.

They are hoped to address concerns that employers do not currently have enough influence over the skills provision offered in their locality and struggle to find staff to fill their skills gaps.

The LSIP trailblazers are:

In application guidance published in April, the Department for Education said the LSIPs will “set out the key changes needed to make technical skills training more responsive to employers’ skills needs within a local area”.

They should be created in collaboration with colleges and training providers, with employers “setting out a credible and evidence-based assessment of their skills needs, to which providers will be empowered to respond”.

“The plans will help ensure provision is more responsive to emerging and changing skills needs and being locally driven, can be tailored to the challenges and opportunities most relevant to the area,” the guidance added.