Ministers have commissioned Ofsted to review skills bootcamps – but there will continue to be no full inspections of the flagship training scheme unless they become a “rolling programme”.
A thematic survey will look into the quality of education and the curriculum of the bootcamps, which last up to 16 weeks and are for adults aged over 19 who are either employed or unemployed. Skills bootcamps are one of the government’s key initiatives in its Plan for Jobs announced last year.
Ofsted’s survey will be based on methodology from their FE and skills inspection handbook. A spokesperson for the inspectorate said: “This approach will help us to understand and evaluate education and training provision, looking at developments nationally, and highlighting good practice as well as areas for improvement.”
Bootcamps could be routinely inspected if they are a rolling programme
FE Week revealed earlier this year, ahead of their national rollout in April 2021, that providers of skills bootcamps would not be subject to Ofsted inspections.
Instead, suppliers bidding to run the provision would need to evidence that training will be high quality, that it meets in-demand skill needs, and that they have their own “strong” quality assurance and continuous improvement processes in place.
The DfE confirmed today that skills bootcamps would only fall under the scope for routine inspection “if and when” they become a rolling programme with regular funding.
This is subject to funding of Ofsted, and comes as the bootcamps are still in wave two of their trailblazer stage, the DfE said.
Bootcamp contracts lasting up to three years were handed out in two lots, each worth £18 million, to suppliers across the country last year.
Over half of bootcamp providers not inspected
FE Week analysis has found 57 per cent, or 19, of the 33 bootcamp providers have neither had a full inspection by Ofsted, nor are they listed on the watchdog’s website as waiting for an inspection.
Those not covered by Ofsted inspections include local enterprise partnerships, a number of private companies delivering bootcamps, and the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority.
Ofsted has insisted the survey visits to providers will “not be the same as an inspection,” as they will only look at the provision and will not make judgements about the provider.
The results will be used to “build a national picture of how bootcamps are working,” and will be reported to the DfE. Survey visits will be carried out between December 2021 and March 2022, with a report set to be published in September 2022.
Skills bootcamps, in areas as varied as digital skills and construction, are one of the two pillars of the £2.5 billion National Skills Fund announced by prime minister Boris Johnson last year, along with the new level 3 entitlement.
The DfE announced over the weekend the bootcamp model would be used to train up 3,000 more heavy goods vehicle drivers, amid a national shortage.
The Department for Education is to spend up to £10 million on new Skills Bootcamps to “ease the risk of shortages” of HGV drivers.
In a package of measures announced on Saturday night, the government wants 3,000 new HGV drivers through the bootcamp route and a further 1,000 new drivers to be trained up through the adult education budget.
A lack of drivers has been blamed for a range of distribution issues across retail for several weeks, including in supermarkets and petrol forecourts. The pandemic, Brexit and chronic workforce issues are all believed to be contributing to the current crisis.
Other measures include drafting in Ministry of Defence examiners to boost driver testing capacity are also being announced today. The Department for Transport and the DVLA have said they will send a letter to 1 million HGV driving license holders to encourage those not currently working to get back in to the industry.
The new HGV driver Skills Bootcamps will include training for a Cat C or Cat C&E license, which is required to drive vehicles weighing over 3,500kg.
DfE also hope the apprenticeship route will help to alleviate the current labour shortage. According to their statement this evening, they have been working with the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education to “boost the apprenticeships on offer for large goods vehicle drivers including by updating the current Large Goods Vehicle Driver apprenticeship and increasing its funding.”
“HGV drivers keep this country running. We are taking action to tackle the shortage of drivers by removing barriers to help more people to launch new well-paid careers in the industry, supporting thousands to get the training they need to be road ready.
Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi
At the time of writing, there are 2 adverts for 9 HGV driver apprenticeship vacancies on the government’s Find an Apprenticeships service. Both offer the level 2 ‘Large goods vehicle driver C and E’ standard. To date, Skills Bootcamps are designed to be targeted at levels 3-5, though they do not have to contain qualifications.
Skills Bootcamps are funded from the £2.5 billion National Skills Fund and are currently only available in limited sectors; construction, digital, engineering and manufacturing, green skills and rail. Programmes run for up to 16 weeks and must be designed with a guaranteed job interview in an in-demand industry.
AELP’s chief executive Jane Hickie welcomed extra investment in Skills Bootcamps,
“Haulage shortages have been causing chaos across the country, so it’s great to see the Government taking decisive action.
“Getting 4000 new workers trained and into quality HGV careers is a good target. Independent training providers are ready to play their part in delivering this training and are uniquely equipped to respond with agility. AELP strongly welcome the continued rollout and investment in bootcamps. We believe these are a great mechanism for training and reskilling the workforce.”
Providers for current Skills Bootcamps were selected in two ‘waves’ of procurement exercises which began in January this year. A ‘pre-procurement information notice’ was issued by the Department for Education last week, 21 September, for a possible wave 3, but it is not yet known whether this relates to HGV bootcamps announced today.
Earlier this year, providers hoping to deliver Skills Bootcamps faced “worrying” delays in their tender outcomes, which DfE reasoned was due to the large volumes of bids received.
Shaid Mahmood has been an FE governor for 20 years. Now he’s launching a review of the work of the Association of Colleges
Across the road from where Shaid Mahmood grew up in Moss Side, inner-city Manchester, there was a Christian missionary man with whom his mum was good friends. He remembers coming home one day aged 11 with an envelope from school and handing it to his mum, who couldn’t read English. She crossed the road and handed it to her friend, who read it out to her.
“He said, ‘Oh, it’s your son’s school report’. Then he said, ‘Oh bloody hell, he’s really quite bright.’” Mahmood grins. “He advised her to push me, get additional lessons and get me to university.”
The new chair of the Association of Colleges, appointed in December last year, has a fire in his belly. It’s more under control these days, he says, but he describes early experiences of a kind that have driven him ever since. He was aware of being capable but was acutely reminded, in 1970s Britain, of the way he was perceived.
“I really, really enjoyed picking up books and learning, I enjoyed memorising things, I always liked working out how things worked. When my dad was rewiring the house, I’d take one of the electrical socket boxes and take it all apart and put it back together again.”
Aged seven, he was placed by teachers in a class with 11-year-olds for English, maths and science. At home, his dad was entrepreneurial and opened a corner shop, and also worked as a bus driver, and his mum was a sewing machinist.
But there were many assumptions at that time that “the sons of corner shop keepers become corner shop keepers,” explains Mahmood. “There was poverty and inequality, and a backdrop of quite racist attitudes. When you see your parents being abused in the street, being spat on, when you’re called names yourself… it kind of lit a fire in me. I wasn’t going to be second best to anyone.”
He has opened up recently to his own grown-up son about the circumstances he and his five younger siblings had to endure, so his son understands the family’s history. “Those kinds of things don’t leave you. It leaves an imprint on your soul.”
It could have gone wrong for Mahmood. He was in a boys’ gang in his neighbourhood, not one that robbed, but that scrapped with other boys. But at the heart of this, he explains, was a sense of community. “That’s just what you did. We protected each other, and of course we got into fights, but it was about being part of a neighbourhood.”
The strong sense of community (not the scrapping, evidently) came from his parents. While his mum ensured, in line with her friend’s advice, that he get extra maths and English lessons as well as Koran classes, both his parents were clear with him that he was expected to share those advantages around.
“My mother and father taught me, if you’ve got any kind of talent, it’s about what you do for others. So I did a lot of paperwork!” The young Mahmood could be found filling out citizenship forms and applications for school places, all in his little printed handwriting.
“That was inbred in me, that it’s about what you help others achieve.” He laughs, before growing serious: “I’d go and march, metaphorically speaking, for anyone! It really got my goat, when people said we wouldn’t amount to anything.”
At the end of school Mahmood had A-levels in biology, chemistry and general studies, and got a place at Lancaster University to study chemistry and later a masters in polymer science. He went on to a PhD in chemistry at Sheffield University, before landing a job at Dupont, the huge American chemicals company.
By his mid-20s, he was travelling the world, from the US to Belgium, France and Germany. “For a young lad out of Moss Side, it was…” he shakes his head, laughing.
A career highlight was his invention of a shorter and less dangerous process for producing a light-sensitive chemical used in the printing industry. From there, he managed teams and so entered the business of developing people.
Back in the UK, Mahmood decided to make the move a permanent one. “I changed tack and join the management team at a company commissioning services for young people,” he says. The company was none other than Connexions, the government-funded support service for students up to age 19, which was wound up in 2012.
But Mahmood was joining in 2003 and was soon director of a northern branch. From there, he landed a role as assistant director at Leeds city council for children’s services, and has worked at the council ever since, currently as a chief officer.
His energy is infectious. He does not, happily, at all fit the mould of a dusty governor at the back of the Christmas party sneaking the odd sandwich. His personal philosophy explains why: “I don’t like to do things half-baked, it has to be brilliant – it is a fault of mine. I hear this thing about ‘good enough is good enough’, but I’m just not sure.”
He leans forward. “My view is, as a parent, I want any institution to strain every single sinew to do the best for my child.” Just as his parents had taught him, Mahmood delivers a very hands-on version of giving back.
Mahmood at Leeds City College
He has held governance roles in FE for almost 20 years, including at Park Lane College, now called Leeds City College. By 2014 he was chair, but the college was in “dire financial straits” and Ofsted was breathing down their necks.
“You can’t do governance sat behind a desk,” asserts Mahmood. So he got stuck in, setting up working groups in English and maths chaired by governors themselves, to drive up standards. He got governors into classroom observations, to compare their findings with practitioners.
“Being on the board is not just about dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s. It’s about really providing leadership on where that kind of organisation needs to be.”
Mahmood is a rare governance expert in that he clearly spells out that governors are leaders within FE. They’re more often portrayed as guardians who hold the real leaders to account.
But Mahmood doesn’t see it that way. “I work with the chief executive and his team to drive the organisation forward. My views and thoughts and those of the board have influenced the strategy. If you asked my chief executive, I think he’d say we’ve navigated this through as a pair.” He grins again. “My job is not just to chair four or five meetings a year.”
My job is not just to chair five meetings a year
Whether all colleges are lucky enough to have such a hands-on, committed chair of governors is another question – but if they do, Mahmood is also clear they are too rarely recognised at a system level, and are at risk of being lost as a result.
“These are volunteers offering their time up, we have to remember that,” he points out. Also, he adds, unlike senior managers, he and most trustees are unlikely to move on after a few years because they don’t have to build a career. “The board members are often the ones who are still there after senior managers have gone.” As such, governors should be celebrated “as leaders of cultural change”.
Governors are leaders of cultural change
To recognise this, says Mahmood, more explicit mentions of governors in Ofsted reports would be welcome, as would policymakers listening more closely to governors for their “different perspective”, rooted as it is in industries, employers and communities outside the college gates.
But despite the frustration of under-recognition, Mahmood has a rallying call to all would-be governors, in his new position as chair of the Association of Colleges. The potential to lead, and make a significant impact, is greater than ever, he says.
“There’s never been a better time to start influencing local, regional and national policy. FE is definitely in the spotlight in a way I haven’t seen for quite some time. The FE white paper, the ‘levelling up’ agenda, the commission of the college of the future…”
To that end, Mahmood is positioning the AoC to be ready – to take stock of all the changes that have happened in the past 18 months, but also to look ahead.
So he and the board are calling for a review of the AoC’s work, he reveals. “It’s something myself, the board and [chief executive] David [Hughes] feel is the right thing to do. Just think what’s happened in the past 18 months: the white paper, Covid, a new interim chief executive at the ESFA, a new FE commissioner. It’s about looking at what we do, and how we can even better serve our members.”
Mahmood at Leeds City College
Mahmood is particularly interested in ‘strategic marketing’, which he describes as an “effective way of planning an approach to the future” from a “relationship management point of view”. One relationship he’s particularly keen to build is between FE and HE, both of which are “anchor institutions” for their areas, who can work “hand-in-hand to deliver community education”.
He’s also determined to support efforts to get more under-represented individuals into leadership in FE, so the attitudes that plagued him in his youth are robustly challenged. This is particularly important outside cities, he says, where communities may never see a community leader from a minority ethnic background.
Well, he’s almost made me want to sit on a trustee board, so I can’t think of a better marketeer to encourage more people in. Mahmood turns to me again, eyes shining. “It has never been a better time to be a chair of governors in a college.”
Learners are sometimes being wrongly labelled as sexually aggressive, writes Jennifer Wilkinson
Teaching in the 21st century is no small feat. Not only are we now educators, the list of “professional responsibilities” just keeps growing.
One of the hot topics in FE at the moment is sex. Now I know what you’re thinking: yes, sex has always been a hot topic.
But for most young people education is their first real experience of an institution and of a community. As such, it is only natural that colleges become the pitch upon which many issues play out on a micro-scale.
And in the post-Savile/Weinstein era, inappropriate sexual behaviour has now become a pressing professional responsibility for teachers. Although this heightened awareness has many benefits, it also has its drawbacks.
That’s particularly the case for learners with autism and complex learning difficulties.
When lecturers are faced with, let’s face it, the uncomfortable situation of confronting sexually inappropriate behaviour, our instinct can be to communicate the severity of the situation to the student in question.
In schools, there are now zero-tolerance policies on any sexually inappropriate behaviour, including revenge porn, sexting, physical acts or unwanted attention.
Of course, actions must have consequences. If history has taught us anything, it is that we cannot just ignore the problem.
However, what do you do when the student does not fully understand their actions? Is the hard-line approach really the best solution?
A fashionable colleague once told me a story about working one-to-one with a student with complex needs. She just so happened to be wearing sparkly-glitter tights.
While she was reading the student’s work, he began to run his hands up her leg, under her skirt. Naturally, she screamed and jumped out of her seat.
When she asked the student why he’d done it, he said, “I wanted to see what the tights felt like and if the glitter went all the way up.”
The student said ‘I wanted to see what the tights felt like’
It was not meant as an act of sexual aggression, nor to harm the teacher. The student simply saw something sensorily interesting.
Students with autism and learning difficulties are at risk of being labelled “sexually inappropriate”, “sexualised” or “sexually abusive” because of the lack of understanding within colleges of how to deal with difficult events constructively.
These labels can be highly destructive, often making it more challenging for students to express sexuality in a healthy way.
Recently, a male student with learning difficulties made inappropriate advances towards a female student on his vocational course.
She felt extremely uncomfortable and understandably stopped speaking to him.
However, he did not understand why, nor did he feel able to speak to staff to help him navigate a very complicated social situation.
The boy became labelled and isolated from his peers on his course. He did not fully comprehend how his behaviour had caused this complex situation or affected others.
He eventually dropped out of college altogether. The support available to him came too little, too late.
Between 20 to 30 per cent of convicted sexual offenders are “estimated to have learning disabilities or difficulties”, according to a study published in the Journal of Sexual Aggression in 2007.
We also know crimes by those with learning difficulties and autism tend to be impulse-based – trigged by curiosity as opposed to seeking sexual gratification.
But this cohort has a higher rate of detention and prosecution than the average population (Craig & Hutchinson, 2005).
Educators should not be put in a situation where hard-line responses are all we have, because mental health support has been outsourced to a phone number due to budget cuts.
So, we desperately need the government to employ more professionally trained counsellors in colleges, who can focus on early intervention and prevention of escalating behaviour.
I am a teacher, not a professional counsellor. My job is to preserve the student-teacher relationship and maintain an environment where any student can learn.
The departing skills minister did well to lead in a pandemic but was too college-focused, writes Jane Hickie
There is no doubt that Gillian Keegan brought prominence to the FE agenda as minister for apprenticeships and skills. Indeed, she was the first former apprentice to hold the office.
Leading on the FE white paper and the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill, was no mean feat in just 19 months in post, never mind during a global pandemic. Keegan should be congratulated for her leadership during this time.
We at AELP welcomed many aspects of the white paper, not least the outcomes-focused, employer-led approach to skills. However, we have concerns that cannot be ignored.
The skills Bill’s focus on greater protection of learners and apprentices is not only reasonable but sensible. But we are concerned about the proposed “list of relevant providers”.
No consultation has taken place on the conditions, and the government itself acknowledges that this could mean “significant costs” being imposed on smaller providers delivering niche provision.
Keegan and her team could have listened and done more to ensure providers will not be saddled with more bureaucracy and unnecessary costs. The focus needs to be on post-pandemic recovery for both learners and providers.
We also have concerns about how local skills improvement plans will articulate the needs of all learners, providers and employers, and avoid duplication at a local level.
The extension of the Baker Clause was a really positive aspect of the white paper, so it was disappointing not to see this included in the Bill.
So now we welcome the new minister, Alex Burghart, and urge him to take these concerns on board.
One thing he could do is listen to the whole sector. I had a good working relationship with Keegan and she was always happy to meet with our members.
But many providers felt she was incredibly college-focused, rather than understanding and listening to providers of all types.
This may well have impacted her decision-making, particularly the government’s continued agenda to reduce the number of providers delivering.
Instead, we need a whole-system approach that values providers of all types.
Independent training providers should not be pigeon-holed as only delivering apprenticeships and at lower levels. Nor should there be disappointing insinuations from within government about the quality of provision.
There shouldn’t be disappointing insinuations about the quality of provision
The vast majority of ITPs are judged good or outstanding by Ofsted – 81 per cent at the latest count.
There is no doubt that the chancellor’s support of apprenticeships and traineeships throughout the pandemic, and the Plan for Jobs, has been a game-changer for learners, businesses and providers.
I have no doubt that Keegan championed this agenda and secured key funding for the sector. However, these financial incentives (which come to an end on 30 September) must be extended.
This is crucial if we are to have any hope of tackling disadvantage, getting young people into training and work and narrowing the skills gap exacerbating workforce shortages.
Burghart, as a former teacher and lecturer, will have a decent understanding of the sector and our challenges. His challenge over the coming months will be steering the Bill through the House of Commons ̶ keeping what’s good, while hopefully addressing our key concerns.
He should also be ready to come out fighting for additional FE funding as part of the spending review. It will be a bunfight, and we need the voice of FE to be heard loud and clear.
There must be long-term financial sustainability of the apprenticeships programme, support for SME apprenticeships, an ongoing suite of support for young people and entry-level apprentices, and fairer funding for maths and English functional skills.
This would put apprenticeships on a sustainable footing and offer parity between academic and vocational education.
We are ready and waiting to support the new minister’s ambitions. I would urge Burghart to listen ̶ really listen ̶ to the sector.
With the job retention scheme about to end, unemployment will increase, writes Duncan Melville
There is good news and bad news about unemployment from last week’s labour market numbers.
The good news is that employment is growing strongly. The number of people in employment went up by 183,000 in the three months from May to July, according to the Labour Force Survey (LFS).
That is the largest quarterly increase since November 2019 to January 2020.
The timelier HMRC payroll numbers show an increase of 241,000 in the month to August – the largest increase ever on record.
Vigorous employment growth can also be expected to continue. Job vacancies exceeded one million for the first time in June to August 2021, and data on job ads this month from ad-tracking website Adzuna indicate that vacancies remain high.
Alongside this big demand for labour, both unemployment inactivity and working-age inactivity have dropped: down by 86,000 and 121,000 respectively in the three months May to July 2021.
But although this is all very encouraging, we should not forget that employment remains much lower than it was before the pandemic.
Admittedly, HMRC employee payroll numbers are back at pre-pandemic levels. But on the wider LFS and Office for National Statistics workforce jobs measures employment is down by over 700,000 and 800,000 respectively since the start of the pandemic.
Full recovery will require supportive action from the government. Ministers need to develop a strong labour market policy to help individuals move back into work.
We also need a supportive macro-economic policy so the economy continues to grow.
With interest rates at historically low levels, any efforts to reduce public debt levels also need to be for the future and not next month’s spending review.
At the same time, the immediate outlook is highly uncertain because the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) ends this month. We estimate about one million people will still be on the scheme when it closes.
Many of these are likely to return to their existing roles. But some will inevitably lose their jobs, so a rise in unemployment seems highly likely.
The magnitude of this rise is uncertain, but some simple calculations suggest it could be in the range of 130,000 to 280,000 people.
And whatever happens to overall unemployment, long-term unemployment has already risen substantially.
Many young people have drifted into long-term unemployment’
The number of young people aged 16-24 who have been unemployed for six months or longer is one-third higher than it was pre-pandemic.
Many young people were unable to find work in 2020 and so drifted into long-term unemployment.
Meanwhile, for similar reasons, the number of people aged 25 and over who have been unemployed for a year or longer is up by nearly half since the start of the pandemic.
FE colleges, alongside other employment and skills providers, can play an important role here.
First off, college staff can support learners to develop their job search and interviewing skills as much as possible.
Second, they can use their links with local employers to simulate employment opportunities for their learners, so learners are ready to hit the ground running.
Third, colleges should ensure the range of provision they offer fits with the changing needs of local employers.
Given this uncertain outlook, the government should also take note that now is not the time for the planned cut to the £20-a-week supplement to Universal Credit, which is due on October 6.
Such a move would both increase poverty and unhelpfully reduce spending and demand in the economy.
Government action in the form of the job retention scheme has prevented a catastrophe in the labour market. Much progress has been achieved in the past six months with substantial employment growth. But with employment levels still well below pre-pandemic levels, there is still much to do.
To avoid undoing progress, ministers must provide the necessary employment support and not take premature actions to improve the public finances.
Former universities minister Michelle Donelan has been named Minister of State for Further and Higher Education.
FE Week reported a week ago that there were whispers in Westminster that Donelan could take a larger education portfolio. This has been confirmed today in a joint message to the sector with Alex Burghart, a junior minister with the apprenticeships and skills brief.
Burghart’s first visit as a newly appointed apprenticeships and skills minister took place yesterday at La Retraite Roman Catholic Girls’ School in London. The school, which received an ‘outstanding’ overall judgment at its last Ofsted inspection in April 2013, is one of the first T Level providers and offers the digital, education and childcare, and health and science routes.
In their message to the sector, posted in full below, Donelan and Burghart state that they will both be representing further and higher education,
“It has long been said that the skills system has been disjointed and confusing which ultimately can affect the experiences and opportunities available to young people and adults. By bringing together these two sectors we want to break down any barriers and work in sync to help encourage closer working between colleges, universities, employers and apprenticeship providers so that ultimately, everyone can gain the skills they need to get great jobs.”
Donelan is the first minister to hold a joint further and higher education brief since Labour’s Bill Rammell, who served as minister for lifelong learning, further and higher education between 2007 and 2008 under Gordon Brown.
It is believed however that Donelan is the first further and higher education minister to attend Cabinet.
Message to the sector in full:
A message from Minister Donelan and Minister Burghart
It is with great pleasure that we are writing to you to introduce ourselves.
As we are sure you will have seen, together we will be representing both higher and further education and we are truly honoured to take on these roles and to be able to work with you all.
It has long been said that the skills system has been disjointed and confusing which ultimately can affect the experiences and opportunities available to young people and adults. By bringing together these two sectors we want to break down any barriers and work in sync to help encourage closer working between colleges, universities, employers and apprenticeship providers so that ultimately, everyone can gain the skills they need to get great jobs.
As Minister for State for Higher Education and Further Education Michelle Donelan will also attend Cabinet to ensure these important briefs are represented at the most senior level.
It is an incredibly exciting time for further education, with transformational reforms and our Skills for Jobs White Paper offering us the opportunity to level up and make sure that together we can deliver the skills that our country needs for the future. This work to help people reskill and provide the employees that businesses need, has never been more important as we move out of Covid restrictions and look to rebuild our economy.
We know that up and down the country colleges and providers are doing fantastic work delivering innovative and high-quality training and that, in the face of a global pandemic you have all gone above and beyond to support your learners and staff and remain pillars of your local communities. We would like to thank you for your continued dedication and we cannot wait to get out and about on visits to see more of the innovative work you do and to meet with staff and students.
We have a great journey ahead of us and we can promise that together, we will champion further education with the energy and passion that it deserves.
A campaign has been launched to encourage employers to pay apprentices a “decent and fair” salary over and above the national minimum wage.
Founder Robert Watts, who chairs the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education’s research scientist trailblazer group, hopes the ‘Back the Future’ initiative will help tackle the high dropout rate in apprenticeships that has troubled ministers.
The campaign asks businesses to pledge not to pay the national minimum wage for apprentices, which currently stands at £4.30 per hour and totals between £8,000 and £9,000 annually.
Watts said he has witnessed a number of individuals who due to having dependents or having to pay rent “could not afford to take an apprenticeship and were forced into a better paid role but that offered them little long-term development”.
While it can be “attractive to pay lower wages to apprentices”, these low wages can “act as a barrier and make apprenticeships exclusive rather than inclusive programmes,” he argued.
A “decent” apprentice wage, in the eyes of the campaign’s organisers, is anything between £6.25 and £7.70 per hour, which equates to £13,000 to £16,000 annually respectively for an apprentice working 40 hours a week.
Research into the “reasons for non-completion” in apprenticeships was published by the Department for Education in 2019 and found that “offer of a paid job” was the third most common reason for apprentices dropping out. “Apprenticeship did not pay high enough” was another common reason.
Then skills minister Gillian Keegan ordered an investigation into the “astonishingly” high drop-out rate for apprenticeship standards earlier this year.
It came after 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.
Watts said one of the biggest reasons for the high dropout rate is because they are “employed on low wages” and “simply cannot survive, eat and pay bills”.
More than 50 employers have so far signed up to Back the Future, including the Universities of Oxford who typically employ around 100 apprentices each a year.
Those who sign up will receive a ‘We Back the Future’ logo to use on their recruiting and marketing literature.
Watts said the idea is to not only raise awareness around this issue but also to “help those companies who perhaps cannot pay a higher wage now, work towards this wage or provide them with resources to help their apprentices manage their smaller budgets and be aware of how to handle debt and costs”.
Abcam, a global life science company, is one firm backing the pledge.
Mark Thomas, Abcam’s vice president for talent acquisition and development, said: “We recognise that to help apprentices reach their full potential, we have a responsibility to reward them fairly, invest in their development and provide opportunities for growth.
“Abcam fully supports the Back the Future initiative in driving new standards for apprentice wages.”
Interesting fact: She was once the youngest elected councillor on Manchester City Council
Fabienne Bailey, Board member, Education Training Collective
Start date: August 2021
Concurrent job: Managing director, One Awards
Interesting fact: She likes to try new foods from around the world and says her current crave is for kelp kimchi.
Rachel Beeken, Board member, Education Training Collective
Start date: August 2021
Concurrent job: Operations director, PD Ports
Interesting fact: A massive Take That fan, she has been to see the band perform live a “staggering” 39 times.
Jen Vanderhoven, Board member, Education Training Collective
Start date: August 2021
Concurrent job: Director, the National Horizons Centre
Interesting fact: In her free time, she loves nothing more than adventure racing and getting covered head to toe in mud.
Martin Harrison, Executive director of finance, The Sheffield College
Start date: June 2021
Previous job: Interim finance director, SCC Group
Interesting fact: He sings with Sheffield Barbershop Harmony Club as part of the club’s performance chorus, Hallmark of Harmony, which has won two gold medals and represented Great Britain in an international competition.
