Revealed: Finalists announced for the 2021 AAC Apprenticeship Awards

The national finalists for this year’s FE Week and AELP AAC Apprenticeship Awards have been revealed.

From 350 entries the shortlists for the 21 awards, being run in partnership with Open Awards, were announced at a virtual ceremony on Thursday evening, hosted by comedian and impressionist Rory Bremner.

They will now go forward for the awards, which will be announced at a gala dinner in Birmingham on Thursday, July 8.

Shane Mann, managing director of FE Week’s publisher Lsect, said: “These finalists are some of the very best of the apprenticeship sector and show just what can be achieved.

“The past year has placed an enormous strain on all our lives, both in our private lives and our places of work.

 “The judges were astounded by the innovation, tenacity and thoughtfulness of apprenticeship providers and employers across the UK. These awards are just one of many ways we can show our appreciation and celebrate their exceptional work.

“In past years we’ve announced the national finalists during a parliamentary reception. This wasn’t possible this year.

“But it was great to have Rory Bremner host this evening’s special online presentation.”

The big award, apprentice provider of the year, will go to either Cardiff and Vale College, Exeter College, Acacia Training and Salford City College.

Meanwhile, Lee Marley Brickwork, Merseyside Police, Pendennis Shipyard Ltd and the Royal Air Force will duke it out for apprentice employer of the year.

AELP chief executive Jane Hickie said it was “very difficult to choose the shortlist for each category. 

“As this year’s array of finalists demonstrates, the fantastic training being delivered to young people and to existing employees who need to enhance their skills in the face of the pandemic and current economic uncertainty never ceases to amaze me.

“AELP partnered with FE Week on these awards as a way to demonstrate the amazing work done by providers in supporting their learners and employers – we certainly have many examples of outstanding work demonstrated across the sector.”

A number of sector leaders are also in the running for the individual award for outstanding contribution to the development of apprenticeships.

These include Anthony Impey, chief executive of Be The Business; Andy Berry, principal of Bridgwater & Taunton College; Rob Colbourne, chief executive of Performance Through People; and Robert Watts, European apprenticeship and early talent programme manager for Covance Laboratories.

Tickets for the awards ceremony are now on sale from http://aacapprenticeshipawards.com/

Watch the ceremony here

 

The full list of finalists is as follows:

Agriculture, environmental and animal care apprenticeship provider of the year

  • Bridgwater & Taunton College
  • Myerscough College

Business and administration apprenticeship provider of the year

  • Abingdon & Witney College
  • Wiltshire College

Care services apprenticeship provider of the year

  • Aspiration Training
  • Paragon Skills

Catering and hospitality apprenticeship provider of the year (sponsored by the Skills and Education Group)

  • Bournemouth and Poole College
  • Remit Training

Construction apprenticeship provider of the year

  • City of Bristol College
  • Kirklees College

Digital apprenticeship provider of the year (sponsored by BCS Chartered Institute for IT)

  • Gower College Swansea
  • Manchester Met University

Education and childcare apprenticeship provider of the year

  • Exeter College
  • Hawk Management (UK)

Engineering and manufacturing apprenticeship provider of the year

  • Gower College Swansea
  • Make UK

Hair and beauty apprenticeship provider of the year (sponsored by VTCT)

  • HAHA Training
  • Grimsby Institute of Further and Higher Education
  • London Hairdressing Apprenticeship Academy

Health and science apprenticeship provider of the year

  • Manchester Met University
  • Petroc
  • Skills Training UK

Legal, finance and accounting apprenticeship provider of the year

  • Gower College Swansea
  • Workpays

Sales, marketing, procurement apprenticeship provider of the year

  • Lifetime Training
  • Remit Training

Transport and logistics apprenticeship provider of the year

  • Performance Through People Training
  • Qube Learning

Apprenticeship diversity award

  • Coach Core Foundation
  • Multiverse

SEND apprenticeship champion award

  • Devon County Council
  • Sheffield City Council

Promoting apprenticeships campaign of the year

  • Carlisle College
  • Luminate Education Group
  • Weston College

Outstanding contribution to the development of apprenticeships: employer, provider and individual (sponsored by City & Guilds and ILM)

Employer

  • British Steel
  • Fort Vale
  • Health Education England
  • Teledyne e2v

Provider

  • Bridgwater & Taunton College
  • Luminate Education Group
  • Remit Training
  • Wakefield College

Individual

  • Anthony Impey, CEO, Be The Business,
  • Andy Berry, principal, Bridgwater & Taunton College,
  • Rob Colbourne, CEO, Performance Through People
  • Robert Watts, European apprenticeship and early talent programme manager, Covance Laboratories

Apprentice employer of the year

  • Lee Marley Brickwork
  • Merseyside Police
  • Pendennis Shipyard Ltd
  • Royal Air Force

Apprenticeship provider of the year

  • Cardiff and Vale College
  • Exeter College
  • Acacia Training
  • Salford City College

Labour ‘interested in exploring’ devolved apprenticeships funding

Labour is “interested in exploring” greater devolution of skills budgets to mayoral combined authorities, its shadow education secretary has said.

Speaking to the FE Week Annual Apprenticeship Conference this morning, Kate Green would not say definitively whether Labour would hand over a greater amount of funding to metro mayors, many of whom already control their local adult education budgets.

But she said she “finds it very difficult to see how you can dictate these decisions from Whitehall.

“The needs of employers for apprenticeships in Cornwall and Devon are going to be very different from what we need in Greater Manchester,” the Stretford and Urmston MP said. “We’re very different sorts of economies.”

Her view is local and regional leaders “must be empowered, giving them a genuine voice to shape the system so that it delivers for their local economy and community; rather than settling for a system handed down but that doesn’t work for local communities.

“Our metro mayors and combined authorities must have a major role in supporting apprentices and apprenticeships, so that the training system works hand in hand with regional and local regeneration and industrial strategies to revitalise regional and local economies.”

As a Greater Manchester MP, she has become “immensely frustrated” the mayor for the area’s combined authority Andy Burnham “has not got his hands on the 16-to-19 skills or the apprenticeships budgets and all the spending that goes into skills and training in Greater Manchester”.

There are currently eight areas, including the Greater London Authority, which have a devolved adult education budget. And subject to legislation, Sheffield City Region and West Yorkshire combined authorities will join them from 1 August.

A number of the mayors leading those authorities co-signed a letter in 2018 calling for unspent levy funds in their areas to be handed to them.

London mayor Sadiq Khan went even further at the time, saying he wanted “London’s whole contribution to the apprenticeship levy to be ringfenced and devolved to spend on meeting the capital’s complex skills needs”.

In a speech on devolution last December, Labour leader Keir Starmer announced Labour would launch a UK-wide Constitutional Commission to look at devolving power to local areas.

He said: “The case for the next phase of devolution was urgent before Covid, but the pandemic has put rocket boosters under it.

“Our Labour council leaders, mayors and metro mayors have stood up for their communities against a centralised Westminster-knows best response.”

But when asked directly by FE Week editor Nick Linford if she would lobby Labour leader Keir Starmer to devolve the apprenticeship budget, Green would not give a yes or no answer.

Instead, she said: “I think it’s an important conversation to have with colleagues internally.”

Pressed again, she said: “I think we can interpret the answer being I’m very interested to explore that.”

Green stressed it was “really important you don’t make policy on the hoof, you are properly examining the implications of policies, and you’re thinking about talking to all the stakeholders in that policy territory.

“But as I say, I just think that if you’ve got a mismatch in governance between economic regeneration and social justice strategies on the one hand, and employment, training and skills strategies on the other, that does not sit easy with me.”

Apprenticeship quality remains ‘troubling’, says Ofsted chief

Ofsted’s chief inspector has warned the quality of apprenticeship training is still “troubling”.

Following the resumption of new provider monitoring visits, Amanda Spielman today told FE Week’s Annual Apprenticeship Conference inspectors had made 100 such visits since mid-March.

It was “concerning,” she said, that a third of them resulted in at least one ‘insufficient progress’ judgement.

“The quality of apprenticeship training does need to improve,” Spielman told delegates, after she and Ofsted more widely have expressed repeated concerns about quality in the apprenticeship sector.

 

‘This can’t be blamed on Covid’

At AAC 2019, the chief inspector said quality of apprenticeships was “sticking” instead of moving forward.

Ofsted’s 2020 annual report said apprenticeships were the “weakest” area of provision in FE providers, with one in ten judged ‘inadequate’ last year.

Speaking this morning, Spielman said: “Let’s be frank, this can’t be blamed on Covid. This is the same pattern we were seeing before the pandemic.

“To have such a high proportion of insufficient progress judgments is troubling.”

Ofsted’s stated concerns contrast with the Department for Education, which has continually boasted of the quality improvement apprenticeships have experienced because of the government’s reforms to the sector since 2017.

Skills minister Gillian Keegan, writing for FE Week’s National Apprenticeship Week supplement in February, said: “Thanks to our reforms, apprenticeships are now longer and higher quality, and we have taken steps to ensure apprentices learn the skills employers need to thrive at any age.”

When asked by FE Week editor Nick Linford today, neither Spielman nor Joyce would be drawn on whether quality had improved since the apprenticeship reforms.

Joyce explained they were at an “early stage” of their evaluation of the programme, partly as there were still providers delivering apprenticeship frameworks while being inspected by Ofsted, as opposed to the reforms’ flagship apprenticeship standards.

 

Apprenticeship achievement rates ‘not yet high enough’

Speaking at AAC on Monday, Keegan said she had ordered an investigation into the “astonishingly” high apprenticeship drop-out rates.

That is after official government data published in March showed just 60.2 per cent of apprentices training on new-style standards stayed on their programme until the end in 2019/20. This figure was 48.3 per cent the year before.

apprenticeship
Peter Mucklow

The retention rate on the old-style frameworks has stuck at 69 per cent.

And addressing the conference today, the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s director of apprenticeships Peter Mucklow said achievement rates “are not yet high enough,” though they had increased by 12 percentage points between 2018/19 and 2019/20.

However, that still only brings it up to 58.7 per cent – much below the 61 or 62 per cent which Linford told him “used to be minimum standards threshold”.

Level 2 business admin apprenticeship replacement could arrive as soon as September

The apprenticeship regulator is reviewing a proposal for a level 2 business administration replacement, which employers hope to have ready for delivery from September.

Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) chief executive Jennifer Coupland told FE Week’s Annual Apprenticeship Conference today they are mulling over a “public sector organisation administrative assistant” standard.

This has been put forward by a group of employers, including the NHS, after repeated bids for a level 2 business administration apprenticeship standard to replace the old-style framework were rejected.

She said the institute “will always respond to employers who come forward with proposals for new apprenticeships and we take every proposal on its merits”.

A “number” of employers had come forward with the proposed new standard at level 2, which would be considered “in isolation from things that may or may or may not have gone before,” as “that’s a fair and proper thing to do”.

Coupland said the proposed standard would have to meet IfATE’s “usual” tests to be approved for delivery.

It is not clear at this stage how this new proposal differs from the level 2 business administration, aside from having a different name.

It was Coupland who drove the final nail into the level 2 business administration standard’s coffin, ahead of the framework being switched off last July.

At a last-chance meeting with employers in February 2020, after she took the chief executive post the previous November, Coupland said the employers’ proposal did not meet the requirements for an apprenticeship, namely the minimum 12-month duration rule.

She also told the employers they would not be able to submit any further proposals for the standard.

Sparking controversy at last year’s Annual Apprenticeship Conference in March 2020, the former Department for Education civil servant justified her decision as proposals for the level 2 standard “did not meet the tests” for a “high-quality training programme”.

Employers have been able to utilise the level 3 business administrator standard, and the Education and Skills Funding Agency has highlighted the level 2 customer service practitioner standard as a replacement for the level 2 framework.

FE Week reported last October plans were afoot for a new, level 2 “Organisational Support Assistant” standard, which was being developed by the NHS and local councils for use in the public sector.

And plans for this new replacement appear to be quite far forward.

Lucy Hunte

Addressing an Annual Apprenticeship Conference workshop yesterday, NHS Health Education England’s national programme director Lucy Hunte said her organisation was “busy” with getting the new standard ready for delivery hopefully from this September.

The programme would be “widened” to outside the public sector, she said, adding that surveys will be “coming out shortly just to get private sector input.

“But the aim is we would hope to have this ready for delivery from September, but don’t hold me to that, and obviously this is all IfATE-dependent.”

Hunte said the institute “is really interested in the social mobility aspect this time round”.

Finalists for AAC Apprenticeship Awards 2021 to be announced tonight LIVE

The finalists for the FE Week and AELP AAC Apprenticeship Awards 2021 will be revealed at a virtual celebration event tonight – and you’ve been invited to watch the announcement live.

Presentation host, Rory Bremner.

Hosted by comedian and impressionist Rory Bremner, the ceremony, being held in partnership with Innovate Awarding, will be shown on the FE Week News YouTube channel from 18:15 – 19:15.

How to watch

  • On your mobile/tablet/laptop/desktop device use the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6hIGBBm0U0
  • On your smart TV, go the YouTube app and search for the FE Week News Channel, you’ll then be able to find the broadcast listing.
  • Or alternatively, watch below.

Following tonight’s announcement, the winners of the 2021 AAC Apprenticeship Awards will be named at a glamorous gala dinner in Birmingham on Thursday 8 July.

Tickets for the awards ceremony are now on sale from: http://aacapprenticeshipawards.com/.

FE Week’s Annual Apprenticeship Conference has been running this week, starting on Monday and set to finish on Friday, providing key policy updates and important views from top government officials and sector leaders.

WATCH Roundtable | Mental Health & Wellbeing in FE – priorities post-pandemic

FE Week recently held a virtual round table discussing mental health and wellbeing in the FE and Skills Sector.

The discussion focussed on priorities for the sector post-pandemic. A recording of the session is available below.

Panel:

  • David Gallagher | CEO, NCFE
  • Liz Bromley | CEO, NCG (Newcastle College Group)
  • Nick Bennett | Founder, FIKA
  • Jane Caro | Assistant Director of Programmes for England, Mental Health Foundation
  • Jane Hickie | CEO, AELP
  • Le’Shaé Woodstock | Association of Apprentices
  • Jill Whittaker | Managing Director, Hit Training
  • Anna Morrison CBE | Director, Amazing Apprenticeships

Should the Further Education Trust for Leadership be replaced?

The Further Education Trust for Leadership think tank will close this year. Should the model be replicated? Jess Staufenberg finds out

“Do we need an independent think tank for further education?” That’s the question that will be posed in a webinar next week by perhaps the only organisation that could claim to be exactly that.

The Further Education Trust for Leadership (FETL) will then close its doors forever.

It’s been seven-and-a-half years since the think tank set up with £5.6 million in the bank, handing out the public funds for some quite extraordinary projects.

Unlike the Education and Training Foundation (ETF), it has not been closely associated with the government and has enjoyed a huge degree of freedom over its chosen projects.

And unlike think tanks such as The Edge Foundation or EDSK, it focused on leaders – not the broader skills or education landscape.

So does FE need a replacement for FETL? If so, what exactly is being replaced?  

‘None of the minister’s business’  

FETL’s beginnings are as gutsy – and slightly surreal – as its founding force, Dame Ruth Silver, a former child psychologist and principal of Lewisham College in south London for 17 years.

Silver, who retired from the college in 2011, had been chair of the government-funded Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS) since it was set up in 2008.

But in 2013 the coalition government cut ties with LSIS, moving monies to the ETF.

Silver was “furious”, she says, and, quite unbelievably, succeeded in hanging on to about £2 million (£2,099,743, to be precise) still in the LSIS kitty, along with £2.7 million from the Inspire Leadership group, a staff development organisation, and £811,000 from Lifelong Learning UK, another professional development body.

Ruth Silver

“Normally, you’d turn to the government and say, ‘take the money back’, but we were semi-independent, and as long as we respected the charitable objects [of LSIS], we decided we could set something else up,” she says, adding that “a lot of people came after” the money.

But she held firm and asked the sector what it wanted. When she proposed a think tank to civil servants, they said “the minister won’t like it”, to which she says she responded, “well that’s sad, but it’s none of his business”.   

With the intention to run until the money ran out, FETL was born.

The founding trustees included some big names, including Sean Larkins, a deputy director of communications in the Prime Minister’s Office, Toni Pearce, the first FE student to lead the National Union of Students, and Ayub Khan, a former local authorities strategist in London.

Other sector specialists such as Jill Westerman, the former chief executive at the Northern College, and Denise Brown, now principal at Stoke on Trent College, remain on the board, alongside FETL chair and a former trustee at LSIS, Ricky McMenemy, who runs the famous Rules restaurant in Covent Garden, London.     

The organisation held a board meeting this week, and FE Week understands an unconfirmed “dowry” left in the kitty will be bequeathed to a deserving organisation.

A surplus of £560,000 was carried into 2020-21, according to the latest accounts. The question now is whether FETL’s inheritor should seek to replicate its model – or do something different.  

‘Give the sector time to reflect’

FETL’s strapline is “to foster and support the leadership of thinking”. Silver unpacks this with the equally rich explanation: “It’s about the leader in the system, and the system in the leader.”

The remit seems to draw on Silver’s own experiences. As a principal, she was given a sabbatical at the University of Cambridge.

McMenemy says: “Ruth had that wonderful opportunity and she said it had completely invigorated her. So that’s what we were trying to do at the start.”

The idea was to fund FE practitioners to take time out to do research. “We felt the sector didn’t have enough time to breathe, to see what was necessary to carry itself forward and improve its status,” he adds.

Ricky McMenemy

But he and Silver are honest the initial model didn’t quite work.

“That just wasn’t fit for purpose,” Silver says. “FE doesn’t have the practice of a sabbatical. People couldn’t get the time off.”

She’s equally frank about problems with another idea: to fund the first “professor of leadership in FE and skills” at UCL Institute of Education.

Martin Doel was appointed, a former chief executive of the Association of Colleges who had come up through the Royal Air Force.  

“It put someone with an intimate knowledge of FE inside the world’s leading research institute,” Doel says.

In his four-day week he ran multiple seminars and produced essays, including “Rethinking Place and Purpose: Provocations on the Future of FE”, which pulled together roundtable responses from colleges.

But would a professorship have been better spent on a hard-hitting research project?

“I’m quite pleased I didn’t get wound up in quantitative research, because that could have been quite narrow. I’m proud of keeping my focus on broader, conceptual issues in further education, and drawing people’s attention to these.”

The essays were “closer to a polemic, than highly referenced and deeply researched”.  

This approach meant “there was a bit of tension early on about whether we should be getting published in academic journals”, he says.

Martin Doel

“FETL quite properly concluded the target wasn’t to get published in journals, but to affect the thinking of people working now”.

UCL did keep Doel on as a visiting professor after his three-year post came to an end.

However Silver is clear the professorship didn’t quite work, in part because FETL was at risk of “mimicry” by prioritising access to higher education rather than “practitioners in the field”.  

Silver moved onto contract

The decision to move away from formal research towards “provocations” – polemic thought-pieces – would become the cornerstone of FETL’s approach, turbo-charged by Silver as leader.

Its first chief executive, Mark Ravenhall, formerly from the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education, had stepped down in 2015 as had its second, Khan, in 2017.

The board now moved to pay Silver as a consultant from late 2018, on £800 a day for up to three days a week.

McMenemy explains what could be regarded as the controversial decision not to appoint another chief executive, and instead pay the president on contract.

“We thought, we will do without a chief executive. The person who had FETL in her DNA was Ruth, she understood more about it than any of us. We spoke to her about an ‘honorarium’ payment where she would start to manage all the projects.”

‘Allowed for intellectual curiosity’

The organisation has funded an extraordinary amount of work: 42 project grants, 82 publications, 84 videos, nine webinars and 12 larger-scale symposiums.

It supported the Independent College of the Future report, the Centenary Commission on Adult Education and a four nations report by the Institute for Public Policy Research.

It asked questions no one had asked before – papers such as “What’s Oedipus got to do with it?” looked at the “problem of triangular relationships” in senior leadership teams.

Another considered “how psychoanalysis and systems theory” can contribute to FE, reminding leaders to examine their own “internal drivers”.

Like Doel’s work, many publications are polemics, freed from the constraints of formal academic research.  

Instead, the trustee board’s entry requirements were more intuitive.

“We said no to people wanting to do research projects with a qualification at the end – this was not about passing exams. And we said no to things we’d looked at before,” Silver says.

“We said to the sector, come to us with your ideas,” McMenemy explains. FETL funded eight fellowships, which allowed FE staff to pursue a line of inquiry.

For instance Stuart Rimmer, the principal of East Coast College in Suffolk, delved into distress in leadership, speaking to nearly 100 practitioners for his “Voices from the tightrope” paper.

Here FETL’s unique selling point can really be seen.

“It’s allowed individuals to pursue intellectual curiosity,” says Rimmer. “We ended up finding really interesting things, sometimes in marginal topics, that wouldn’t otherwise attract big research funding.”

Other projects were thought up by the board itself, McMenemy says. This year the “Honorable Histories” report surveyed 30 years of FE policy and its impact.

Meanwhile the New Local, an organisation for councils, was funded to examine the “piecemeal nature of English devolution” while a report called “The Way We Work” looked at the effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

The very toughest topics have been tackled: the public “shaming” of college leaders, and the way national media overlooks further education.    

Hard-hitting enough?

In a way, the risk of being overlooked has been perhaps FETL’s main weakness.

The nature of its work hasn’t always generated the national media headlines, or impacted Whitehall policy, in the way it might have.

Doel describes FETL as “more of a reflection and intellectual engine than a think tank – by the sector about the sector”.

But did FETL impact outside FE? Should it have focused more on funding and findings?

Rimmer says FE didn’t need a “proliferation of data” but instead a “proliferation of thinking” – an intellectual backdrop for future research.

Now the British Library and UCL want to add FETL’s materials to their archives. Doel says: “There’s already such a rich literature on schools, which gives them a framework in which to work. We needed FETL to come first.” 

When it’s wound up in December, FETL says it will know how much cash it has left and will decide where to bequeath it.

A think tank that can combine FETL’s rich, anthropological groundwork, with hard-hitting, outward-facing recommendations, could be a powerhouse replacement.

Rimmer says: “It’s been a worthy vehicle. I would like to see a continuation.”  

Crawley College evacuated following suspected shooting

Staff and students have been evacuated from Crawley College after a suspected shooting near its campus.

Two people have been injured and a man has been detained after gunshots were reported this afternoon, according to the police.

A statement released by Sussex police said: “We have responded to reports of gunshot fire near Crawley College.

“One man has been detained at the scene. Staff and students are being evacuated from the college.

“Two people have suffered injuries, but these are not believed to be serious.

“Please stay away from the area.”

In a separate statement, the college said it was “aware of the incident” and they are “awaiting further information from the police”.

“At this time, we are not aware of any serious injuries,” a spokesperson added.

“Our priority remains the safety of students and staff.”

Crawley College is part of the Chichester College Group and teaches 16 to 19 study programmes, adult learners and apprenticeships.

 

UPDATE 27/04/2021:

The police has confirmed that two staff members were treated for minor injuries. These were not gunshot wounds but a firearm and knife were seized.

An 18-year-old man from Crawley has been detained and police are not looking for anyone else in connection with the incident. It is not being treated as a terrorist incident.

Crawley College has announced it will be closed to students on Tuesday (26 April) while police enquiries continue.

Principal Vicki Illingworth said: “Our college community was shaken by the actions that occurred yesterday afternoon.

“I cannot praise the courage, resilience and support shown by our staff enough. They have been incredible and the care and compassion they shared with our students and with each other continues to fill me with admiration.

“We can confirm two members of our staff did sustain some minor injuries, which were not gunshot wounds.

“Their heroic actions – and the rapid response of emergency services – helped to protect our college community. They are both at home, resting, and we ask members of the media to respect their privacy at this time.

“Our priority is and remains the safety and wellbeing of our students and staff. Counselling services are available for all students and staff.

“We are grateful to have received so many messages of support from parents and local residents, as well as colleagues across the FE sector, local authorities and individuals close to the college. We would like to thank everyone for keeping us in their thoughts and extend our thanks to the Police and the emergency services.

“We know many of our students are keen to resume their studies in their normal college environment. We will be providing updates as soon as we are able. But we look forward to being together again, on campus, soon.

“Thank you for your continued support, patience and understanding.”

Minister orders investigation into ‘astonishing’ apprenticeship drop-out rate

The skills minister has ordered an investigation into the “astonishingly” high drop-out rate for apprenticeship standards.

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.

The retention rate on the old-style frameworks has stayed consistent at 69 per cent.

Minister Gillian Keegan was quizzed on the numbers this morning by FE Week editor Nick Linford on the first day of the Annual Apprenticeship Conference, and revealed she has asked the Department for Education to “look into this” after being left “astonished”.

She pledged that she “won’t stop” until the completion rate is “much, much higher”.

Keegan said she “couldn’t understand” why this is happening as apprenticeships were seen as the “golden ticket” when she left school and the “last thing you would dream of is not finishing it”.

“Are people being put onto apprenticeships they don’t know they’re on? Are people not being given the right support to finish? Are people going onto apprenticeships and then deciding it is not for them and then giving up and starting some other pathway in life?”

Keegan admitted there could be a variety of reasons for low retention, but early indications point part of the reason towards new apprenticeships being disjointed.

She explained that apprentices will often drop out if they achieve a qualification that proves their professional competency much before they are due to sit their end-point assessment, such as nursing.

Keegan described this as creating an “artificial end-point” that “needs to be more logically placed as part of the apprenticeship”.

She explained: “I have a suspicion that we need to make sure that all of the parts of the apprenticeship work intuitively.

“I have seen some examples where qualifications or certification may be separate from the end-point assessment by quite a long way. That doesn’t make much sense, so we need to make sure that the apprenticeship doesn’t have the end-point a long time after either the individual or business thinks they are at the qualification level.”

Keegan said this problem first came to light at the start of the pandemic when she was asked to sign off a group of nurses that hadn’t finished their end-point assessment but had completed their nursing and midwifery accreditation and wanted to be on the frontline.

“When I looked into it actually, they had completed their nursing and midwifery accreditation but the end-point assessment was a completely separate thing and came a long time afterwards,” she told delegates.

“I said that makes no sense and they should be together. You know, when is a nurse a nurse? The Nursing and Midwifery Council accreditation is the most logical point so I couldn’t understand.

“It is kind of like an artificial end-point and it needs to be more logically part of the apprenticeship.”

The issue that Keegan describes is already being acted upon by the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education. In October 2020, the quango announced plans to “simplify and strengthen” apprenticeships that have a “statutory regulator” and an “established professional competency test”.

It would mean that in situations where an apprentice has met a statutory regulator’s requirements to practice, this will be counted as that apprentice’s end-point assessment in the future.

Currently, just 28 standards out of a possible 500 that are approved for delivery could be impacted, most of which are in the healthcare sector.

Watch the Minister’s address to the AAC