With the General Election nearly upon us, Natspec’s Clare Howard has been assessing the three main parties’ promises as they battle to gain or remain in power

The Education Select Committee’s October report scrutinising the 2014 reforms to Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) referred to “a treacle of bureaucracy… conflict… and despair”. So will the next government finally address the failures in SEND provision?

Published last week, Natspec’s manifesto, furthers our lobbying in the interests of FE students aged 16-25 with SEND. It focuses on three key areas for improvement: high quality education and training, a system that works for young people, and brighter futures.

But how do the parties’ manifesto promises and commitments compare with our recommendations?

First, Natspec’s recommendations for high-quality education and training include investment in the workforce to extend specialism and expertise, and better strategic planning across local authority (LA) borders for specialist services.

All three parties have recognised the importance of colleges within a quality education system. The Liberal Democrats promise to “end the neglect” and invest an extra £1bn; Labour “will ensure fairness and sustainability in FE” and the Conservatives will invest almost £2billion to upgrade the entire further education estate.  

But none consider the contribution of specialist or general FE colleges in improving outcomes for young people with SEND. There is nothing specifically in any of the party manifestos about FE training.

Labour and the Liberal Democrats do promise to increase the base rate for 16-to-19-year-olds, an important first step to plug a big funding gap and support students with SEND who are not high-needs funded. 

But none address the need for LA co-operation and cross-border strategic planning for SEND. The Liberal Democrats want LAs “to act as Strategic Education Authorities for their area” but they already have this role for SEND.

No single party is getting everything right

Second, Natspec’s recommendations for a system that works for young people call for increased funding for SEND in FE, a simplified funding system, better accountability and reduced bureaucracy. Importantly, we also call for a renewed focus on hearing the voices of young people. 

All three parties mention SEND funding. The Labour party promises “the necessary funding” for SEND and regulation of education provision to improve the life chances for “the most vulnerable”. The Liberal Democrats will “end the crisis in SEND funding by allocating additional cash to local authorities”. The Conservative manifesto simply refers to the additional £780m for SEND already announced in September.

Third, Natspec’s recommendations for a brighter future include new national transition standards, training for careers advisers, and investment in housing, social care and employment options for young people with learning difficulties and disabilities.

The Labour manifesto addresses most of these recommendations, particularly around disability employment. There is a welcome amount of detail, including training for employers, specialist employment advisers, disability pay-gap reporting, and new specific duties for disability leave separated from sick leave, but no mention of learning disabilities where employment figures are shockingly low.

Long awaited by charities for the deaf, Labour and the Liberal Democrats promise to give British Sign Language full legal recognition.

The Conservatives promise a new national strategy for disabled people covering benefits, housing, transport and jobs. They will commit £74million over three years for additional capacity in community care settings.

Labour does promise community-based, person-centred support as part of a National Care Service for England, but it mainly covers older people.

Improved careers advice is picked up by the Liberal Democrat manifesto. They also promise to address fair access to health and care services and “the scandal of women with learning disabilities dying an average 20 years younger” than their non-disabled peers.

Whatever the result of the election, Natspec hopes that the ambitious plans for transformational change set out by the 2014 legislation finally become a reality for the young people it was designed to help. No single party is getting everything right, but they are beginning to listen, so it isn’t beyond them to deliver that promise.

It seems the three main political parties have fallen out of love with apprenticeships, writes Karen Redhead, and the unintended consequences of reform may not be helping

Four years and two general election campaigns ago, Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats competed to outdo each other on apprenticeships. While the debate has moved to a much wider recognition of the investment further education sorely needs, apprenticeships are no longer centre-stage and the silence is deafening

In 2015, David Cameron pledged to fund three million new apprenticeships to end youth unemployment. Liberal Democrats also pledged to expand apprenticeships, doubling the two million that had been created during the coalition. Labour focused on quality and pledged to create an extra 80,000 apprenticeships a year with a focus on school leavers with higher grades, as an alternative to university or unskilled jobs.

Given the clear intention that young people would be the main beneficiaries of apprenticeship growth, it is hard to fathom how the national reform could have taken such a different turn. Not only did we see contraction instead of growth, but we are also left with significant system issues and soaring costs that are about to exceed available funding. 

The reform also missed the opportunity to support social mobility and has been disastrous for young people and smaller employers. We have already seen stark societal and political effects. People in our communities feel they have been left behind. 

There have been some benefits. The government had been constrained for decades by a deregulated labour market, and the levy could provide an effective mechanism to encourage more employers to train. There has also been greater employer and industry input into the design of standards.

People in our communities feel they have been left behind

However, the market-led approach to reform has resulted in too much training that is too job-specific, with insufficient consideration of the country’s longer-term skills needs. While reform claimed to put employers in the driving seat, this has been far from successful as many employers are already writing off levy costs rather than engaging with a resource-intensive system that does not give them what they need. 

Whether or not apprenticeship reform makes a late entry to this campaign, the next government will have to deal with these problems. Here are four recommendations that would vastly improve the situation.

First, as trusted partners and long-standing experts in education and training, it is imperative to work with colleges to smooth out the unintended consequences and refocus on what will be urgently needed in a post-Brexit economy. A more inclusive reform process would lead to better solutions and a greater level of ownership and commitment from all participants.

Second, there must be enough funding in place to support the reform, and it should prioritise places for 16-to-19-year-olds and apprentices of all ages without a level 5 qualification. Arrangements for non-levy funding are unreliable and leading to a start-stop approach, unhelpful to colleges and employers alike, and rates in important sectors like health and social care need review to ensure these pathways are viable. 

Third, employers are put off by the burden of bureaucracy. Pre-reform, many colleges offered a successful turnkey solutions for employers. If colleges are to reclaim this through “trusted status”, this requires resources, particularly for SMEs, who tend to have smaller numbers of apprentices.  Penalising colleges for minor data mismatches between employer and college records is also unhelpful.

Lastly, definitions of quality need review, and a distinction needs to be made between quality and compliance, informed by everything we know about high-quality teaching and learning.  Apprenticeships have been running for hundreds of years in some sectors without compliance audits and artificial distinctions of on- and off-the-job elements. 

Teaching, learning and assessment are the core business of colleges, which brings us back to the need for a collaborative approach. After all, no policy can be delivered without us.

The skills sector is still stuck on seeing apprenticeships as a NEET policy rather than the industrial strategy policy it has become, writes Mandy Crawford-Lee, and that’s leading to bad policy.

For most people in the skills sector, the priorities for apprenticeship are seen as providing training for the 16 to 18 ‘guarantee’ group, supporting the third of young people who leave school without a full level 2 and providing an alternative for the 50% of young people who don’t go to university.  From a productivity perspective, the argument goes that SMEs are the life-blood of the economy and funding for apprenticeships in small businesses needs to be prioritised.

There is merit in these arguments. The problem is that there is a bigger picture to consider. In its recent report, the Learning and Work Institute (LWI) recommended that given the overspend of the levy pot, employers should be restricted in their levy spend on apprenticeships at levels 4 to 7. Such action would enable the apprenticeship levy to be spent on youth training and in SMEs that are far less likely than larger organisations to be able to afford training.

The problem with the LWI’s argument is that it ignores some inconvenient truths.  Apprenticeships are supposed to be the government’s flagship productivity programme, and the occupations where skills gaps and shortages are apparent are frequently at levels 4 to 7, the very levels the LWI wants to restrict spend on. 

We then have a public sector. Dominated by large employers, it accounts for a sizeable share of levy payments. Police forces, for example, are increasingly using their levy to fund police constable degree apprenticeships to widen recruitment.  Does the LWI really expect a politician to tell police chief constables they can’t use the force’s levy payments to train police constables, because their levy payments are needed to train young people as hair professionals, or nail technicians in small private businesses? The same argument applies for the NHS and nurses, and local authorities and social workers.

The LWI’s argument ignores some inconvenient truths

Arguments from the skills sector against management apprenticeships also ring hollow.  Allowing employers to spend their levy on management Apprenticeships is a poor use of public funding, the argument goes.  Again, the evidence rather gets in the way. 

Firstly, improving management and leadership abilities is a skills priority in the government’s industrial strategy.  Secondly, some of the biggest spenders on management apprenticeships are the same public sector bodies.  Does restricting NHS spending on management apprenticeships to fund SMEs to train their staff really represent a better use of public funding?

We need to remove the blinkers on apprenticeships. Like AELP and AOC, UVAC has argued that the levy should not be used to fund apprenticeships for 16- to 18-year-olds.  Such provision is for all intents and purposes compulsory education and must be funded from general taxation. 

Next, government must recognise that the concept of a levy paid by large employers that funds all apprenticeships is fundamentally flawed.  Levy payers will increasingly seek to spend and optimise their levy payments, so there will be an ever-decreasing fund for SMEs. The notion of under-spend from the largest levy payer by far, the NHS, being used to fund apprenticeships in unrelated sectors is as misplaced as a levy paid by a blue-chip manufacturing company funding retail or catering apprenticeships in SMEs.

Government needs to rethink its fiscal policy for apprenticeships for SMEs, and quickly.  Of course, should government make separately funded provision it would want an assurance it was appropriately used, delivering pound the best value and investment in skills.  The surest way of doing this is by increasing the employer co-investment rate. Would a government co-investment rate of 95% for apprenticeships aligned with industrial strategy priorities, and a rate of 75% for all other apprenticeships, not be more appropriate?  

Perhaps, the LWI, UVAC, AoC, AELP and other partners should work collectively to argue a unified case for skills? One way or another, we should move on from the “my Apprenticeships are better than yours” argument, to a position where we value and champion all apprenticeship standards.