The new secretary of state for education introduces National Aprenticeship Week with his vision for how the sector will change on his watch. His focus will be on challenging misconceptions about apprenticeships, tightening oversight of providers, and encouraging headteachers to promote the apprenticeship concept to their students

I’ve enjoyed so many great “firsts” since becoming education secretary—my first visit in  the role, my first results day — but one of the things I’ve been most looking forward to is my first ever National Apprenticeship Week. And what a week it’s been!

The 13th annual National Apprenticeship Week got off to a flying start on Monday, and was as jam-packed as ever, with – by my last count – an amazing 800 or so events and activities taking place across the country to celebrate apprenticeships and all the great opportunities that schools, colleges, training providers and employers have to offer.

I’m determined to make sure the system works for the people that can benefit the most

I kicked off the festivities in Stratford, where I met apprentices working for MACE construction on the UCL East development.

The 35,000 square metre project shows exactly how exciting and cutting-edge a modern apprenticeship can be: after donning all the traditional construction site gear, including the obligatory hard hat, I was led by apprentices round a virtual reality “cave”, a cube made up of projectors that allowed us to virtually walk around the project as it was being built around us.

My visit to MACE construction was just a taste of the opportunities on offer this week.

Other events taking place included “have a go” workshops in Nantwich, an open evening in Sunderland, and an awards ceremony in Somerset to celebrate all the wonderful work apprentices do in all sorts of sectors.

The theme of National Apprenticeship Week 2020 involves looking beyond misconceptions of apprenticeships, including outdated ideas about their range and variety. One great way of celebrating that theme is by checking out grime artist P Money’s latest track The Calling, released a few weeks before National Apprenticeship Week. The video, which you can watch online, was put together with the help of seven apprentices working across sound and video production, lighting, hair and make-up and even drone engineering.

However, as I know you’re all aware, lingering stereotypes about apprenticeships persist – which is why I also marked National Apprenticeship Week by commissioning
Mumsnet to survey parents about their attitudes towards apprenticeships. The results were illuminating: some 45 per cent of those parents were unaware that apprenticeships
go right up to degree level, for example, while one-third said they still associated them with only manual jobs.

I know that everyone in the sector has been working hard to tackle these types of assumptions and show just how varied modern apprenticeships are, and we’ll be doing everything we can to change people’s perceptions over the coming years so that they recognise the work which goes into delivering apprenticeships and the opportunities they
provide.

I’m aware that many of you have raised questions or concerns about funding for apprenticeships as well as the future direction of the apprenticeships programme. I want to reassure you that I am looking at all of this very carefully. I’m determined to make sure the system works for the people that can benefit the most from the life-changing impact apprenticeships can have, and that it works better for employers and providers too.

We are making improvements, including moving smaller employers on to our award winning digital apprenticeship service so they can choose the training provider that
works for them, and we are making funding available to support for up to 15,000 additional apprenticeships.

It’s also vital that we continue to have high quality providers to deliver apprenticeship training, both so that people gain the skills they need to get ahead and to give us the workforce our economy needs to grow. I know the vast majority of you are doing a fantastic job – I’ve seen this first hand – but there are still some areas of concern.

We’ve put in place new tougher rules for providers and employers applying to get on the Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers, and they now have to meet strict
criteria to become registered training providers. Strengthened oversight and tighter monitoring also means we can take swift and decisive action against poor performance by providers or attempts by them to break, or manipulate the rules.

Finally, we also want to make sure every young person is aware of just how rewarding  doing an apprenticeship can be, which is why the Department for Education’s own Lord
Agnew has just sent out a letter to headteachers across the country reminding them of their duty to make sure they are letting apprenticeship providers into their schools to talk to their pupils about the range of opportunities available, no matter what their skills, interests and aspirations.

All in all, the past seven days have been a testament to all the hard work being done to boost apprenticeships up and down the country.

As we mark the closing of the 13th National Apprenticeship Week, here’s to another brilliant year!

National Apprenticeships Week is now in its thirteenth year; launched in 2007 by the then Labour government as an “annual week-long celebration of apprenticeships across England”.

For our readers, those delivering the training and assessment, the programme has changed considerably since 2007, a time when they were only available to young people at level 2 and 3.

The coalition government lifted limits on the number of apprenticeship starts for those aged over 25 and they now make up the majority of all apprenticeship starts.

Conversely, as we’ve documented in FE Week over recent years, the number of young people starting apprenticeships has been declining at an alarming rate. 

The government also allowed graduates, and even those with an unlimited number of post-graduate qualifications, to be funded as apprentices for the first time in 2017 – at the same time as expanding the level of apprenticeship courses to degree and beyond.

Literally any employee in need of new skills at any level, soon all the way up to PhD, could be eligible for funding for an apprenticeship under the “employer ownership” model.

But the bonanza has come at a much higher cost than mandarins had predicted and last week the government’s own apprenticeship quango called for an extra £750 million per year.

Critics, including myself and Ofsted, will have you believe small employers, young people and opportunities at level 2 are all losing out to large employers rushing to cash-in their levy pot on rebadging both management courses for existing employees and their existing graduate schemes.

The message seems to be reaching the incoming government, with prime minister Boris Johnson telling parliament that he plans to “reform the apprenticeship levy” and the “secretary of state for education will updating the house in due course on those proposals”.

And writing in this supplement, the education secretary Gavin Williamson looks to “reassure” critics that he is “determined to make sure the system works for the people that can benefit the most” as well as work “better for employers and providers too”.

With the three million starts manifesto commitment in the last parliament already a distant memory, major reform can be expected before, or as part of, the budget on 11 March.

I have argued before that employer ownership and social mobility are incompatible.

Hopefully the reforms can prove me wrong in time for National Apprenticeship Week 2021.

Read FE Week’s National Apprenticeship Week 2020 supplement here.

If the new government is serious about its proposals, it must address the many problems with the levy, plus the accessibility of courses for those outside towns and cities, writes Emma Hardy

Apprenticeships should be the perfect vehicle for meeting the challenges of social mobility, bridging the skills gap and raising productivity.

However, the government’s rushed implementation of the apprenticeship levy has resulted in unforeseen consequences and perverse incentives, while previous obstacles remain unresolved.

The pathways for post-16 FE, apprenticeships and skills training are confusing and dislocated. There has been no real move to untangle the jumble. To compound the problem there is no guarantee that every child in secondary education will receive full, impartial information and guidance on all their choices post-16.

The Baker Clause was an important step forward, but there are still grave concerns around FE access to secondary schools and the careers advice children are receiving. It is certainly worth considering a national careers service with a guaranteed offer for each child.

Alternatively, the quality of careers advice could be made an important part of Ofsted’s judgment of a school, alongside proper support and funding for schools to provide it.

Should a child decide on following the existing apprentice route the barriers to progression and universal access remain significant. Parents lose child benefit for under 19-year-olds taking on apprenticeships.

Combined with the low level of apprentice pay this puts a severe cap on travel costs and associated expenses and therefore limits the choice of placements available. For those living outside of urban centres, with greater distances to travel, the situation is more acute. If you are one of the 4 million children living in poverty your opportunities further diminish.

This situation needs addressing through a combination of transport schemes or travel passes, making child benefit available to parents with u-19 apprentices, and an increase in the apprentice wage.

For the majority of apprentices their journey traditionally began at level 2 or 3. However, the number of these apprenticeships has fallen precipitously since the introduction of the apprenticeship levy. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which provide the lion’s share of new jobs, are now receiving half the funding they were before the introduction of the levy. Current estimates are that 40,000 to 50,000 apprenticeship vacancies are going unfilled because of the lack of funding.

The biggest falls are in the north-west and north-east: areas in desperate need of job opportunities and economic growth.

The government needs to take urgent action to solve this crisis of its own making by providing a funded pot for SMEs. Further, its level needs to be guaranteed in order to give certainty to SMEs and to training providers alike, so that both parties can provide the apprenticeships that are needed and at the same time allow effective planning for the future.

In its original estimates, the DfE counted on the large businesses who pay the levy spending around half on their own apprenticeships. However, and some might say predictably, they responded to the levy by increasing spending on training in their own businesses well beyond that. Some of this was accounted for by an increased number of higher-level apprenticeships up to degree level. Currently around 50% of university graduates leave to take non-graduate jobs and there is no doubt that degree apprenticeships have a role to play in alleviating this skills mismatch, as well as providing a recognisable route to high level qualifications through apprenticeships.

However, there is strong evidence that some companies have “apprenticised” their trainee workforce by simply rebadging or moving over their existing programs. This is clearly not what was intended and has opened a debate on what is and is not an apprenticeship.

This important discussion leads to fundamental questions on the way post-16 FE, apprenticeships and skills training should be organised, integrated and funded. We need good answers if we are truly to address the challenges of social mobility, bridging the skills gap and raising productivity. There are no good answers to be found “on the cheap” and gaming the system just creates winners and losers where we need everyone to be a winner.

This sector needs a serious commitment to long-term investment and planning from all parties for the benefit of all.