11% of 15-18s encouraged to take up an apprenticeship

One in ten 15 to 18-year-olds are being encouraged to take up an apprenticeship by their schoolteachers, a new YouGov survey has revealed.

The research was commissioned by training provider JTL ahead of National Apprenticeship Week, which starts on Monday, February 3.

It found that 73 per cent of students reported that the most likely recommendation from their school or sixth form would be to follow a university route.

There was an increase of three percentage points in the proportion of those surveyed being encouraged towards apprenticeships since JTL’s last survey – from eight per cent in 2017 to 11 per cent in 2019.

Association of Employment and Learning Providers chief executive Mark Dawe said that considering that the Baker Clause – a legal requirement for schools to promote apprenticeships and other skills programmes – has been in force since 2018, this report “makes depressing reading”.

He questioned how the “disastrously low figure” of 11 per cent was possible, considering that the Careers Enterprise Company “is claiming 74 per cent of all schools are engaging with them”.

Dawe called on Ofsted to “crack down really hard in its inspections on schools’ non-compliance with the Baker Clause”.

The policy stipulates schools must ensure a range of FE providers have access to pupils from year 8 to year 13 to provide information on technical education and apprenticeships.

All schools are required to publish a policy statement to show how they ensure education and training providers can talk to students.

However, a 2019 report by the Institute for Public Policy Research found two-thirds of schools were flouting the controversial rule a year after it came into force. The DfE later confirmed “no action was taken” against schools that failed to comply.

The results of the YouGov survey also indicated that just ten per cent of 15 to 18-year olds are “very content” with the amount of technical job support or practical skills, such as engineering or plumbing, they receive in lessons.

In addition, a gender gap was revealed in relation to students being directed to certain professions – only five per cent of females surveyed felt they had been encouraged to become a skilled tradesperson compared with 14 per cent of males.

Jon Graham, chief executive of JTL, said: “These results are disappointing. They show there is still much more work to be done in ensuring school leavers are fully aware of the benefits of undertaking an apprenticeship – and in helping their parents or guardians feel confident and empowered in choosing this route”.

He claimed that the UK is experiencing a skills shortage, particularly within the building services engineering sector, so apprenticeships “offer a fantastic opportunity for school leavers to embark on a career in a highly skilled and well-paid job”.

“We really want to challenge people’s understanding of what an apprenticeship involves and importantly what it can lead to, so that all school leavers are fully informed,” Graham added.

“We also want to encourage more female and BAME learners, who are massively underrepresented within the trades, to consider an apprenticeship as an option.”

YouGov surveyed 1,060 children aged 15 to 18 in December 2019 to collect the data.

For this year’s National Apprenticeship Week, the Department for Education has asked employers to “open their doors in a nationwide series of ‘Look Beyond’ events to bring apprentices, parents and teachers together and fire up conversation around apprenticeships”.

Activities include Twitter Q & As with employers and apprentices, as well as a ‘Big Assembly’ online interactive webinar for teachers.

More than 350 other events are planned across the country to “celebrate the diversity and value that apprenticeships bring to employers, apprentices and communities”.

FE Week will produce our annual supplement celebrating the week on February 7.

Sponsored: What are learners telling us about how they want to engage with learning – access, flexibility, unlocking talent and realising aspirations

Last week at BETT I had the pleasure of sharing the results of Pearson’s Global Learner Survey 2019 – sharing feedback from 11,000 learners in the UK and Internationally. This article highlights some of the main findings from the research and explores the important role of educational technology as an enabler for unlocking talent at an individual level, in businesses and more broadly in supporting the industrial and economic strategies of many governments. 

The Pearson Global Learner Survey engaged with 11,000 learners across 19 countries. The results provide three key insights into the way learners are changing; changes we believe will underpin the future of learning.

  1. Firstly, a DIY mindset is reshaping education. With  ready access to technology there is an increased move to person ownership of learning as individual progress in their lives and careers. According to our survey 81% of people globally believe learning will become more DIY the older you get.
  2. Secondly, the 40-year career is gone, replaced by lifelong learning and diverse career paths – we are already seeing this trend in many of our own careers and in many sectors. The results of the survey suggests that there will be an increased emphasis on the talent economy and recognition that the traditional, linear career path will no longer be the norm. Our findings indicate that globally, over 80% of people think they will need to keep learning or re-training throughout their career.
  3. And finally, people expect digital and virtual learning to be the new norm in the next decade – supporting greater engagement, flexibility and access. The Global Learner Survey suggests that circa 80% of people in every country surveyed see the opportunity for Artificial Intelligence and other innovations to make learning more engaging.

It is clear that the findings of the Survey are driven by four key global trends most of which are well understood. The first of these is the significant demographic shifts across the globe – moving to an increased number of people over the age of 60 in many economies. This trend is accompanied by rapid technological advancement and with this the impact of new roles, changing roles and the increased coexistence of humans alongside technology in work and life.  A third global trend which is less often spoken about is a major shift in how businesses operate – working as part of a wider ecosystem where businesses, enterprise and individuals connect.  The final area shaping what learners are looking for in learning throughout their lives are the preferences and values of many Gen Z – be it an increased emphasis on the importance of wellness, work-life balance, flexibility, the environment, social responsibility and values; the implications of this is significant for employers in terms of how they engage with, attract and retain talent in their businesses.  

So what does all of this mean for us as a collective and for our role in the provision of education  and learning – a powerful enabler for change both social and economic. Where do we need to  focus our efforts as we move forward to continue supporting access and helping people make progress in their lives including careers?

I would like to suggest four main areas – the first is the need to place more value on vocational and career focussed education and its contribution to driving sustainable economic and social growth, productivity and GDP but also in preparing young people and adults to respond to the changing world of work. We know we still have a real challenge in getting politicians and society to value academic, work-based, and career focussed education equally, however it is encouraging to see many governments around the world embedding technical and vocational education into the heart of their industrial strategies. The second area of focus is the need to create a culture and love of lifelong learning, helping us and future generations adapt to change –  something acknowledged by the respondents in the Global Learner Survey. A third important area is the emphasis on soft skills such as flexibility, adaptability, critical thinking, creativity – preparing for a future where multiple careers, portfolio careers, global ecosystem, and greater co-existence of humans and computers will be the norm. And the final area is one that we are all already focused on – the  need to increasingly use technology to expand the effectiveness of learning; new discoveries in technology are creating real opportunities to enhance access and provide exciting learning experiences, creating a huge opportunity to break down financial and geographical barriers. At Pearson, we are developing and embedding technology in what we do. Our Pearson Learning Hub, for example, is an exciting new development – a digital learning platform designed to deliver an interactive and personalised learning experience for all. We have also created digital teaching resources for our qualifications in sport, partnering with Max Whitlock MBE, gymnast and five-time Olympic medallist.

The means to unlock talent is an educational challenge not just in the UK but for governments all over the world. Continual transformation of education will be crucial as we prepare for the future.  If you would like to share your thoughts after reading this article I’d be delighted to hear from you.

Baroness Wolf tipped for role as skills adviser to Prime Minister

FE expert Baroness Alison Wolf is set to become the skills and workforce policy adviser to the Prime Minister, according to news website Politico Europe.

The King’s College London professor of public sector management will join the Downing Street policy unit with initial focus “on skills and apprenticeship policy across all government departments”.

Wolf is currently on sabbatical from the university and a source close to her told FE Week that she will be advising the Prime Minister three days a week.

She was commissioned by the government to author a report into 14 to 19 vocational education in 2011, which informed future skills policy, and was nominated for a life peerage by then Prime Minister David Cameron in 2014.

Wolf made the case for an employer levy to fund apprenticeship training in a report published days before the government first unveiled the charge.

David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, told FE Week: “I’m really pleased that Alison has been brought in to advise the government on its skills and post-16 policy.

“Alison knows a lot about the sector and has taken a lot of interest in trying to make it work more effectively and we look forward to working with her.”

In June 2019, Wolf said further education funding had “been devastated,” when writing for Conservative Home – after being a member of the Post-18 Review of Education and Funding Independent Panel (the Augar Review) .

She added: “Courses teaching technician and advanced craft skills are vanishing from English education at speed, even though the economy is crying out for these skills.

“…Augar does its sums and recommends more money for the neediest – cash to get FE back on its feet, to invigorate technical education, to allow adults to retrain and progress, and to reinstate maintenance grants for the poorest students.”

After graduating from Oxford with a degree in politics, philosophy and economics in the early 1970s, Professor Wolf moved to America and worked for the National Institute of Education and the US Government, advising on educational matters, before returning to the UK in the mid-1980s.

In the early 1990s, Professor Wolf secured Nuffield Foundation funding for research into the evaluation of GNVQs, which took her back to a policy role and into the media spotlight.

She worked for the Institute of Education before joining King’s College and being invited to advise the government, which adopted her principle of study programmes for learners aged 16 to 19 among other policies.

 

 

Awarding organisations invited to bid for 8 new T-levels

Awarding bodies are being invited to develop qualifications for wave three of the T-levels programme, which is due to be delivered from September 2022.

The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education today opened up a £35 million tender for eight qualifications, based on three routes: legal, finance and accounting; engineering and manufacturing; and business and administration (full list below).

Chris Morgan, IfATE’s deputy director for commercial, called it a “really exciting opportunity for awarding organisations to bid to take on T-levels for several key sectors”.

IfATE welcomes “widespread interest” and are looking forward to receiving their submissions, he added.

T-levels are two-year courses which will be equivalent to three A-levels and will include a combination of classroom learning and a mandatory, 315-hour industry placement.

The bidding process will involve two stages: the first will close on Wednesday 12 February and applicants which pass this hurdle will progress to stage two, where they must complete their bid submission by 28 April.

The winning organisations will develop and then implement qualifications based upon outline content created by T-level Panels – employer-led groups which come up with the key knowledge and behaviours a T-level student ought to learn.

The Department for Education opened up applications for providers to deliver these T-levels earlier this month.

The awarding organisations developing wave one of T-levels for delivery from this year onwards were announced last February: NCFE was awarded a contract to deliver the education and childcare pathway, while Pearson was commissioned to deliver T-levels in design, surveying and planning as well digital production, design and development.

NCFE is also developing qualifications for digital business services, digital support and services, health, healthcare science and science for the second wave next year.

City & Guilds is working on the onsite construction and building services engineering qualifications to be delivered from the same time.

The procurement documents to develop wave three of T-levels can be found at procontract.due-north.com/Login

The bidding lots are as follows:

  • Lot 1: Legal: £3,080,000
  • Lot 2: Finance: £2,640,000
  • Lot 3: Accountancy: £3,190,000
  • Lot 4: Manufacturing, Processing and Control: £4,600,000
  • Lot 5: Maintenance, Installation and Repair: £5,700,000
  • Lot 6: Design & Development: £4,470,000
  • Lot 7: Management and Administration: £7,860,000
  • Lot 8: Human Resources: £2,940,000

Immigration, skills and the economy after Brexit – both government and employers are missing the point

The government and business lobby groups need to get their act together when it comes to both immigration and skills, says the Confederation of British Industry’s former head of education and skills, John Cope

Given the importance of improving the way in which the UK does business, it’s unedifying to see government and business trapped in what seems a perennial scuffle over immigration. 

As Brexit Day approaches, the government is fleshing out plans for how migration will work once it comes under the UK’s control – and especially once the transition period ends at the end of 2020. Briefings in various newspapers suggest that the new system may not have a salary threshold as originally proposed, and we know from the announcement this week that the visa regime for the most highly skilled mathematicians and scientists will be loosened. Against that, the government is making clear to bodies like the CBI that it will not accede to their demands for a more open post-Brexit immigration system, with a frustrated No10 firing back that business ought to spend more time investing in its own workers that bleating to government about easier hiring from abroad.   

To fix the Levy, there needs to be a top up from government

Both are right. Both are wrong. And both are missing the real issue.  

Both sides are right that this issue needs looking at. When it comes to investing in talent and people, the UK needs to wise up and realise the pace of change that’s happening around us. Careers are getting longer with the majority likely to work into their 70, and many kids born today likely to live to 100. The march of artificial intelligence, driverless cars, automation – the most visible sign of which is the death of the checkout in shops – and algorithms that can understand what drives our buying habits, relationships, and motivations better than we can ourselves. Our lethargy on this shows – the productivity of UK workers is lower than that of Germany by a quarter, and lower than the G7 by a sixth.

No10 are right to be frustrated. The level of investment by business in training is not good enough. Despite the world of work changing, investing in training and development is stagnant (despite the huge rise in the number of people in work since 2010) – with training investment barely moving from £43.8 billion in 2011 to £44.2 billion in 2017. Add in research from the Learning and Work Institute showing the number of adults in education is at a two-decade low, and you can see why No10 are touchy. 

Business is right though that Brexit is absolutely not about pulling up the drawbridge to immigrants or just letting in ‘the brightest and the best’, whatever that means in reality. The immense strength of the UK, and every free society around the world, is openness to people, trade, and free market capitalism. Importantly, most British people get this. Focus group after focus group finds what most people want on immigration is not arbitrary quotas or a shameful hostile environment, they want to know criminals are stopped at the border, the system is under control, and immigrants are contributing rather than being a burden on public services. Otherwise, the door is open for people work in the UK. 

But they’re both wrong, because this isn’t mutually exclusive. We desperately need employers to spend more on training as well as continuing to be a free and open country. And it also misses the point – which is how we do get this? 

Having spent several years at the CBI leading their work on education and skills, a major barrier to getting employers to invest more in training is the apprenticeship levy.

When the levy was introduced, its purpose was clear: getting more money into apprenticeships, making sure apprenticeships are core part of our education system, and holding big employers’ feet to the fire on how much they should be investing in training.  

Several years on, the impact has been mixed.  Apprenticeship starts are subdued, with young people and lower level apprenticeships affected most. The levy has also become overspent, with funds now having to be rationed, especially to smaller firms. Anecdotally I’ve spoken to CEOs who admit that to pay the apprenticeship levy, they’ve reduced, or replaced entirely, other training. One of the consequences of this has been an explosion in ‘MBA apprenticeships’ where employers, with plenty of justification, are trying to use levy funds to pay for training they used to do.  

To fix the levy, there needs to be a top up from government to the £3 billion employers contribute to fix an impending overspend; greater flexibilities for employers on what they use the levy for to support in work training that isn’t an apprenticeships; and much more support for smaller employers who struggle the most to offer training and take on apprentices. Just as importantly, we need to look at how to adapt apprenticeships to also act as ‘retrainerships’, for people wanting to change jobs later in their career.  

So, let’s end the dither and delay. It’s time to fix the apprenticeship levy so younger people get a great start to their career, older people can do a retrainership to brush up on new skills, and employers invest more than ever so the workforce can make the most of new technologies.

Apprenticeship starts nosedive 18 percent in November

The number of apprenticeship starts in England crashed by nearly 20 percent in November, according to government figures published this morning.

Starts fell just four percent between August and October, but provisional figures for November when compared to the same publication last January reveal a fall of 5,200 (18 percent) in a single month.

The analysis by FE Week (see below) shows starts for those under the age of 19 fell the most, by 22 percent.

Level two saw the largest percentage decrease in November, with a 26 percent fall, part of a 21 percent overall reduction since August 2019.

 

Association of Employment and Learning Providers chief executive Mark Dawe said: “The fall in young people starting apprenticeships by nearly a quarter since the levy was introduced has been catastrophic for the communities that the government is promising to level up.

“The lack of apprenticeship funding for smaller businesses is largely behind this because it is they who traditionally recruit from the younger age groups.

“The chancellor needs to sort this out and review the mistaken removal of financial incentives for offering places on the programme for 16 to 18 year olds.”

Shadow skills minister Emma Hardy added: “By failing to tackle the declining number of L2/L3 apprenticeships, especially in SMEs, the government are denying the opportunities and progression for young people.

“This needs to be addressed urgently in the upcoming budget.”

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We are investing significantly to level up skills and opportunity across the country and apprenticeships are playing a key role in this.

“Our higher quality apprenticeships have been designed with employers of all sizes so apprentices can learn the skills they need to go on to have successful careers and businesses can build the workforce they need for the future.

“We recognise there is more work to do and we are continuing to look at how the apprenticeship programme can best support the changing needs of businesses so more people can get ahead and all employers can benefit.”

Profile: Professor Kevin Orr

Jess Staufenberg meets an education researcher with a unique and singular focus on teaching in further education

Professor Kevin Orr of the University of Huddersfield has spent his whole career teaching or researching into teaching in the further education sector. Listening to his soft Belfast lilt as he eloquently explains both roles, it strikes me that two things are unusual about Orr.

The first is that he is the only grammar-school educated person, who moved seamlessly through a selective school and on to an academic university degree, I’ve spoken to whose career has then been dedicated to further education. Usually FE leaders left school around 16, worked as apprentices, in factories or worked their way up from receptionists, and they have a deep affinity with the purpose of FE as a result. Not so with Orr.

Second, he is obsessed with teaching – not assessment, not Ofsted, not workload, not the unions – but with teaching and pedagogy. Only when you speak to someone whose sole interest is actual teaching do you realise this is too rarely the subject of conversation among FE leaders. Orr is one of the leading researchers in this area, with his most recent publication on “enhancing subject specialist pedagogy” out in March last year. Currently, he is looking into higher education courses delivered in further education settings.

So how did a grammar-school boy come to FE?

“My own educational career was a very traditionally academic one. Interestingly the school I went to, the Belfast Academical Institution, was right beside Belfast Tech, which is an enormous and very impressive building. It had the best technical facilities in the whole of Europe, even better than Germany. That this amazing building was on the lawn of the grammar school in a way symbolized the divide between technical and academic education. The irony is not lost on me that I’m a grammar school boy who is an advocate for further education.”

The irony is not lost on me that I’m a grammar school boy advocating for FE

The school was mainly for Protestant pupils, and Orr and his three sisters were encouraged by their mother to move away from Northern Ireland to escape sectarian tensions and better their prospects, something which “broke her heart”, explains Orr.

With strong A-level results, he studied French and history at the University of Manchester, a decision mainly swayed by the existence of the huge new nightclub there, The Hacienda. “Bear in mind I was coming from Belfast in the 80s, so excitement was hard to find! The opening of this new nightclub was a big deal.” Safely through grammar school and packed off to an English university, a career in FE wasn’t the obvious route. But one observation from Orr’s childhood stayed with him.

“My dad had done an apprenticeship in textiles and he’d worked at York Street Mill, which was the largest linen works in the world at the time. The industry collapsed and he lost his job, not because of a lack of skilled workers, but because of the development of nylon and artificial fibres. And that’s important for me when thinking about FE today. While it’s right we prepare young people for the world of work, history shows us the nature of work can change very quickly. We need to make sure we are not just educating people for a particular job, but educating them to be prepared for their lives.”

This view is reflected in Orr’s first permanent job in FE, teaching French at Stockport College in 1992. I am taken aback when he explains he was teaching French to builders, to broaden their education. “That wasn’t considered unusual at the time, it was just to give a different dimension to their learning. I also taught French to students doing early childcare. That was quickly cut after incorporation. But it wasn’t considered outlandish then, there was a real commitment to these students not just as people who were going to work, but as people who were going to live. I think sometimes we might be losing that.”

It is perhaps this background as a languages teacher, and later a teacher of English for speakers of other languages (ESOL), that means Orr takes a much broader view of the purpose of further education than some of its champions. Rather than regarding FE as providing people with necessary skills, he seems interested in the transformative joy of learning and teaching – including builders learning French they may never need.

Orr then landed an ESOL teacher job at Tameside College in Greater Manchester in 2002 and enrolled on a masters in Teaching at Manchester Metropolitan University. “That was completely transformative,” he says. “I had a chance to watch people teaching in nursery, higher education, further education – it really challenged me to consider how I applied my values in the classroom.”

He speaks with an enthusiasm about the process of teaching that I’ve rarely encountered before. Should all teachers to do a masters in teaching?

“I would be cautious about saying everyone has to have an MA, but if we are to develop excellent vocational and technical education in this country, we have to have qualified teachers.” A requirement for qualified status was introduced by New Labour and then removed in 2013 under the Conservatives.

“It’s a shame teachers in FE don’t have to be qualified,” warns Orr. “We’ve had so many reforms in one form or another, but unless the people implementing them have excellent knowledge and skills about teaching, they won’t work. Too often, reform has overlooked teachers in education.”

Later, he puts this even more brilliantly. “I think very often policy change has been in the form of assessment, but not the process of teaching.”

Policy change has been in the form of assessment, but not the process of teaching

Orr is one of a handful of researchers in FE who has spent a lifetime trying to drag the importance of teaching back to the fore of any improvement efforts. Following his MA, and whilst working as a teacher trainer at the now-closed Manchester College of Arts and Technology, he won funding for a PhD at the University of Huddersfield to look into the experiences of trainee teachers in FE. The leading researchers he met took him “into a world where research into FE was taken very seriously.”

It is perhaps this background as a languages teacher, and later a teacher of English for speakers of other languages (ESOL), that means Orr takes a much broader view of the purpose of further education than some of its champions. Rather than regarding FE as providing people with necessary skills, he seems interested in the transformative joy of learning and teaching – including builders learning French they may never need.

Orr then landed an ESOL teacher job at Tameside College in Greater Manchester in 2002 and enrolled on a masters in Teaching at Manchester Metropolitan University. “That was completely transformative,” he says. “I had a chance to watch people teaching in nursery, higher education, further education – it really challenged me to consider how I applied my values in the classroom.”

He speaks with an enthusiasm about the process of teaching that I’ve rarely encountered before. Should all teachers to do a masters in Teaching?

“I would be cautious about saying everyone has to have an MA, but if we are to develop excellent vocational and technical education in this country, we have to have qualified teachers.” A requirement for qualified status was introduced by New Labour and then removed in 2013 under the Conservatives.

“It’s a shame teachers in FE don’t have to be qualified,” warns Orr. “We’ve had so many reforms in one form or another, but unless the people implementing them have excellent knowledge and skills about teaching, they won’t work. Too often, reform has overlooked teachers in education.”

Later, he puts this even more brilliantly. “I think very often policy change has been in the form of assessment, but not the process of teaching.”

Orr is one of a handful of researchers in FE who has spent a lifetime trying to drag the importance of teaching back to the fore of any improvement efforts. Following his MA, and whilst working as a teacher trainer at the now-closed Manchester College of Arts and Technology, he won funding for a PhD at the University of Huddersfield to look into the experiences of trainee teachers in FE. The leading researchers he met took him “into a world where research into FE was taken very seriously.”

Some have a very restricted perception of what the role of a teacher is

Orr’s most recent published research was funded by the Gatsby Foundation, which tasked him and his team to understand the role of subject-specialist pedagogy in teacher education – in particular, whether improving the subject knowledge of trainee teachers was the best way to improve technical education in colleges.

Orr’s team created an intervention of face-to-face sessions, videos and online resources, with the aim of prompting the trainee teachers to think about the way they were using their subject knowledge to lead the lesson. “Our intervention was there to help trainees think about sequencing topics, knowing what questions to ask and so on. Teaching is complex and multi-faceted, and this was a way to get them to think about it.”

The findings from the research are telling. In the conclusion, Orr’s paper states: “Despite the generally enthusiastic response to the intervention from both trainees and teacher educators, the lasting impact on individuals’ practice was limited […] This was mainly due to conflicting pressures that restricted their capacity to innovate, mainly associated with workload and the general instability of many FE colleges at a time of cuts and mergers. For some participants it reflected a very restricted perception of what the role of a teacher is, which does not include innovation.”

During our interview, Orr says the word “teaching” 20 times. It is way above the average when I speak to FE bosses. Since Orr is not actually a teacher anymore but an academic, it seems something is not right when he is more enthused about the technical skill of teaching than others in the sector, who are swamped by policy change and funding cuts. But Orr is undeterred, with two more research projects lined up: one on why some students choose to study degrees in college rather than university settings, and another on the experiences of black and minority ethnic students in FE.

He reflects back on his first encounter with teaching, at a youth outreach centre after he’d graduated, just a few years out of grammar school. “I was hooked. It was so exciting. That was when I thought, ‘I want to become a teacher.’”

At a time when retention of teachers is such a challenge, Orr’s total prioritisation of their professional growth and experience is a lesson the government would do well to follow.

SPONSORED: Supporting Line Managers To Transform Apprenticeship Delivery

Line managers are crucial to successful learning and development. It doesn’t matter how much money an organisation spends on giving employees opportunities to increase their knowledge and improve their skills, if line managers don’t then give employees the opportunity to use those new capabilities in their day-to-day work, it’s money and time wasted.

Learning doesn’t stop when people leave the classroom. In fact, the real learning begins once they get back to their desks and start to explore how their new knowledge and skills enable them to do a better job. And their line manager is the key to this learning transfer – they’re the ones who can encourage them to either take risks and make mistakes, and learn from them, or just fall back into old, comfortable routines as though the learning opportunity never even happened.

LINE MANAGERS’ CRUCIAL ROLE IN APPRENTICESHIPS

Nowhere is this role clearer than with apprenticeships. An apprentice’s line manager ensures that they’re learning what they need to learn, that they’re free to do off-the-job learning, and that their learning stays on track throughout the programme. In short, the line manager is instrumental, along with HR and the apprentice themselves, in setting the right tone and making sure the apprenticeship runs smoothly.

To do this successfully – and to encourage apprentices to squeeze every drop of value from their programme – line managers must commit to the principle of learning at work and want to support employees as they learn new skills and develop their careers. There’s no point in organisations talking about the importance of learning if they don’t have line managers who believe in it too.

They have to be ambassadors for apprenticeship programmes and believe in them wholeheartedly, ensuring learners are engaged, motivated and supported in completing their programmes. 

They may need some support themselves to be strong, effective advocates for apprenticeships. Some may want extra coaching, and they will all need to have strong performance management, leadership and time management skills, to be able to support their apprentices effectively. Some may even want to undertake a management or leadership apprenticeship programme themselves, so it’s good practice to offer line managers all the training they need before an apprenticeship programme starts so that they can help to turn a good apprenticeship experience into a great one.

APPRENTICESHIPS’ CRUCIAL ROLE IN THE FUTURE OF WORK

Apprenticeships are all about learning on the job, learning from and with others, and discovering different approaches to achieving goals. This is one of the reasons why they’re growing in popularity and why more than half (54%) of the L&D leaders we’ve talked to expect to see their numbers increase further.

In fact, according to the L&D leaders who took part in our research, apprenticeships are one of the top four activities that are most likely to have a significant impact on learning culture and learnability over the next five years.

This is important because learning culture and learnability are going to be at the very heart of success in a workplace where people work alongside AI and automation in a tech-enabled environment. In this hybrid future, people will be free to focus on high value, creative work while artificial intelligence, robotic process automation and machine learning take care of the low-value, repetitive tasks. The way we learn will change as quickly and as deeply as the way we work: people will have to be prepared to regularly learn, unlearn and relearn skills to stay employable, and organisations will have to be able to support them in doing that.

LEARNABILITY AND A LEARNING CULTURE IN THE FUTURE OF WORK

Our Human to Hybrid research examines how workplaces are changing amid growing digitisation and the impact of this on employees and how – and what – they learn.

We interviewed 350 L&D leaders, 500 business leaders and over 2,000 employees about how they perceive the future of work. One of the key messages to emerge from this research is the increasing importance of learnability. Employees must be able and willing to learn, learn and learn some more, so that they have the right skills, knowledge and behaviours to be successful in the future workplace.

But they can’t do it on their own. For learnability to thrive and take root in organisations, business leaders and L&D have to foster a learning culture that supports it. Organisations must adapt to and embrace change to recruit, retain and train key talent and maintain their competitive advantage.

Download Knowledgepool’s insight on the roles of line managers in achieving apprenticeship success.

ESFA demands final off-the-job hour data to ‘support the work of audit’

A new field is set to be introduced to individual learner records (ILR) to support government audits of apprenticeship training.

The Education and Skills Funding Agency confirmed today that all FE providers will need to log “actual” off-the-job hours from August 2020.

It will apply to apprentices who started new programmes from 1 August 2019.

Plans for the new field were consulted on towards the end of last year and many in the sector were concerned that the agency would demand monthly updates.

But today’s announcement confirmed that providers will only need to enter the data once, at the end of each apprenticeship programme.

The move follows high-profile concern from the National Audit Office and Public Accounts Committee about non-compliance with the unpopular rule, which requires apprentices to spend a fifth of their week on activities related to their course that are different to their normal working duties, going unchallenged.

In the NAO’s apprenticeships progress report published last March it said that the ESFA, in summer 2018, had just one “red risk” associated with delivery of the programme – that apprentices do not spend at least 20 per cent of their time doing off-the-job training.

The government’s spending watchdog warned that the agency has “limited assurance” in knowing whether the policy is being abided by, as even though audits may identify problems, there is “scope for providers to under-deliver for some time without this being picked up”.

In response, last May, the ESFA said that from the 2019/20 academic year, a new mandatory field in the ILR would be added that requires providers to record “planned” off-the-job hours.

This replaced the “optional” field for recording how many OTJ training hours had been completed on a monthly basis, which was introduced to the ILR in 2018/19.

Today’s announcement said: “We are committed to ensuring that apprentices receive the minimum of 20 per cent off-the-job training that legislation requires.

“To ensure learning plans reflect this, from 1 August 2019, we started collecting planned hours data. To provide further assurance on delivery we are now introducing a field capturing the actual hours delivered.

“From 1 August 2020 providers must input the total hours of off-the-job training that have been delivered to apprentices who started new apprenticeships from 1 August 2019 into the ILR.

“The actual hours field should be populated with the amount of off-the-job training delivered over the apprenticeship (up until the apprentice reaches gateway) and must be entered once, at the end of the programme.

“The actual hours ILR field will be used by ESFA in conjunction with the planned hours field to monitor delivery of the off-the-job training. It is our intention that the new field will support the work of audit, as providers must be able to supply evidence to support the figure entered during the audit process.”

The ESFA added that it will release more detailed information on this change in the next version of the ILR specification, and the 2020 to 2021 apprenticeship funding rules.