What is the answer to the inevitable overspend of the apprenticeship levy pot? Adrian Anderson has some constructive suggestions

This week, ministers floated the idea of using an eligibility starting salary cap as a way of limiting demand for apprenticeships and thereby preventing an overspend of the apprenticeship levy pot.

The precise impact of such a salary cap on apprenticeship provision would be determined by the level of the salary cap introduced – would it be £25,000, £30,000 or £40,000?

I would suggest that to make a real dent in the predicted overspend of the apprenticeship budget, any cap introduced would have a massive and detrimental impact on the ability of employers to raise productivity and enhance the delivery of public sector services.

Superficially, the idea of stopping employers using the apprenticeship levy to fund a manager on £40,000-£50,000 per annum to undertake an MBA Senior Leaders’ Degree Apprenticeship may seem attractive, but let’s look at the facts.

What is the answer to the inevitable overspend of the apprenticeship levy pot?

Firstly, the government’s own industrial strategy makes it clear that poor management skills is a key factor that explains the UK’s productivity gap. Surely the government should welcome employers using apprenticeship to raise management skills in line with its own policy? Or is apprenticeship no longer a training programme focused on productivity, but instead a tax on employers (disproportionately paid by the public sector) to fund level 2 training provision for young people let down by the schools system?

We have then the issue of who pays the apprenticeship levy. The biggest levy-payers are predominantly in the public sector. Working with their sponsor departments, the NHS and police forces have developed strategies to use their levy payments to develop the skills of new and existing employees to enhance the delivery and efficiency of public sector services.

An arbitrarily set apprenticeship salary cap could fundamentally undermine such plans and in my view should not be the first funding lever to be pulled. Would the government really tell the NHS that it couldn’t use its levy payments to train and develop key nursing, healthcare, clinical and managerial staff if their salaries are above some arbitrary determined pay scale? Don’t we want police forces to use their levy payments to develop the management skills of senior officers to tackle the multitude of challenges they face?

A salary cap would impose a significant constraint on the ability of the NHS, police forces and others to use the payments made by levy payers and paid into their apprenticeship accounts (originally referred to by the government as “their” levy payment) to raise the skills of their employees and the efficiency of public sector services. Any cap would undermine the principle that apprenticeship was an employer-led programme in which employers spent levy payments where they felt they were most needed.

There is a danger that big levy payers could be forced to use their levy payments on apprenticeships that weren’t a priority, or lose them. Let me be a little controversial: should NHS hospitals, police forces and local authorities be enabled to use their levy payments in the way they need to develop their staff to deliver better public services, or is the priority to restrict the ability of these employers so that the levy they pay can be used to fund apprenticeships for employees under the salary cap in, say, business administration or customer service in small private businesses? 

So, what is the answer to the inevitable overspend of the apprenticeship levy pot? I’d suggest the answer is straightforward: in line with any concept of joined-up government, prioritisation should be based on the government’s own industrial strategy and the need to enhance the delivery of public sector services, as determined by the Department of Health, Home Office and other government departments.

If this means more STEM, management, nursing, healthcare, police and social worker apprenticeships and fewer business administration, customer service and retail apprenticeships, wouldn’t this boost the economy and be acceptable to the public?

At the AELP conference, delegates were polled on the various proposals to deal with increased level 2 starts, reports Mark Dawe

Owen Farrell would have been proud of Secretary of State Damian Hinds’ kick for touch when Robert Halfon, chair of the Commons Education Select Committee, challenged him on Wednesday on whether the apprenticeship levy is doing a good job in supporting the social justice agenda in light of falling apprenticeship starts at level 2.

More level 2 starts will almost certainly mean making “hard choices” about the levy. This was previously discussed with the Department for Education permanent secretary in another Commons committee session earlier in the year. We asked Anne Milton which choice she would make if she was still skills minister after the end of July, when she attended the AELP annual conference on Tuesday.

As FE Week reported, Milton floated the possibility of a current salary limit on any would-be apprentice, potentially to reduce the number of higher level apprentices and free up more funding at the lower levels.

Electronic polling of the AELP conference delegates found that only a quarter of them were keen on this idea.

We have known for some months that in the absence of increased funding, everything is on the table

We have known for some months that in the absence of any increased funding for apprenticeships now or in the Spending Review, everything is on the table as far as hard choices are concerned and that policymakers are busy modelling them. In simple terms, the government is considering age limits, prioritisation of sectors, a cap on levels and/or a salary limit.

If Milton were to stay in post after the change in leadership at Downing Street this summer, she would almost certainly put her red marker pen through any suggestion that apprenticeships should no longer be an all-age programme. She was waxing lyrical again this week on meeting older workers whose lives had been transformed by going on an apprenticeship.

Prioritisation of sectors takes us to that age-old Whitehall minefield of trying to pick winners when the global economy is changing so rapidly and future jobs are so difficult to predict because of artificial intelligence and automation. Interestingly though, over a third of the AELP conference delegates felt that sector prioritisation was a proposal worth exploring.

The salary cap idea does correlate with the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) and Home Office discussions on limiting the number of migratory workers earning less than £30,000 a year. But it is frankly another minefield and the Home Secretary has reportedly told the MAC to think again. A £30,000 limit on the earnings of an apprentice would, for example, have major implications for the levy spending efforts of the NHS trusts. So unless the limit was raised significantly, we believe that the proposal is probably a non-runner.

This brings us to the question of whether all levels of apprenticeships should be eligible for levy funding. In AELP’s Spending Review submission, we make clear that all levels should be supported, even if it requires the levy’s scope to be widened or its rate to be increased. Our input into the Augar Review also suggested that the higher education budget should be a contributor to the funding of degree apprenticeships as more universities sign up for the register of apprenticeship training providers.

Some 36 per cent of our conference delegates supported a level cap. This would prevent some apprenticeship levels being publicly funded. So the higher, more expensive levels would have to be funded by other means.

The simple truth is that without a hard choice being made, the money for apprenticeships will soon run out for everyone. Of course a new skills minister might be thinking that this government’s apprenticeship policy is an amazing success and we could get even more productivity, social justice and support from business if we found more money to support more apprentices at all levels. Let’s not accept a debate that is a negative; we should all join together to fight for the positive.

Youngsters today are likely to have a 50-year career. T-levels can play a major role in equipping them, if we keep certain strategies in mind, says Stephen Evans

As we wait to find out who will succeed Theresa May, and whether this leads to a changed ministerial team in the Department for Education, one thing that is unlikely to change is the focus on T-levels as a key way to improve skills. How do we make sure they help people in their career aspirations and deliver the skills needs of employers?

The latest report from our Youth Commission, which we set up to consider how to improve education and employment outcomes for young people, shows that young people are likely to have 50-year careers. This means they are likely to change roles a number of times.

Even if they stay in the same occupation, the skills needed in that occupation are likely to change dramatically. Our report, Tomorrow’s World: Future of the Labour Market, considers how the labour market is likely to change during young people’s working lives, and suggests a number of issues we need to consider in order to make T-levels fit for the future.

Firstly, T-levels need to be both specific, and broad: specific enough to deliver the skills to equip students for their chosen occupational role now, and sufficiently broad in content to focus on how young people can adapt to change and build core employability skills in the future.

Secondly, T-levels need to be part of a pathway; it’s no good having the best T-levels in the world if there is insufficient progression into them from below level 3, and also pathways from T-levels into more advanced learning.

T-levels need to be part of a pathway

And we additionally need support for young people who may have done A-levels or other vocational qualifications, but now want to take a different path. We also need to consider how T-levels could or should apply to adults, wanting to update their skills or change careers.

Likewise, place matters too: what about young people living in an area with too few employers to offer an industry placement? We need to find solutions to ensure T-levels deliver across the country.

Third, the qualification needs to be recognised by employers. The government is currently grappling with whether to stop funding other vocational qualifications, such as BTECs, or wait until T-levels are the most popular choice before turning off funding for other qualifications.

Leaving aside that there are some areas that T-levels won’t cover, you don’t make one qualification more credible by stopping the funding of the ones that are in place already. The new qualification on the block will be valued by employers once they are convinced that they have equipped young recruits with the skills they need: given the gradual roll-out of T-levels, this will take time.

The fourth point to consider is the help offered to employers. Our research shows that they want to deliver the industry placement element of T-levels, but they are confused by the array of demands from various government departments.

Are T-level industry placements a bigger priority than apprenticeships, work placements, work experience etc? If everything’s a priority, then in practice, nothing is.

Finally, we need an overall vision for lifelong learning that sets T-levels in context. The previous decade probably saw too many skills strategies, and it has often felt like a “once in a generation” chance to make things right every few years. But now we have gone to the other extreme of having no strategy.

Strategies are not the answer to everything but, combined with local leadership, they can support a partnership approach with employers that allows prioritisation and coordination. As our report notes, we don’t know what all future skills requirements will be, but we do know the core basis and the need to build in flexibility.

T-levels are not a silver bullet and we shouldn’t oversell them; there is also a risk that they could follow previous efforts, such as Diplomas, into the lessons of history. But if we work together, set T-levels into the wider context, and work strategically with employers, there is a real opportunity, this time, for things to be different.

A lack of job security in further, adult and prison education is making an army of workers mentally and physically ill – and forcing many to take on a second job to make ends meet, says Andrew Harden

Staff on insecure contracts working in further, adult and prison education are holding down multiple jobs to make ends meet. Some are even visiting food banks. These revelations are among the findings of a new report by the University and College Union (UCU), published today, which looks into the use of casual contracts in FE and their impact on the staff and students.

We surveyed 798 casualised staff members earlier this year and found that people without secure contracts were unpaid for about a third of their work (30 per cent). The report, Counting the costs of casualisation in further, adult and prison, also reveals the toll that a lack of job security has on their mental and physical health.

More than two-thirds of respondents (71 per cent) said they believed their mental health had been damaged by insecure contracts, and almost half (45 per cent) said it had impacted on their physical health.

The report paints a bleak picture of a hand-to-mouth existence where numerous jobs are often needed just to meet basic costs. More than half of respondents (56 per cent) said they had held at least two jobs in the past year.

No matter how many jobs people have, they find that busy and quiet periods are both stressful. The stress that comes with a shortage of hours, and therefore income, around holidays is just of a different kind to the one experienced when they are forced to accept as many hours as possible. Especially if you don’t have enough time or resources to cover long commutes, preparation and marking.

The report rubbishes the claim trotted out by employers that staff like the flexibility offered by zero-hours contracts. Budgeting is tough when you don’t know how many hours you will get.

Similarly, it’s impossible to plan if hours, and therefore income, are cancelled at short notice – a situation that left one respondent relying on food banks. Nearly three-quarters of respondents (72 per cent) said they had struggled to make ends meet and 56 per cent said they had problems paying the bills.

Almost all staff on a fixed-term contract (93 per cent) said that they would rather be on a permanent contract and about 72 per cent said they would sacrifice flexibility to secure a job with guaranteed hours.

None of this is good for staff, but it is also extremely damaging for students as staff working conditions are students’ learning conditions. Most respondents said they did not have the time to do their jobs properly.

The UCU report paints a bleak picture of a hand to mouth existence

More than four-fifths (83 per cent) said that they did not have enough paid time to prepare adequately for their classes. Similar proportions complained of insufficient time to get their marking done (84 per cent) and not being able to stay on top of their subjects (85 per cent).

Three-quarters (76 per cent) said they did not have enough time to give their students the feedback they deserved, and many complained that they were not given the same resources as permanent staff, which they said meant their teaching suffered. One said they had no work email address, no desk or workspace and struggled to get simple tasks such as photocopying done.

It’s now time to take a proper look at the problem. Ofsted has previously raised concerns that a lack of stability has an impact on the quality of teaching and learning. We want the watchdog to commit to taking a proper look at the negative impact of casualisation on students’ education.

It is not acceptable for colleges to continue to exploit the commitment and professionalism of an army of casual workers who are going the extra mile, sometimes in multiple jobs.

UCU has previously worked with colleges to improve the security of employment for teaching staff, and we will work with any employer willing to engage with us on this issue.