A DAY IN THE LIFE: Apprenticeship assessor

As debates about levies, funding rules and quangos rage on, assessors working for England’s 280 end-point assessment organisations quietly keep the apprenticeship system ticking over.

They are the gatekeepers who ensure apprentices are ready for the workforce. Yet their work observing, questioning and making decisions that shape careers can go largely unnoticed.

Freelance assessor Janine Robb, herself a former apprentice, reveals her life is a balancing act: she’s a cheerleader for her apprentices while holding them to account, and once back home is there for her family while juggling that day’s admin.

Robb, who lives in Wakefield, West Yorks, with husband Matt and 15-year-old daughter Lila, tells Jessica Hill what a busy working day looks like as an assessor in retail, sales and building supplies.

End point assessor Janine Robb (second from left), her husband Matt and two daughters

5am

People rarely see what I do so nobody understands my job – even my husband Matt doesn’t. So I compare it to being a driving test examiner, but for apprentices.

Normally my assessments don’t start until 9am, but builders’ merchants open early and today I’ve got an assessment booked at 7am for a level-two trade supplier apprentice.

Sometimes I’ve stayed up late working until the early hours doing admin. I built my work up from nothing and had some really good years, but then worked really hard to replicate that success. I’m getting to a point now where I know what work I should refuse, but early on I said yes to as much as I could. You’re trying to please everybody, and you just can’t.

End point assessor Janine Robb

It’s a blessing and a curse, being self-employed. In this game, because it’s my name on the assessment, I can’t subcontract to anyone. We’re paid fairly but you can almost get greedy because you see what you can potentially earn.

I feed my two cats and grab a protein coffee before driving to the builders’ merchant, which could be two hours away.

When an assessment is on the other side of the country I’ll stay over the night before, so I’m not racing to get there on time. I know I’ll be outdoors so I put on my woolly hat, sneakers, protective trousers and PPE.

7am

I like to arrive 45 minutes before my appointment time. Meeting the apprentice is the highlight of my working day, building a rapport and finding out about who they are.

I do a warm-up for half an hour to remind them what the criteria will be.

First, I do a three-hour observation – watching the apprentice operating heavy lifting machinery, driving a forklift, dealing with customers and selling products. The biggest mistake the apprentice makes is not putting themselves in front of customers enough, so if they’re behind a counter, they tend to stay there, even though I can see there’s a customer in the yard. Thankfully, they don’t often make mistakes on health and safety.

It can be very busy for half an hour, then it will go dead, so you’re chatting to them in the meantime about their families and what they did before this. There’s often quite a lot of banter in a builders’ merchant and you’re laughing along.

10am

Now there’s a one-hour knowledge test and an hour-long professional discussion.

I have a retail client who has been putting through lots of women. The industry is saturated by men so it’s lovely to see that.

Normally the apprentices are school leavers, but bigger companies using the apprenticeship levy might pop on current members of staff to upskill them.

Since Covid we see a lot more reasonable adjustments and special considerations for social anxiety – the young people get overwhelmed. That generation has not had the same exposure from sitting exams and learning life skills, so you do have to coax them and be kind.

I always tell them, “I’d feel the same way as you if I was in an exam. Everybody gets anxious.” I make them realise I’m human and I’m not there to trip them up.

But I cannot lead them. It’s a difficult line. I do feel external pressure to pass them. There are devils and angels on your shoulder with this job.

When I meet them I instinctively want them to pass, regardless of whether they get upset or are very strong. But if they don’t meet the criteria, they don’t meet the criteria. I’ve come from a teaching background where I want to pull people up to give them praise. You can’t do that, but you can still smile.

I have an affinity with apprentices because I started out as a beauty apprentice myself at 16. I fell pregnant during my apprenticeship but I still finished the programme. It was the best thing I ever did. When my eldest daughter decided she wanted to go to university, I was like, ‘Oh – don’t you want to do an apprenticeship?’

Midday

Janine Robb on the electric bike she rode regularly until a recent accident compelled her to sell it

I don’t eat much for lunch, maybe just cheese with crackers, a protein shake or a peach. Two years ago I had a gastric sleeve fitted in Turkey and since then I’ve lost six stone. Because I’m in a sedentary job I found I just couldn’t lose the weight and my lack of body confidence impacted everything.

Now, people say I look like a different person. I don’t regret it, although it’s hard. We often used to go out with friends for dinner, and that’s changed because I can’t really enjoy a full meal now. Some foods repeat on you, so during the week I probably don’t eat enough because I’m careful, just to make sure I’m there for my apprentices.

2pm

I get home and my mum and dad nip over for a coffee. I can spare about 10 minutes to chat, but the organisation of my diaries is nearing obsession now. I can’t do my job any other way – I have to be on the ball.

I don’t use AI yet butpeople outside the industry have said to me it could be helpful in writing reports and organising my day. I’m very set in my ways. We also have to be very careful that if an apprentice has written a report using AI, it has demonstrated their own knowledge, not the AI’s knowledge.

My husband Matt, who is a tiler, is home by 4pm, and then his working day is over, which is a different world to mine. His knees and wrists are hurting so he can’t do tiling forever. I see my job as an opportunity to earn as much money as possible, so if he’s got a dead week it doesn’t matter too much to us.

4pm

Janine Robb and her family

I’ve got an online level-four sales executive assessment, so I make sure I look presentable, grab my laptop and go to my office which is in a little alcove in my bedroom. I make sure family members know not to come in, then I’ll start the Teams call.

These apprentices are usually very confident young guys – very different to my morning clientele.

The assessments for office-based jobs are now done remotely, but it’s crazy to think that before Covid they were all done face to face and I was always on the road.

Although I don’t miss driving, I do miss those visits. With the remote assessments you don’t meet the apprentice’s colleagues and manager, who would usually spend half an hour telling you how great that apprentice was. You’d get a real flavour for what they did.

I did team leader assessments for Fox’s Biscuits, in Batley. They’d take me on a tour of the factory every time and I absolutely loved it. When it’s remote, you don’t see where they work.

The sales executive presents a sales pitch presentation to you and then you ask questions, and they give anecdotal examples. It’s very different to the trade supplier assessment I did in the morning because you’re not watching them doing their job.

It’s interesting and I learn lots about how different companies operate – sometimes companies I’m a customer of. I used to do lots of assessments for retail leadership, manager and team leader programmes and loved visiting the big supermarkets because they’re all competing. One’s always trying to get ahead of the others on technology or promotions.

When she gets time off, Janine Robb likes to go skiing in Austria and visit Lanzarote

6pm

I might take my daughter to cheerleading or football sessions, or go to a personal training session with some friends. I feel guilty if I’m doing anything for myself but I know it’s important to do that. None of the companies I work for push me into anything, it’s ultimately my choice to work as much as I do.

Then I make dinner for my family. I get Hello Fresh deliveries which makes life easier, not having to think about food shopping. Cooking is not Matt’s strong point.

I’m usually on the laptop after that, but only doing simple prep tasks I can do while half watching a TV programme with my family. But there are certain programmes that I don’t have my laptop out for because I like to give them my full attention, like House of the Dragon and Yellowstone.

8pm

I’ve now got reports to write, which is the part of my job I dread. Writing up what’s happened during the assessment can be monotonous. And sometimes I might be writing up yesterday’s assessments and it’s hard to recall everything. I write a lot of notes during assessments and listen back to my recordings which is time-consuming.

If there’s one thing I’d change about my job it would be the bureaucracy of report writing. People can listen to recordings of assessments so they know what’s happened. Writing about why we think an apprentice has met the criteria is almost like doubling the work. They’re meant to be justifications [for the grade], but it’s very difficult to not fall into just saying, ‘the apprentice did this’.

One end-point assessment organisation I work for has a much more succinct way of doing it – criteria is assessed with a tick box. If there’s more to say you write it down, but they don’t expect you to write up what you could hear on a recording.

I then pull myself away from my laptop to get a proper break. Nowadays when I quality assure new assessors, when I see them taking on loads of work and their reports being uploaded at 4am, I’ll just give them a little call and remind them to take care of their wellbeing. There’s a fine line between being overworked and just working hard.

I’ve learned the hard way where that lies.

If you or someone in your organisation would like to tell us what a typical day involves in your job, please get in touch at jessica.hill@feweek.co.uk

DfE scores with Sky Sports-style ads for FE

Adverts to drive up interest in FE teaching jobs have proved a modest success, figures suggest.

The ‘Share your Skills’ campaign – which included Sky Sports News-style ads with presenter Mike Wedderburn talking to brickies who became FE lecturers – seeks to draw talent into further education by promoting its “unique benefits”.

Run internally by the Department for Education’s workforce and communications teams since 2022, an FE Week freedom of information request shows the campaign cost £2 million in its first year, £4.1 million in 2022-23, and increased again to £5.1 million for both 2023-24 and 2024-25.

Annual “attitudinal research” of the campaign’s target audience – adults between 35 and 65 years old with two years’ experience in priority sectors such as engineering, manufacturing or construction – suggests the proportion of people considering a job in FE rose slightly from 21 percent in 2021-22 to 25 per cent in 2023-24.

However, the target audience’s understanding of FE teaching only rose by 1 percentage point to 24 per cent over that period.

The DfE said the campaign aimed to “increase awareness, understanding, positive perceptions and consideration” of FE.

It does this by promoting the “high value and transferability of industry expertise within FE teaching and inspires the next generation of workers in key sectors” through a series of paid TV, radio and social media adverts.

The campaign drives traffic to a bespoke campaign website where potential applicants are signposted to vacancies, college website sand the Teach in FE support service.

The FOI request data shows website visitor “sessions” more than tripled from 134,000 in 2021-22 to 457,000 in 2023-24.

In the first two years unique page views hovered around 500,000 annually, while visits to the website’s dedicated jobs board shot up from 32,000 in 2021-22 to 190,000 in 2022-23 before dropping to 124,000 in 2023-24.

The DfE did not respond directly when asked whether it held internal reports on the campaign’s performance but provided these figures as a “summary evaluation” of its impact.

It also said there was no “available data” to show how many staff were recruited as part of the campaign.

Concern about FE teacher pay is considered the key reason colleges and training organisations struggle to recruit staff, particularly in high-demand subject areas such as construction and engineering.

Speaking at the Labour conference last month, skills minister Jacqui Smith said she had “strongly” made the case for FE teacher pay and status to the Treasury following the government’s recent decision to snub colleges from public sector pay awards.

The DfE was approached for comment.

AoC makes ‘disappointing’ 2.5% pay recommendation

College staff should be awarded a 2.5 per cent pay rise this year, the Association of Colleges has recommended.

The pay recommendation is lower than the 5.5 per cent pay rise for school teachers agreed earlier this summer, after the Labour government refused to apply the £1.2 billion public sector pay award to colleges.

The Association of Colleges (AoC) said it was “forced” to make a recommendation “far below what we believe is needed” as colleges cannot afford to give a pay rise higher than 2.5 per cent.

The AoC makes a pay recommendation each year which colleges use as a benchmark in their negotiations with unions that represent their staff. The membership body has delayed making a pay recommendation for 2024/25 since May.

Following negotiations with five trade unions representing FE workers, its formal recommendation will advise college leaders to award staff with a 2.5 per cent pay rise or £750, whichever is greater, for the 2024/25 academic year.

The college membership body explained its recommendation was above the current rate of Consumer Prices Index inflation of 2.2 per cent and above the 1.9 per cent increased 16-18-year-old funding rate for this year.

David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of College said: “We are clear that after 14 years of punishing funding cuts, college pay is far below where we believe it should be and needs to be.”

He added: “Once again, we are forced to make a pay recommendation far below what we believe is needed, simply because colleges cannot afford more.”

The body has urged the Chancellor for £250 million to match the 5.5 per cent school teacher pay uplift to prevent the “unjustifiable” £10,000 pay gap between college staff and school teachers from widening.

He said: “In the spending review we will be calling for a funded plan to close the pay gap with schools and with industry over the coming years. We need to see a step change in college pay both because it is fair and right to do so, but also because colleges are central to delivering the government’s missions and ambitions, and without better pay, colleges will struggle to step up.”

Meanwhile, college unions said the recommendation was “hugely disappointing” and would neither remedy the £10,000 pay gap nor the years of below-inflation awards.

UCU members have demanded a 10 per cent pay rise or £3,000, a minimum starting salary of £30,000, national agreements on workload, national bargaining and parity with schoolteacher pay.

University and College Union general secretary Jo Grady said: “Most further education teachers work on average over 48 hours a week, and around half of qualified teachers leave the sector within 3 years. This will only get worse unless we see greater investment and the closing of the pay gap. 

“Labour cannot ignore the crisis in further education any longer. Their ambitious plans to develop a more skilled workforce and the creation of Skills England are in danger of failing unless they ensure better pay, a workforce strategy and a new national bargaining framework for further education.”

The AoC made a recommendation of a 6.5 per cent uplift last year, which only came after the previous Conservative government found £200 million extra funding for the sector. The government told colleges to use their cut of the 16 to 19 funding boost to boost staff pay and “address staff recruitment and retention challenges”.

Education secretary Bridget Phillipson has asked the School Teacher Review Body to “evidence” the impact of its pay recommendation for school teachers on the further education workforce. It is hoped this evidence could give the Department for Education a stronger case for additional funding from the Treasury to  close the pay gap between teachers in schools and colleges.

DfE launches Skills England CEO job advert

The first chief executive of Skills England “should” come from government or business and will report to the Department for Education’s director general for skills, a job advert for the role has revealed.

The hunt for the boss of Labour’s much-hyped skills quango was officially launched today with a closing date of October 31 for applications.

A salary of £130,000 is advertised for the “senior leadership” role where the post-holder is expected to serve for at least three years.

Legislation introduced to the House of Lords this week revealed that Skills England will be established as an executive agency within the DfE rather than an independent or cross-government organisation.

In another move that appears to water down the quango’s power and independence, the status of the CEO of the new body will be at director-level rather than director general, reporting to the DfE’s director general for skills Julia Kinniburgh.

Today’s advert claimed that the CEO’s “influence will extend not only across the breadth of the DfE, but across government and skills bodies across the country”.

But a source close to the DfE who previously told FE Week this move was on the cards warned that influential permanent secretaries from other departments will not see post-holders below director general level as they view this as being “too junior”. The source believes a clipping of their wings in this way may be a deliberate ploy by officials to “contain” the new body.

From IfATE to Skills England via DfE: What you need to know

The CEO job advert said this “high-profile and high-impact” role requires an “inspirational and impactful senior leader, with a successful track record of leading, developing and motivating multidisciplinary teams in a high profile and politically sensitive environment”.

It explicitly states that the government wants candidates to be “senior leaders from government or from business”, who can “demonstrate the ability to lead an organisation, to work successfully in a government context, and to work closely and effectively with business leaders”.

Applicants must “have experience of using a range of powers, levers and interventions to achieve measurable impact, and of understanding and balancing the conflicting demands of a range of stakeholders”.

Skills England is expected to drive the government’s efforts to meeting skills needs over the next decade by “bringing together central and regional government, businesses, training providers and unions to a) develop a single picture of national skills needs, b) identify priority training programmes to receive funding and c) ensure that national and regional skills systems are meeting skills need”.

The body currently operates in shadow form with Richard Pennycook, a Department for Education non-executive director and former boss of the Co-operative Group, in post as interim chair.

Adverts for a permanent chair and board went live in August. Interviews for the roles are due to take place in early November.

The body sitting within the DfE is being established in phases over the next six to nine months. Predictions are that it will be fully operational by April.

The CEO job advert said the post-holder will “lead the establishment of this new body – the precise form of which is subject to parliamentary authorisation – developing a commitment to a shared vision for the agency and lead and inspire a culture of collaborative leadership and teamwork to deliver the agency’s mission and plans with creativity, pace, impact and rigour and with a clear sense of purpose and employee engagement”.

Formal interviews for candidates will be held the first week in December.

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: EDITION 474

Julie Peaks Principal

Wyke Sixth Form College

Start date: September 2024

Previous Job: Deputy Principal, Wyke Sixth Form College

Interesting fact: Julie has become the first female principal of Wyke after joining the sixth form college 20 years ago

Fabienne Bailey

Chief Executive Officer, Gateway Qualifications

Start date: October 2024

Previous Job: Director of Business Transformation and Growth, AIM Qualifications and Assessment Group

Interesting fact: Fabienne has been lucky enough to travel for both work and leisure, visiting 39 different countries including living in Germany and Barbados in her younger years. Whilst sunnier climes are high on the list, her favourite place to be is at home by the sea in Whitby with her large family and 2 rescue dogs

Colleges to manage student parents’ childcare claims

Young parents will claim childcare bursary payments direct from their college from next year after the government scrapped a burdensome external support service.

Revised Education and Skills Funding Agency rules state colleges will be responsible for managing Care to Learn payments for the 2025/26 academic year.

Since 2013/14 the bursary scheme has funded payments to childcare providers to help parents aged under 20 attend school or college.

Young parents, childcare providers and education providers had to use the student bursary support service (SBSS), an external portal used to submit applications, claim funding and make payments.

Instead of filing claims through the SBSS, young parents will now complete applications for financial help with childcare with their education provider, which will then determine eligibility, submit claims and make payments to childcare providers.

Lisa Humphries, chair of the National Association for Managers of Students Services, said SBSS’ removal was a “positive move forward” as bursary teams were burdened with “additional steps” of completing updates on the portal.

Under the old system, young parents would submit applications to the SBSS and give their education provider a copy of the child’s birth certificate and a letter confirming receipt of child benefits.

The SBSS would then contact the institution to confirm the students’ course details and the childcare provider for confirmation services were being provided.

The National Union of Students welcomed the change after previously calling for a simplification of the system. 

Qasim Hussain, NUS vice president for further education, said childcare was a “huge barrier to education” for student parents. 

He added: “We hope this announcement will make it much easier for those who need it to access childcare funding, and that colleges have the adequate resources to carry this out.” 

Demand falls 85% 

Official data up to 2022/23 shows take-up of the bursary has fallen consistently during the last decade, with demand down 85 per cent from 2013/14 levels when £24.5 million was claimed. 

Just 841 payments were made in 2022/23, a total payout of nearly £3.8 million. 

The government has chalked the decline down to a fall in demand caused by drops in teenage pregnancy rates and demographic changes. Latest data from the Office for National Statistics reports teen pregnancy in England and Wales has more than halved since 2011. 

But the NUS also blamed the trend on complexities around claiming the cash. 

Last year the ESFA increased the maximum amount available for parents from £160 per child per week to £180, or an increase from £175 per week to £195 per week in London.

The ESFA acknowledged the upcoming process change would add extra admin to college student support services so will pay 5 per cent on top of each amount claimed per student.

Humphries said the move gives “parity” with all other bursary schemes that colleges already handle, such as the 16 to 19 bursary fund for vulnerable groups.

She said: “Care to learn is the only part of bursary schemes that is not administered locally by colleges and it is a small number of students who apply from each college. It makes sense to move it to being supported by bursary teams in each college.”

DfE considers more GCSE resit training for college staff

Extra teacher training to boost GCSE maths and English resit pass rates is being considered by ministers. 

An engagement notice was published by the Department for Education to gather market interest and capacity to deliver fresh CPD (continuing professional development) to the resit workforce. 

Officials want “innovative provision to achieve the best outcomes for learners” that could be rolled out nationally but with a particular focus on regions with higher resit levels. 

Students must resit GCSE English and maths in post-16 education as a condition of their places being funded if they fail to achieve a grade 4 pass at school. 

However, FE Week understands the future of the forced GCSE resits policy is being considered by the government’s independent curriculum and assessment review, led by Becky Francis. 

Results out in August revealed 17.4 per cent of the 185,727 post-16 learners taking GCSE maths in 2024 achieved a grade 4 or above – a 1 percentage point rise on last year but almost 4 percentage points lower than the pre-pandemic level of 21.2 per cent. 

In English, 148,569 students re-sat the GCSE in post-16 education this year with 20.9 per cent gaining at least a grade 4 pass. This was 5 percentage points lower than 2023 and almost 10 percentage points down on 2019. 

The DfE has funded multiple resit CPD programmes in the past, including through the Education and Training Foundation, White Rose Education, Lexonik and Mathematics Education Innovation.

Milton Keynes College Group won a government contract in 2022 to run a professional development programme for post-16 English and maths teachers that it called the Greater Than Network. Funding was meant to run until March next year but the DfE ditched the contract early and the network ended in February. 

Revealing its intention to revive resit CPD training, the DfE’s latest market engagement notice said: “The DfE is seeking feedback from the market so it can understand market interest and capacity to deliver CPD to the 16-to-19 level 2 English and maths workforce in further education settings, on a national or regional basis, before defining its next steps for any competitive procurement process. 

“The quality of the English and maths workforce across the FE sector is paramount and the department continues to work with the sector to ensure that providers can recruit, retain, and develop the teaching and governance staff they need to deliver the best possible education to students.”

A 90-minute early supplier engagement webinar will take place on October 15. 

If the DfE goes ahead with a tender it expects to launch the competition in mid-December. The amount of funding on offer is not known. 

The ‘opportunity mission’ is alive in Hull – and should be nationally

Opportunities that (for reasons I can’t explain) are normally available only to those who have already left school, are at the forefront of our 14+ College offer at Hull College.

As I write this, a group of fourteen-year-olds is in a classroom above my office exploring early childhood development.

Across the corridor, a team of fifteen-year-old creative media students is building a scale model of the college campus as a set for an animation that will be entered in a national sustainability competition.

In an industry-standard salon on the fifth floor of our building, school-age learners are being taught how to style hair by a team of industry experts.

Local and national media frequently discuss secondary education through the lens of crisis; whether it’s the elective home education crisis, the post-Covid attendance crisis, or the staffing crisis.

What is often missed amid these crises is the opportunity we have to craft a purposeful, skills-based education for young people.

At Hull College, we’ve had a 14+ provision since 2013, serving generations of Year 10 and 11 students with a curriculum that blends GCSE delivery with career-focused vocational qualifications.

The young people we serve are significantly more likely to have experienced personal or educational trauma, to have been bullied or to have been homeschooled. Many have suffered the collapse of self-belief that comes with these experiences. Yet, at 14+ College, they are shown a future more hopeful than the one they left behind.

The curriculum model has been a huge success. Learners graduate from 14+ College and many choose to move directly onto their next vocational level, transitioning smoothly from one college department to another. Others may instead pursue academic qualifications that prepare them for university. 14+ College and those who built it have been proud to guide all of them.

We were able to offer one place for every six applicants this year

With this model, however, comes a responsibility. Hull is one of the most educationally deprived areas in Britain. Too few young people in Hull and the East Riding leave school with the skills they need to thrive, and not enough are actively participating in the economy.

Alongside this dilemma of human potential, the economy of Hull and the Humber is undergoing a renaissance. New and developing industries in the region are driving the need for a workforce skilled in STEM and sustainability principles.

Young people leaving education confident in their ability to adapt, solve problems and communicate will find the employment landscape very welcoming. Schools, with their rigid curriculum models and scale, are not ideally positioned to adapt. FE, however, has been doing this for years.

Hull College has long served the needs of the region. In recent years, we have adapted our curriculum design to better meet the needs of local employers and to more purposefully develop the core and character skills our young people need to thrive.

Our 14+ College provision, and 14-16 provisions more generally, offer an obvious opportunity for students to get a head start in discovering where they fit into a changing world of work.

And the students in our region know it. We were able to offer one place for every six applicants in Year 10 this academic year. Amid all the talk of crises in education, it’s worth pointing out that one corner of secondary education is thriving beyond its current capacity, such is the desire among young people to start their careers.

The evidence is clear: this is what our economy needs, and this is exactly what many young people want to do. As a result, at Hull College we have a moral obligation to provide it.

So, in future years, when you get a lovely new haircut or your nails fabulously painted; when your child comes home from nursery with a giant smile or you enjoy a brand-new blockbuster movie at the cinema, our dream is that the person providing this service came from 14+ College and is doing something they never thought they could.

Vocational reforms must differentiate between education and training

The future of the UK’s economy hinges not just on the skills we teach but on how we define and keep them updated. As we grapple with rapid technological change and shifting industry demands, it’s clear that our current approach needs a fundamental rethink. Redefining the relationship between vocational education and vocational training is key.

At Pearson, we have made this case in our evidence submission to the Lords’ industry and regulatory select committee’s inquiry on future skills needs. For too long, these two terms have been used interchangeably, muddling policy decisions and diluting the effectiveness of our skills system.  

Vocational education is about laying a foundational understanding of an industry – imparting the core concepts and skills that are at its very heart and change slowly over time.   This is particularly important for younger learners just beginning their careers.

Vocational training, on the other hand, is dynamic and responsive, focusing on current industry practices, tools and techniques. It’s what people of all ages already in the workforce need to stay relevant in rapidly evolving sectors. (Me included, as I work with my team to embed the rapid developments of Gen AI into our daily work).

By conflating vocational education with vocational training, we risk failing our young learners and our existing workforce. This distinction is not just semantic; it has profound implications for how we design our education system and prepare for the future.

Our recent Skills Map of England showed that by 2027, automation and augmentation do not necessarily mean fewer jobs – but different jobs. While 390,000 new jobs will be created in England in total, around 2 million people will need to reskill or upskill.

These aren’t just numbers. They represent workers across the country who must adapt to new roles and industries. The jobs of tomorrow are not the jobs of today, and our skills system must reflect that reality.

So, how do we bridge this gap? It starts with policy that recognises and supports the unique roles of education and training at different stages in people’s lives.

This distinction has profound implications

We need to revisit the development of occupational standards to allow for a stable national core, flexible regional adaptations and evolving skills needs over time. This means utilising data to create a common skills taxonomy, enabling qualifications to be tailored to diverse needs while maintaining national coherence.

Moreover, government intervention should shift from managing qualification design to setting overarching strategies and empowering local institutions to do what they do best: using their expertise to identify and deliver the provision that best meets the needs of young learners, those in work, and those seeking work for the first time or returning to it.

The system as a whole should be simpler by integrating funding streams like the Adult Skills Budget, Lifelong Learning Entitlement and the proposed Growth and Skills Levy. Unified funding mechanisms would effectively serve learners, providers and employers. Greater transparency will ensure that everyone involved understands the system and can navigate it effectively.

Apprenticeships are one example of a programme that, with an appropriate level of support and flexibility, can provide individuals with a broad, foundational education to kickstart a career.

The government’s ask of employers to invest more in younger workers is welcome, as is the introduction of foundation apprenticeships which could also help reverse the decline in 16-19 apprentices.

Employers play a crucial role in this system. By incentivising them to invest in young apprentices and adjusting rigid requirements like 20-per cent off-the-job training, we can make apprenticeships more accessible and effective for those starting their careers.

Experienced, mid-career, individuals who require more immediate and specific upskilling can then reap the benefits of shorter, more focused apprenticeships and more flexible training models.

The challenge before us is preparing people for a transformed world of work. This requires an adaptable workforce capable of lifelong learning and reinvention to ensure individuals are not left behind by technological change but are empowered to drive it.

By clearly distinguishing between vocational education and vocational training – and designing policies that respect and support both – we can build a skills system that’s responsive, inclusive and fit for the future.