Blog posts for author:Andrew Gladstone-Heighton

This month we’ve been hearing a lot about skills devolution. First, we got clarity from the Greater London Authority (GLA) about their Adult Education Budget (AEB) plans from 2019/20. ‘Skills for Londoners, A skills and Adult Education Strategy for London’ sets out 3 main priorities that the Mayor’s office has identified for their approximately £311 million AEB they’re set to be allocated.

From the 1 August this year, we’ll have an amended apprenticeship funding regime for new starts on apprenticeship frameworks and standards. There’ll be 30 funding bands in place instead of 15, and all new starts and standards will be placed onto the relevant band.

NCFE Policy Leader, Andrew Gladstone-Heighton examines skills growth and replacement in a post-Brexit economy in his newly published paper. In just under a year, article 50 will expire, and the UK will have left the European Union.

By the time you’re reading this, the consultation on the forthcoming T-level programmes will be drawing to a close. This has been the first real opportunity for people across the sector to give their feedback on the new programme, the qualifications it will contain, and the work placement required for completion.

Before Christmas, my colleague Paul Turner wrote this blog about the ongoing saga Training Providers are facing to access £650 million worth of non-levy apprenticeships funding. Despite the precarious position a lot of good and outstanding providers were left in before Christmas, no further reassurances on money have been promised. The Association of Learning Providers had written to the Skills Minister over the break about the untenable situation a lot of providers find themselves currently in. We could cynically interpret the ministers’ lack of a response as Mrs. Milton waiting for the cabinet promotion that was widely speculated was coming her way and, as it transpires, was not offered to her.

The Chancellor set out his budget that would invest in skills and employment – as well as setting out his vision for the future economy.   There were a number of measures outlined for Education and Skills, so let’s see how they stack up against my pre-budget wish list:

Education Secretary, Justine Greening, recently made her first appearance in front of the Education Select Committee, chaired by one of her former junior ministers, Rob Halfon. Beyond the value of this meeting of minds to policy nerds like myself, it gave us a chance to know Greenings’ mind, and her thoughts of how she feels education is faring on her watch. Quotes are taken directly from the transcript released following the event. What did we learn?

At this critical moment, with so much uncertainty about the future economic and employment prospects of the United Kingdom, we need significant and long term investment commitments across all levels of education and skills policy. More specifically, here’s my 5 point wish list for the Chancellor: To the Chancellor,

There was a lot of talk at the Conservative Party Conference about the ‘skills revolution’; largely centred on promises of greater degree level apprenticeship opportunities for teachers. This, along with raising the profile of apprenticeships and ‘gold standard’ T-level technical qualifications, are part of the government’s plan to raise the esteem of technical education.  These are welcome announcements from the government, but in order to create a true parity of esteem, we need to go much further in promoting, and embedding, technical opportunities in mainstream learning from an early age.

The government has published its experimental apprenticeship service statistics to August 2017, showing apprenticeship service account registrations, and ‘commitments’ to apprenticeship starts by age, level and academic year. The data itself is striking in its insight into the new world of apprenticeships, following the launch of the Levy. It reveals that only 55% of employers have signed up to use their Levy account. This means just under half of Levy paying employers are currently writing this off as a tax, without signing up to see how much their Levy payments will get them.