There appears to be some confusion in government over apprenticeships at the moment. Perhaps it’s an inevitable consequence of changing the Prime Minister, Education Secretary and Skills Minister in the middle of one of the most ground-breaking reforms to skills policy for decades.
At the Conservative Party Conference, the Prime Minister listed some of her party’s achievements over the past 6 years. Included in this list was the claim that the government has “created nearly 3 million apprenticeships.”
To many, this may sound like the government has already achieved its target. But, of course, to those of us in the sector, it represents a simple move of the goalposts to present a positive soundbite. The target of 3 million starts was for this parliament (2015-2020). By taking the 2.4 million apprenticeships from the last parliament, and adding new starts from the past year, the number is nearly 3 million.
The problem is that it doesn’t tell us anything. Very few of those starts can be attributed to apprenticeship reforms, as they haven’t really taken off yet. Furthermore, purely counting the number of starts is a poor measure of success, particularly when the achievement rates of apprenticeships are 71.7%.
Let’s use an example. If universities had a similar pass rate, of the approximately 500,000 students who start a degree every year, around 358,500 would have successfully completed their studies. It would be ludicrous, in such a scenario, for the government to suggest that they’d created 500,000 degrees. Yet that is what’s happening with apprenticeships.
The obsession with the target is very unhelpful, at a time when the major reforms loom on the horizon. In April the apprenticeship levy will come into force, and new funding rates follow in May. Frameworks are being turned off and as standards come into force, there are still issues around end-point assessment. There are questions over whether the Institute for Apprenticeships, an employer-led body, will have the capacity to take on responsibility for approving new standards, funding rates and assessment plans. There seems to be no coherent plan to grow apprenticeships in areas where they’re needed.
There’s been a lot of talk in recent years about the need for ‘parity of esteem’ for apprenticeships, and the need to strengthen the apprenticeship ‘brand’. We’re now at a key juncture in this process; all of us can play a part. If the move to standards fails to improve the system, we’ll let learners down and leave employers without a solution to their skills needs. The supply of apprenticeships will depend on the demand. We must make it attractive for learners.
Our message is the same as it’s always been: the focus should be on quality, rather than quantity. If we can create a system where learners progress into a career, with a recognised qualification and employers use apprenticeships to solve their skills gaps, then the numbers will inevitably follow.
