The apprenticeship reforms go live next April but are arguably already more than four years old. Doug Richard was commissioned by the Skills Minister John Hayes to come up with recommendations back in June 2012.
Since then Hayes became Hancock who became Boles and the ministerial baton was last month handed to Halfon.
So after four ministers, as many consultations and a pilot that has been running since November 2014, will implementation succeed in driving up both quality and quantity?
The problem is, we cannot be sure – for two reasons.
Firstly, the pilot has failed. Not necessarily the fault of a new funding system which requires the employer to pay a third, but because there have been so few available standards to start apprentices on and even fewer approved assessment organisations.
Secondly, the introduction of a levy to pay for all these new, more expensive standards is an untested game changer. This payroll tax for large employers in all sectors wasn’t part of the pilot or even part of the early system design.
It seems obvious to me that for both these reasons and with a new consultation launched (despite being under nine months from when all apprenticeship starts are shifted onto the new system) a new pilot should be started. It should be focused on one or two high volume sectors, such as health and care and hospitality, where only the new system can be used to access funding. The rest of the levy income would then simply replace budget lines at departmental level.
Why take a risk with the whole programme, jeopardising the 3m starts target, when there is so little evidence it will succeed?
The main area that needs testing is one that hasn’t even featured in the consultations. In the history of education funding, it cannot be overstated how radical ‘negotiating’ funding (the public subsidy) is.
Will employers with small levy pots drive the funding rates to providers down to unacceptably low levels, thus compromising quality? Some, definitely. Will other employers over-claim public funding by unnecessarily agreeing to pay the maximum rates because they have more in their levy pot than they can use? Some, definitely.
Essentially, employers are handing out government contracts and negotiating rates, so how sure are we of a fair and open market? Not very.
It was in 2010 that Chris Banks, in a report commissioned by the Labour administration, proposed the idea of negotiating funding and linking it to a 50 per cent fee. At the time I warned against such a complex model, and the then Learning and Skills Council seemed to agree.
It really cannot be over-estimated how radical a change it is to shift from a price set by the government, as is the current case for all education and training, to one where the consumer agrees with the provider how much public subsidy to draw down (within limits).
Surely this warrants some consultation? Surely such a radical market change should be thoroughly piloted, along with the associated software systems? Surely?
The new minister will return from his summer break shortly. He and the Secretary of State should ask their officials one simple question.
Would it be possible to pay for apprenticeships from the levy but using the existing system and listed rates, whilst piloting the new system and negotiated rates in just a couple of sectors?
The answer? My guess is the civil servant would say: “Yes minister”.
