With the Apprenticeship Levy introduced this month the sub-committee on Education, Skills and the Economy have released a report highlighting concerns around the focus on skills gaps, a lack of focus on outcomes and concerns it will do little to raise the quality of apprenticeship provision.
The Findings:
The Sub-Committee on Education, Skills and the Economy, formed from the Education and Business Select Committees, find that:
- the target of three million ‘starts’ by the end of the Parliament risks the exercise being focused on simply raising participation levels
- the Government should place far greater emphasis on outcomes
- Ministers should look to how apprenticeships can help close the skills gap, including by restructuring the levy on a sectoral and regional basis.
- points to concerns that the three million target could hamper attempts to raise quality of provision
- Highlights tension between the Government’s desire to give employers more control over the system and its attempts to use apprenticeships to increase social mobility.
- schools are still failing to promote non-university routes.
You can read the full report here.
Chairs Comments
Neil Carmichael MP, Chair of the Education Committee and Co-Chair of the Sub-Committee on Education, Skills and the Economy, said:
“Apprenticeships are vital if we are to close the skills gap, which could grow wider post-Brexit. We must train our young people for jobs that the economy needs, but the Government has failed to show how its three million target and levy will help achieve this.
“Ministers must recognise that apprenticeships are a means to an end and not an end in themselves. They need to place greater emphasis on outcomes, focussing on areas of the economy where training is most needed, and ensuring quantity does not trump quality.
“For too long apprenticeships have been seen as inferior to the university route and failed to benefit young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. We fully support the Government’s attempts to improve the prestige of apprenticeships, but it will take more than words to achieve this aim. If the quality is there the prestige will follow.”
Iain Wright MP, Chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee and Co-Chair of the Sub-Committee on Education, Skills and the Economy, said:
“The Government’s flagship apprenticeships policies positively focus on raising participation but are inherently contradictory. Ministers have a centrally-dictated, top-down three million target, welcome though that focus is, at the same time as insisting that this approach will be bottom-up and address the skills requirements of individual firms, sectors and regional economies. These requirements will often be very different and the Government should target those sectors of the economy and regions of the country where skills shortages are particularly acute.
“The Government has emphasised in its emerging industrial strategy the importance of supporting and promoting UK productivity and states that apprenticeships will be an important part of this. However, too much training remains sub-standard and detrimental to the career of apprentices and, more widely, the performance of our economy. The success of the Government’s reforms will ultimately be judged on whether the planned increase in the quantity of apprenticeships is matched by an increase in their quality.”
You can read the full news story here: http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/education-skills-and-economy/news-parliament-2015/apprenticeships-report-published-16-17/
