Learners and employers should “expect nothing less” than an apprenticeships system that works for them, a leading civil servant has said.

David Hill, director of apprenticeships at the Department for Education, told delegates at The Skills Summit in central London today that he felt a quality apprenticeships offer would give learners “an opportunity to progress and succeed” with high quality learning, and provide employers with “a system that delivers everything they need”.

Mr Hill said: “So what does success look like…I think it looks like the right outcomes for employers and the economy and the right outcomes for apprentices. The reforms are ambitious because those two groups expect nothing less than a system that delivers everything they need from it. For apprentices themselves, it’s about high quality apprenticeships available in occupations that matter to them and fundamentally an apprenticeship that offers an opportunity to progress and succeed with high quality learning. And for those who are newer employees, a real job in which they can make their way in the world of work.

“So to be successful we need to make sure that the programme works for [people] regardless of whether they’re men, or women, or [from] black and minority ethnic groups, [or] have a particular learning difficulty or disability, or are facing the challenges created by deprivation. And it’s a key objective of the government to enable all of those groups to aspire to the best that apprenticeships have to offer.”

‘New and better options’

Earlier in the session, Mr Hill said that improving skills “was at the heart” of the government’s industrial strategy, and that government was committed to building a system of technical education which “provides new and better options” for young people.

“Improving skills is right at the heart of the government’s emerging industrial strategy,” Mr Hill said. “You’ll have [a] sense [of that in] the [government’s] recent green paper...[It] signals the government’s commitment to building a strong system of technical education which benefits the half of young people who don’t go to university, and [that] also provides new and better options for those already in the workforce.”

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