The government’s target of creating 3 million apprenticeships by 2020 will be “unattainable” unless it takes drastic action to make the programme more appealing to employers, a new report claims.
Research by policy consultancy SQW concludes that current reforms, including the creation of a new Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education and the introduction of the apprenticeship levy, are unlikely to address the reasons for the “endemically low level of apprenticeship adoption by employers”.
The warning comes ahead of the expected publication today of new guidance on how the levy will operate.
Concerns raised in the report appear to be backed up by the latest official statistics, published last month, which revealed that the number of apprenticeship starts in the third quarter of 2015-16 was 112,900. This was almost 2,000 fewer than in the same period a year earlier - and 37,000 fewer than the average needed over the next five years for the government to hit its much-vaunted 3 million goal.
In the report, David Crichton-Miller, chief executive of SQW Group, argues that the apprenticeship system “will remain insufficiently appealing to small businesses, who are crucial to England reaching its apprenticeship targets, and that the target will therefore remain unattainable on this trajectory”.
In an exclusive interview with TES last week, Robert Halfon, the new apprenticeships and skills minister, described the successful introduction of the levy in April 2017 as the “single most important” aspect of his new role.
But senior figures across the sector also expressed concerns. Paul Warner, policy director at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP), said he shared SQW’s concerns about replacing apprenticeship frameworks with new standards at the same time as implementing other changes to the programme. He was also concerned about the need to keep smaller businesses engaged.
“AELP has written to the new ministerial team calling for a pause on the standards process and continued growth under existing frameworks to hit the 3 million target,” he said.
‘A toxic mix’
Matt Garvey, managing director of West Berkshire Training Consortium, said that a “drip-feed” of information about how the levy will operate had adversely affected “confidence and momentum” behind the apprenticeship programme.
“If you add in the ambiguity around funding rules and ignorance of what an apprentice costs, there is a toxic mix that is not going to help [increase apprentice numbers],” Mr Garvey said.
Lindsay McCurdy, chief executive of training consultancy Apprenticeships4England, said she was confident that the 3 million apprentice starts target will be reached, but most of them would be “people who were already employed by their employer, without any job progression”. “Is the government number-driven or does it want to give businesses the apprenticeships they want, and of the quality and standard required?” she added.
A separate report published yesterday by the Federation of Small Businesses concluded that, with appropriate government support and incentives, the small business sector in England has the potential to double the number of apprentices it hires to more than 2 million.
This is an edited version of an article from the 12 August edition of TES. Subscribers can read the full story here. To subscribe, click here. To download the digital edition, Android users can click here and iOS users can click here. This week’s TES magazine is available in all good newsagents.
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