New skills minister Anne Milton has outlined her main priorities.
Ms Milton, speaking today at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers’ (AELP) national conference in London, said these includedclarifying the requirements for off-the-job training for apprenticeships, for which guidance has been published today; improving careers advice in schools; improving social mobility; and establishing clarity about the procurement process for apprenticeship delivery for small- and medium-sized employers (SMEs).
Ms Milton also announced that the current procurement process for SMEs would be cancelled, and a new one would be launched at the end of July. She also said she would be responding within the next weeks to providers which had made business cases for additional funding for non-levy apprenticeship provision. In April, Tes reported that some providers were notified their allocations had been reduced by as much as 89 per cent.
Ms Milton is widely understood to be the next skills minister, but her ministerial remit has not yet been confirmed by the Department for Education.
Addressing delegates, Ms Milton said: “You will know that we recently paused the procurement competition as it was substantially oversubscribed. To be completely honest, we were not confident that it could deliver the diverse market we were looking for, whilst giving the sector as a whole enough stability in the short term.”
She later added: “We have concluded that it does not. Therefore, we will be launching a new procurement at the end of July and cancelling the current procurement.”
Ms Milton said that she intended the new procurement contracts would cover the period from January 2018 to April 2019 - “the date by which we aim to bring all employers onto the apprenticeship service”.
She also said that while the new procurement is open, she would not be reopening the register of apprenticeship training providers for new applications.
‘We need to work together’
Earlier in her speech, Ms Milton said that working with the FE sector was ‘critical’ and that she was ‘keen’ to listen to the views of the those working in it.
“Government can be very frustrating at times, for me as well as for you actually, trust me,” Ms Milton said. “But I am here to listen and to learn and I hope also to offer some clarity about the way forward.”
Ms Milton also spoke about turning social mobility from little more than a “slogan” into something tangible and real.
“Social mobility is a word you often hear, it’s become a little bit of a slogan, jargon,” she said. “It’s got to mean something. It’s got to be real, you’ve got to actually see people moving through the structure, actually achieving.”
Previously Mark Dawe, chief executive of the AELP, had said that, along with productivity, “social mobility is so important”.
“I hope we can continue to have a conversation almost monthly to make sure that we are getting things back on track to support those that are harder to reach,” Mr Dawe said. “Because it is those small providers, small employers that do that in the locality and we really must support [them].”
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