The Further Education Skills Index - a “key part” of measuring the productivity impact of the FE system - has fallen by more than 15 per cent since last year.
The Skills Index covers both apprenticeships and classroom-based learning - and had decreased year on year from 2012-13 to 2016-17. It rose slightly in 2017-18, but decreased by 17 per cent in 2018-19.
It shows how the aggregate value of the skills supplied by the FE system each year has changed over time, using increases in earnings attributable to different types of training to estimate a total impact on productivity.
Background: FE’s impact on UK productivity continues to drop
News: “Apprenticeship starts are falling off the cliff”
More: WorldSkills UK sets out emergency package of support
The Department for Education says that the large decrease in 2018-19 has been driven by a decline in apprenticeship achievements, which fell by a third compared with 2017-18.
Drop in apprenticeship starts
The report says: “Achievements in classroom-based learning were more stable in 2018-19, falling by 2 per cent from the previous year. However, as apprenticeships make a larger contribution to the overall skills index than classroom-based training, the larger fall in apprenticeship achievements has had more of an impact on the 2018-19 skills index than the smaller fall in classroom-based achievements.”
It adds: “Until 2017-18, there had generally been increases in the volume of apprenticeship achievements, particularly advanced and higher apprenticeships, as well as a small shift towards sectors with higher wage returns.
“The value-added for apprenticeships also increased year-on-year from 2012-13 to 2017-18, followed by a large drop of 26 per cent in 2018-19. The recent fall in apprenticeship achievements takes place in the context of a decrease in the number of starts and increases in course length.”
Today the government also published statistics on apprenticeship starts, which revealed that starts are down by 11.5 per cent compared with this time last year.
Mark Dawe, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, warned that they would get much worse.
