Variability in apprenticeship standards could ‘undermine’ credibility, warns Pearson president

The credibility of the apprenticeship programme will be ‘undermined’ without a greater understanding of standards, according to Rod Bristow
21st September 2016, 4:22pm

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Variability in apprenticeship standards could ‘undermine’ credibility, warns Pearson president

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There is a “great risk” of variability in standards between apprenticeships, the president of Pearson UK has claimed.

Speaking at the British Chambers of Commerce business and education summit in London yesterday, Rod Bristow said that the credibility of the programme would be “undermined” unless a greater understanding of apprenticeship standards was achieved.

He said: “It is a concern…I think the idea of [doing] a qualification is very important for the learner. It goes much deeper than that, though. It’s about making sure that we have got a good understanding of standards…There is a great risk that there will be a variability in standards between apprenticeship programmes which will undermine their credibility. That’s my worry.

“In our case we are going to [champion] the…BTEC as much as we possibly can. BTECs are at the heart of the apprenticeships, the frameworks that employers…want.”

‘The divide is being broken down’

Mr Bristow also said that the “divide” between vocational and academic education - one he said has existed since the Industrial Revolution - was being “broken down” by apprenticeships, which now require “a huge amount of thinking and decision making as much as it does getting things done”.

“I think this issue of the divide...between the apprenticeship and the degree is another way of saying the divide between the practical and the academic, and I think that divide is being broken down,” he said. 

“It’s the divide that arguably originated at the beginning of the 20th century when people divided the workforce into the managers who thought about industrialisation and the manufacturing and the workers who just carried out the decisions that were made by managers. That doesn’t happen now...the apprenticeship programme requires you to do a huge amount of thinking and decision-making as much as it does getting things done. I think a great apprenticeship represents a fantastic way to break that divide down. It really does bring those two things together.”

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