As the sitting Prime Minister, David Cameron put a promise to create another 3 million high quality apprenticeships for young people at the centre of his 2015 election campaign. Yet apprenticeships have provided few alternatives to continuing to higher education for young people – key to Cameron’s intentions.
In fact apprenticeship starts had already peaked before Cameron’s opportunist electioneering. The 510 000 enrolments between Aug and July 2012/13 were down to 493 000 two years later, falling to 393 000 by 2018/19, (by which time Cameron had long since fallen off his wall) and 322,000 by the time the pandemic set in.
Whether the 3 million figure was ever reached during the life of the parliament, has been less significant than the nature of the apprenticeships created. For the most part, only around 1 in 4 were started by somebody under 19. as employers continued to use apprenticeship funding to train existing staff. (An investigation for BBC’s Panorama (2 April 2012) had earlier exposed the supermarket chain Morrisons; finding that up to 40% of its entire workforce had been reclassified as ‘trainees’). Approaching two-thirds of enrolments remained at Intermediate Level, equivalent to GCSE, a standard most school leavers had already attained anyway.
There have been other changes in more recent years that could be interpreted as more positive. In particular, there have been moves to improve apprenticeship quality, by creating new national standards on which almost all new apprenticeship starts are now based. Also, apprenticeships are required to run for a minimum period and there must be specific amounts (generally one day a week) of ‘off the job’ training. A national levy has been imposed on large employers and there’s also been some improvement in apprenticeship pay – though it remains well below national minimum wage levels.
Data released last month now shows Advanced Level apprenticeships accounting for 43.2% of new starts, while Higher Level apprenticeships, barely existing at the time of Cameron, make up 34.0% of starts and continue to grow – up to 93,670 compared to 88,240 in the same period last year. In other words, the lower level Intermediate starts now represent a minority.
Yet the total number of enrolments continues to be disappointing. A small post-Covid recovery recorded 350 000 starts for 2022/23, but last month’s data shows only 275, 600 between August to April 2022/3 – a 5% fall compared to the same period a year previously. Meanwhile Higher-Level apprenticeships have been receiving attention for the wrong reasons.
Anxious to spend the money they are required to pay and having more flexibility on how they use it; big companies have used it to fund MBAs for their management trainees. Large employers and the universities that provide the training have side stepped government restrictions, with some estimating levy spending on MBA (level 7) schemes approaching £1 billion.
The data also shows under 19s remain seriously under represented – data for 2021/2 indicates that of the 105,000 Higher level starts, just 5000 were by those under 19 compared to 70,000 plus, by those over 24.
In Cameron’s time, despite his and George Osborne’s commitment to the ‘march of the makers’ 1 in 5 starts were in the business/financial and legal sector, twice as many than for engineering manufacturing and construction. Today, high take ups in business have been overtaken by large rises in health and care and hospitality sectors, but science technology, engineering, and manufacturing (the STEM areas government has wanted to increase) still constitute less than 1 in 3 ). Meanwhile government has specified that public sector organisations in England with 250 or more staff must have at least 2.3% of their staff as new apprentice starts. On average of 1.8% of all public sector employees have started an apprenticeship, but this has been distorted by large take ups in particular occupations like policing and the military.
In many respects, by the time Cameron fell, the Tories had ‘parked’ ( if not completely given up on) apprenticeships as the main alternative to academic education as Theresa May published the Sainsbury Review (and then a White Paper) that introduced classroom based Technical (T) Levels as a new option. There have been attempts to set up apprenticeship based routes into occupations like law and teaching, but these have been resist by professional bodies and unions.
Some commentators continue to contrast the failure of apprenticeships in England ( things have been better in Scotland) with the continued success of German system. But in Germany vocational education and apprenticeships have long been part of a wider ‘social partnership’ between employers, state authorities and trade unions often providing a ‘licence to practice’ many occupations. In contrast, without anything resembling an Industrial Strategy, the UK has relied on a ‘free market’ approach. In the private sector no employer is required to take on apprentices and if and when they do, they tend to only be concerned about the implications for the firm rather than for young people’s future prospects as a whole .
A general lack of interest in apprenticeships, is also compounded by high levels of ignorance amongst those in the education sector about how they actually work. Many think they are initiated by FE colleges or universities ( colleges in fact have lost out to private training providers and universities have to sell schemes to employers ) or imagine there’s been a continuity with the post war years, where in more prosperous times, approaching half a million (mostly boys) left ( invariably secondary modern) school often with minimal qualifications, for trade apprenticeships overseen by skills councils and back by trade unions.
But the UK economy has undergone massive changes since then. ‘Deindustrialisation’ has been replaced by precarious and low paid service sector employment. As a result, young people have looked to higher education to give them at least some labour market security, while many of the ‘middle-jobs’ that apprenticeships have traditionally been associated with, have been automated. Until recently also, areas like building and construction have continued to use multi skilled eastern European labour rather than take on young people.
It’s still too early to write apprenticeships off completely, there are many good schemes and many young people who have used them and will continue to use them, to turn their lives around. New types of apprenticeships could play a key part in an alternative green industrial strategy, but arguably as things stand, the ‘reinvention’ of apprenticeships at the start of the 21st century was never going to be successful.
Education, Economy and Society 