Interviewing Skills Minister Nick Boles at 1 Victoria Street seemed appropriate.
This 10-storey, 1,000 square feet of shining glass and steel is home to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and a host of other offices and shops in the heart of Victoria and it is where Boles does much of his skills thinking.
Boles has been charged with making sure the Government meets its bold goal to create three million apprenticeships by 2020. The leading expert on skills and the labour market, Baroness Wolf of Dulwich, outlined just how bold an objective it is by describing it as “a mad and artificial political target which risks undermining the reputation of apprenticeships”.
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Boles’ response was diplomatic yet direct: “I, and the government, are huge fans of Alison Wolf – she has been an inspiration for many of our reforms but I do totally reject that suggestion.
"If you look at the figures and at the number of apprentices per thousand in population here and elsewhere in Europe, even if we hit three million we will still be down roughly half the number of any of our competitor countries and they manage to have schemes, which are generally viewed as being higher quality, and they have more of them, so there is absolutely no conflict between quantity and quality, and if anything they are neutrally reinforcing.”
Boles used the new employers’ levy, described by him as a tax which organisations can offset by spending on apprenticeship training, to further contradict Wolf: “She might have had a point if we hadn’t been introducing the levy, but in the context of the levy, I am very confident that we can hit three million and make them better than they currently are.”
Boles explained how the government planned to assess the standard of the apprenticeships and measure return on investment: “There is defensive quality control and an overall measurement of impact... Defensive quality control is that the levy can only be spent on an approved quality standard, on a training provider who is on the register of providers which means they are subject to Ofsted inspections. That is the defensive baseline.
“Also we now have the data to link people’s earnings with their education and skills data. We already know that, with existing standards, a Level 2 apprenticeship, on average, increases people’s income by 11% three to five years later and a Level 3 apprenticeship on average by 16%.
“In the next few years, with a bit of luck, the data linked to apprenticeships will become a little more granular and we will be able to say that, for those who took this standard, on average, this was the impact. By the end of this parliament I would hope that we will have very good data on different standards and what impact they have made.”
The new Trailblazer initiative was introduced by the government to ensure the standards were employer-led and Boles readily admitted that some sectors were doing better than others. “There are some gaps, but some of that is because we don’t think the standard is good enough.”
The levy will change the dynamics, he said: “When you have employers who know they have to pay this money in, and there is not already a standard to suit them, then that is a pretty dramatic incentive to ensure that the right standard is developed.”
How, then, would ministers manage and assess the quality of the new apprenticeship providers that, according to government, are going to grow quickly over the next few years? Boles seemed confident that Ofsted was up to the job: “Ofsted has a pretty well developed process in place for assessing training providers and, with the start of the levy, employers will be given the money to spend with the provider. Providers will not receive direct government funding from the money raised by the levy.”
The funding for schools, colleges and providers will come direct from the Skills Funding Agency and when Ofsted reports poor provider practice their contract, ultimately, can be cancelled and they are removed from the accredited list of providers.
Boles seemed resigned to the fact that there would be some poor performance. “There is constantly a bit of a churn and unfortunately it is life. People do not always maintain the quality that they should and we need a method to weed them out.”
You cannot improve skills without factoring in the role of education and Boles said there was “always more that can be done” to improve awareness of apprenticeship opportunities in schools. He mentioned twice in the interview the need to keep girls engaged with STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and to ensure they are not put off by preconceptions or lack of information.
“It is an uphill struggle to change attitudes. Young people go home and their parents give them outdated views on what a certain set of qualifications leads to and what type of jobs are out there and we need to tackle that.”
Boles was confident that attempts to align education and skills are reaping benefits. “We have, for a long time, boasted about our reputation for academic education but we have rarely been able to similarly boast about our system for technical and vocational education.
"People look to Germany, Switzerland and Scandinavian countries for that, not from the UK and that is something we want to correct. We are mainly doing this through the apprenticeship programmes and reforms of technical and professional education in colleges where it links with the schools stuff.”
He was adamant that apprenticeships must not become elite-only programmes: “One of the major disagreements with the opposition during the election was their proposal that there shouldn’t be any more Level 2 apprenticeships, that all apprenticeships should be Level 3 and above.
"I am very opposed to that because, actually, Level 2 is a very important level because many do the Level 2 construction, hairdressing, business administration and so on and we don’t want people to feel there is a cap and they can’t go further.”
The Government’s commitment extends to the public sector, where a target that 2.3% of workers should be engaged in an apprenticeship has been imposed.
“Many people have a very old fashioned view of apprenticeships, but they are now discovering that you can do almost any job by way of an apprenticeship...
"We want all public sector organisations to be thinking about it in their recruitment policies as the public sector lags behind the private sector in apprenticeships. Ultimately, taxpayers’ money is paying for them, so it is a very important goal for the government to promote this opportunity as widely as possible.”
The government has high hopes for its apprenticeship policy and it does seem to make sense to put the employer as the very heart of the programme – imposing the levy is a way of reducing government spending while giving employers a vested interest in making the standards work.
Boles seemed confident that there will be enough data to show success by the end of this parliament. However, this seems a tall order given the nature of our fast-changing working environments – only time will tell.
A longer version of this interview originally appeared in
Training Journal .