Clarity on new Apprenticeships Levy needed, says Shadow Business and Education Minister
Speaking at the Apprenticeships Forum debate at the Labour Party Conference this morning, Gordon Marsden called for all those in a position of authority to champion apprenticeships.
Gordon Marsden said there was a paradox between the amount the Government has lauded the value of apprenticeships, and the small amount of support it has actually given them. There was no clarity from government on technical skills, he argued, which needed to be integrated more fully.
What’s more, significant sums of money would be cut in the short term under current plans, so it remained unclear “where the levy will end up”.
Brexit ought to be “a wakeup call” for the UK to ensure that workers were skilled and reskilled appropriately, he said.
The last Labour government had established a very strong narrative with its focus on “education, education, education”, he said. The new emphasis to this commitment now needed to be “progression, progression, progression”.
Alex Burrowes, strategy director from Alstom UK, said the organisation was a big supporter of apprenticeships, and was putting “our money where our mouth is” in providing them, but asked what assurances there were that the apprenticeships it was providing would actually be required.
Mr Marsden spoke about the changing nature of the workforce and stressed the need to expand capacity east and west, which he noted could be accomplished with things like high speed rail. The increasingly devolved nature of government, with more power being transferred to local authorities also meant attentions needed to shift accordingly, he said.
“Frankly, at this stage of the process, we should all be lobbying government hard” he said, arguing that the proposals Labour was bringing forward were made more sense than the Government’s.
“The previous government didn’t have an industrial strategy” he said, so what the government actually meant by its ‘industrial strategy’ would be crucial.
The Chartered Insurance Institute’s Daniel Pedley raised the question of what behaviours the levy would create in business. Many organisations were looking to “rebadge” their existing internal schemes as apprenticeships, he noted, raising the risk that little would actually be gained by the levy.
It would be “naïve” to assume a major new scheme could be introduced without employers trying to minimise its impact to them, he said. However, “if employers game the system, it is because they have been encouraged by the Government previously to game the system” he stated. He agreed that there were hard questions to ask, arguing that “these things cannot be micromanaged by Whitehall in the way that they used to be in the past.”
He questioned whether the balance between money being put into apprenticeships and money being put into training and reskilling had been assigned correctly: “We must put more money into retraining and reskilling people in the workforce.”
“We need to seize the issue of traineeships dramatically” he said. Ending up with a proliferation of new qualifications would be a “perverse outcome”, he added.
Speaking for The Open University, former MP Simon Hughes asked Mr Marsden how it could be ensured that Degree Apprenticeships complemented rather than disrupted existing Employer Sponsored Degrees.
Mr Marsden said taking the best examples of Employer Sponsored Degrees would be useful, adding that the key would be to construct funding formulas carefully. Ultimately, he said he wanted to see “crisper and clearer” guidelines from the Government.
Kate Shoesmith from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation welcomed Marsden’s “progression mantra” and asked how to ensure the quality of apprenticeships remained high when the Government was focused primarily on the number of people starting apprenticeships.
“There is a continuing, creative tension between the needs for employers in setting up apprenticeship schemes and the needs of the people taking them up” he said, and both sets of desires need to be accommodated. A series of skills needed to be provided in apprenticeships which would satisfy both partners, he said, believing decent credit accumulation processes would be key in doing so.
CEO of World Skills UK, Neil Bentley, asked whether a significant number of apprenticeships would be completed at higher levels.
Mr Marsden said getting the branding of apprenticeships right, making them attractive to both apprentices and employers, would be crucial. He stressed that this was not just a question of swanky PR; government ministers, mayors of combined authorities, people with influence all needed to be championing high quality apprenticeships, and the systems and processes which delivered them.
Responding to a question from Laura Bennett from Carer’s Trust asked about the accessibility of apprenticeships, Mr Marsden said he wanted to see a much stronger commitment in legislation to people with disabilities, noting how the results for those with disabilities who did take part in an apprenticeship scheme were often more impressive than for those without disabilities.
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