With the school year ending last month and final-year students considering what to do next, a group of local authorities recently called for comprehensive reforms to the apprenticeship system. The
Industrial Communities Alliance — the all-party association of local authorities in the industrial areas of England, Scotland, and Wales — unveiled a new report that argued apprenticeships should be put on an equal footing with academic qualifications and echoed Tony Blair’s famous call ‘education, education, education’.
The report,
Vocation, Vocation, Vocation, makes six recommendations, namely that: apprenticeships and vocational training should be placed on an equal footing with academic qualifications; a national partnership should be established, bringing together employers, unions and Government to provide oversight on skills policy; the Apprenticeship Levy paid by larger employers should be remodelled as a skills levy to give them flexibility on how funds are spent; the ‘apprenticeship’ label should be reserved for higher-level training, to restore the mark of quality it used to provide; FE and skills funding in England should be devolved, initially to combined authorities; and an expert body should be established to advise on investment in skills.
Councillor Keith Cunliffe, national chairman of the Industrial Communities Alliance, said: “A robust apprenticeship system is vital to economic growth. This is especially true in our older industrial areas, which remain the heartland of British manufacturing, where the need for apprentice-level skills is greatest and where there are shortages in industry, construction and public services.
“The present system, including the levy on employers, is flawed. It inhibits smaller businesses, limits opportunities for younger apprentices, and provides qualifications that are not always understood by employers. Ministers need to signal that the era of more and more graduates is over, and that a wider range of high-quality skills and training is now the priority.”
The full 26-page report can be downloaded from the website:
here.