Vandalism on apprenticeships

Phillipson is chopping down the tall poppies yet again - public services will be among the losers

The Government are completely reversing the direction of apprenticeships policy. Where we lengthened apprenticeships, they have cut the length of an apprenticeship to just eight months.

By abolishing the Institute of Apprenticeships and bringing control of standards in-house at the Department for Education, they are eroding independence and employer ownership.

And where we grew higher apprenticeships, they are planning to abolish most level 7 apprenticeships, which have been carefully built up over recent years. They say they want funding “rebalanced” to lower level apprenticeships.

For decades and decades, politicians have stood up and said that they wanted to make apprenticeships, and technical education generally, more prestigious. “Parity of esteem” they say - we have all heard that speech a million times.

The last Government tried to make that real. The number of people on higher apprenticeships went up from just over 3,000 in 2010 to 273,000 last year. That is a huge increase. So why is the government planning to reverse this?

A hole (and a mess) of their own making

The government are doing two big things that are bad for apprenticeship numbers.

First, the £25 billion increase in national insurance at the Budget is hitting hiring in the kind of entry level occupations that typically employ apprentices.

Second, the government is also planning to allow employers to take money out of apprenticeships.

In opposition the government talked about allowing employers to take 50% of their apprenticeship levy funds, and spend them on other things.

As the election drew closer this commitment seemed to be disappearing.

On 20 November the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State said this commitment was “currently being reviewed”

But just weeks later, on 9 December, the Secretary of State said the government was still committed to (and I quote) “50% flexibility for employers”.

In February the Skills Minister suggested to the FT that it would depend on how much funding the Department of Education receives at the spending review in June.

On 13th march this year I asked the Minister whether 50% was still the policy.

She said she would “get back” to me.

I think that’s pretty amazing. Total uncertainty for employers over more billions of their own money - I think it is pretty shocking that the government are so chaotic on this.

But whether it is 50%, or some other amount of apprenticeship funding that is to be moved, then other things equal that will not be good for apprenticeship numbers. That’s why they are looking for savings elsewhere.

Mind the gap

To address the funding gap that Ministers are creating with the Budget and their decisions on moving money out of the apprenticeship levy to other things, the Government are doing two things.

First, they are making apprenticeships shorter to prop up numbers.

But Stephen Evans, who heads up the Learning and Work Institute, has warned that “lowering standards” in this way, is a “mistake” and only gives the “false illusion” of increasing opportunity.

Second, they are also trying to redistribute money from level 7 apprenticeships into other things, and they have repeatedly refused to rule out doing the same thing to level 6 apprenticeships too. When I last asked a minister about this it was clear they were keeping their options open.

The level 7 apprenticeships that the Government are planning to axe account for about 9% of apprenticeship spending, and about 7% of all starts. They are not a huge part of the system, but they are a big part, and a lot of very good things will potentially be lost by abolishing them.

Over the last seven years, almost 123,000 people have started a level 7 apprenticeship—that is a postgraduate level apprenticeship—with 24,000 people starting one in the last full year of the Conservative Government. It was ramping up quickly.

Of those who answered the Department for Education’s own apprenticeship evaluation in 2023, 48% of level 7 apprentices were first-generation students; their parents had not been to university. They were the first generation in their family to get university-level postgraduate qualifications. They could go all the way to the top of the ladder using apprenticeships rather than going to university full time.

What we are losing - in the public sector

Restricting level 7 apprenticeships will disproportionately impact on public services. For example, nearly half of chartered management apprentices, who are nearly all at level 7, work in the public sector. Dan Lally, the head of skills and employability at Sheffield Hallam University, said level 7 restrictions will:

“disproportionately impact on public services…We are meeting vital skill gaps in disciplines such as Advanced Clinical Practitioner...these are NHS workers, civil servants and local authority employees. A high number of our L7 apprentices...come from the areas of highest deprivation”.

To give a specific example within public services, level 7 apprentices are absolutely central to the NHS’s own long-term workforce plan.

Last year, we saw the Government’s very disappointing decision to cancel the level 7 doctor apprenticeships. Aside from the fact that we have taken out a route to the top professions for a group of people who might otherwise not be able to access them, it means that there will be a shortfall of around 2,000 medical places a year by 2031. Students who have already started on the medical doctor apprenticeship have been left in limbo.

I’m worried they will do something similar to nurses. Again, the NHS workforce plan proposes to increase the total number of nurses by 170,000, so that the number reaches 550,000 by 2036. The plan set the ambition that 28% of nurses would come through the apprenticeship route—so about 50,000 of that 170,000. Of those, around a quarter—23%—of NHS nursing roles are at “Agenda for Change” band 7 or higher, which typically requires a master’s degree or equivalent. We would therefore expect around 11,000 of those extra nurses to be coming via level 7 apprenticeships.

Getting rid of them would create a big hole in the NHS’s workforce plans. These are all specialist nursing qualifications that we need, such as school nursing, health visiting, advanced clinical practice and community nursing.

Like the NHS, local government makes substantial use of level 7 apprentices, including for the extra town planners that the Government say are needed to deliver on their housing targets. Deborah Johnston, the deputy vice chancellor of London South Bank University, says:

“Over half of the employers we work with…on level 7 apprenticeships are local authorities. Our apprentices enable councils to deliver projects in the wake of increased demand and reintroduced mandatory housing targets. The suggestion that, as employers, local authorities should step in and pay for the level 7 apprenticeships themselves is fanciful.”

What we are losing - in the private sector

Outside the public sector, the professions are also worried. The Institute of Chartered Accountants has said that axing level 7 apprenticeships will lead to work leaving the UK altogether. It says that

“removing Level 7 apprenticeship funding will mean that fewer UK training roles are created. Instead, organisations are likely to turn to offshoring to replace UK training roles”.

The Chartered Management Institute states, of its profession, that

“cutting funding for level 7 apprenticeships would risk creating gaps in leadership and technical expertise at a time when business and the public sector need them most.”

I have been contacted directly by firms that are worried about the abolition of the solicitor apprenticeship, which is a great way into the law, particularly for people from less privileged backgrounds, but more generally for people who do not want to run up a large amount of debt at university and instead want to earn and learn. One firm that is really worried about this—Bolt Burdon Kemp—told me:

“This will really impact social mobility into sectors like law, accountancy, and consulting. The traditional route into law is expensive and therefore without the apprenticeship scheme many would not be able to afford to do so. We also believe it will have a wider detrimental impact on the reputation of apprenticeships.”

That is surely right: by putting what might seem like the top of the pyramid on the system, we add to the prestige of the whole system.

British Airways used to talk about the “halo effect” of Concorde: it changed the airline’s whole brand and the way it was seen more generally.

Level 7 apprenticeships, as well as being useful and remunerative in their own right, also change the way apprenticeships are seen, in a way that all politicians have wanted for decades.

Similarly, Attwells Solicitors says:

“Reducing funding to level 7 apprentices runs the risk of removing opportunities into professions where a qualification equivalent to a master’s is mandatory”.

The firm adds:

“Reducing funding for level 7 apprentices will likely impact diversity and social mobility in professional careers such as Law…Apprenticeships help break down barriers into not only Law but all career paths which could be inaccessible to young people without them”.

Indeed, many of the areas where we currently have level 7 apprentices are things we are short of nationally.

That is why the Campaign for Learning has called for a skills immigration worker test before defunding level 7 apprenticeships, so that we do not simply go from investing in British workers to importing workers from other countries to fill the hole.

That is exactly the same point as was made by the Institute of Chartered Accountants: if we do not invest in people here, the work leaves, or we have to bring people in from elsewhere.

Conclusion

It is a big mistake to cull level 7 apprenticeships to fill a gap that the Government are creating through their own policies. Not only are those apprenticeships vital across the public sector, but they are a vital way into the professions for people who will otherwise struggle to enter. They are the capstone of the drive to make apprenticeships truly prestigious and to make them ladders that people can use to get all the way to the top. No wonder the Chair of the government’s own Social Mobility Commission has warned the reforms could be bad for social mobility.

It’s particularly frustrating because they have taken a lot of time and effort to set up, and a lot of hard labour has gone into them. Some of them have been real labours of love, particularly from professions where they think, “We do not want us all to be from very privileged backgrounds. We want someone who grew up on a council estate still to be able to be a solicitor, or to be whatever they want to be.”

We have gone through the grind of years of standards setting and years of trying to mobilise the sector to create these opportunities, and we have got some people’s hopes up. We have even got people on to doctor apprenticeships and then kiboshed them. It would be tragic if the Government really do what they have said they will do.

If you are reading this in Downing Street: it’s not too late to think again!