That the economy has a skills and productivity problem has been one of the recurring themes of 2022. Rishi Sunak has in the past noted that employers spend only half the European average on training their workers. Since 2005, according to the Learning and Work Institute, business investment in skills has fallen by 28%. Such lamentable statistics, it is widely accepted, have contributed to Britain’s historically anaemic growth figures. They also represent a grievous waste of potential in relation to millions of young people entering the workforce. Yet, despite years of government rhetoric regarding apprenticeships in particular, and the introduction of the apprenticeship levy on bigger businesses in 2017, nothing seems to change.
Amid multiple recent reports delivering grim news about the economy, one study published this month stands out. Entitled “No Train, No Gain”, and produced by EDSK – an education thinktank – it finds that almost half of young people signed up for apprenticeships subsequently abandon them. Many of those who drop out, the study’s authors report, become terminally disillusioned with what they are being offered.
It is not hard to see why. In Germany and other comparable countries, firms offering apprenticeships must conform to detailed national guidelines. But here businesses appear free to offer as much, or as little, training as they choose. The independent Richard Review, commissioned by the David Cameron government a decade ago, insisted that apprenticeships “need to be high quality training with serious kudos and tangible value”. But the EDSK report finds that government-funded “apprentices” are being hired for dogsbody jobs such as making tea and answering phones in offices, or greeting guests in hospitality. In jobs where meaningful training can take place, more than half of apprentices say they are not allocated the mandatory one day a week off the job to receive training. Some “can go weeks, sometimes months, without receiving any training from a mentor or industry expert”.
The report’s authors recommend the establishment of a national apprenticeship inspectorate, replacing Ofsted. This would enforce new mandatory requirements, such as 200 face-to-face training hours each year. Obviously low-skill roles, they note, are frequently being used as a cover by unscrupulous employers to pay less than the minimum wage. They should be taken out of the apprenticeship system altogether.
The government, which has pledged to improve the quality of training schemes, should take note both of this damning study and of its proposals. Gillian Keegan, the new secretary of state for education, herself served an apprenticeship in Kirkby, near Liverpool. She can thus claim first-hand knowledge of their value, when properly delivered. For far too many young people, that is not the case. Haphazard regulation and conceptual confusion is tarnishing the apprenticeship brand, and making a mockery of talk about investing in a high-skill, high-wage economy.
For some reason, Britain seems to have developed a chronic problem when it comes to funding, nurturing and according due prestige to technical and vocational skills. Ministers like to boast about the country’s “world-class” university system. But if the country is eventually to find an exit route from economic stagnation, it will need as well to develop the potential of young people who do not take a formal academic route after school. At the moment, they are being badly let down.
