Sir Keir Starmer needs to be clearer on apprenticeships - Jayne Dowle
Apprenticeships should be on an equal footing with degrees, says Sir Keir Starmer, which sounds like a good idea, but is hardly a new one. It might have escaped the Prime Minister’s notice, but it’s already happening. Degree apprenticeships have been around for a decade.
If he spoke to a few students he might learn that degree apprenticeships are becoming more sought after than established honours courses, because they offer a way out of accumulating massive student debt.
Equivalent to a traditional degree, degree apprenticeships were launched in England in 2015, introduced by David Cameron’s government as part of reforms to vocational training, to combine on-the-job work with university-level study.
Any young person considering higher education – and their parents – will tell you that gaining a place on a degree apprenticeship is just as difficult, if not more so, than its academic equivalent.
Fighting to secure a degree apprenticeship with one of the many major engineering and construction companies, the police, City financial services firms such as J.P. Morgan, and prestigious law practices is tough, demanding excellent exam grades, and gruelling rounds of presentations and interviews.
It’s all about the money, and the guarantee of employment at the end. Successful degree apprenticeship applicants typically work for a basic salary and study to degree level at the same time, with the costs of tuition met.
I was speaking with headteachers of independent schools last week and they all said that whilst there is still some residual snobbery about degree apprenticeships amongst parents, young people are increasingly keen and will pull out all the stops. Clearly, the narrative that apprenticeships are only for disadvantaged and directionless youngsters is already out of date.
Meanwhile, ‘modern apprenticeships’, designed to get young people into work across a broad range of sectors, from the NHS to construction, were launched way back in the 1990s, as an improvement on the Youth Training Scheme (YTS) devised by the Thatcher government.
As they’ve evolved, they’ve become unpopular with employers, especially those with smaller firms, who cite the bureaucracy involved as a barrier to offering apprenticeships.
It’s reported that apprenticeship starts in the UK have dropped by 40 per cent since 2017, with the number of ‘Neets’, young people not in education, employment or training, now almost touching one million, or one in eight 16 to 24-year-olds across the UK.
If Starmer’s initiative is to bear fruit, he needs to be rather clearer about what his government is actually offering. Is he talking just about apprenticeships that are equivalent to a degree, or apprenticeships at post-16, a combination of both, or what?
He can talk about the figures; the government’s plans involve a £725m package of reforms to the apprenticeship system, of which £140m is earmarked for a scheme to connect young people with local employers.
As promised in the Budget, for small and medium-size enterprises, the government will also now fund the cost of apprenticeship training for under-25s. But employers will still be responsible for paying apprentices to at least the equivalent of the minimum wage.
The plan – the government promises – will bring about a new wave of what’s called foundation apprenticeships in sectors such as retail and hospitality.
If all this is about encouraging social mobility, the PM might like to pay a little more attention to his homework.
Also, if the government is going to push apprenticeships as the alternative to an academic degree, it makes more sense to focus on the parts of the country where there are likely to be more Neet youngsters than others.
In the Yorkshire and Humber region this year, 9.7 per cent, or almost one in 10, young people aged 16-24, were classified as Neet, so higher than the national average.
In the wake of its star driver Lando Norris being crowned the Formula 1 world champion last weekend, Starmer chose McLaren's production centre near Woking, Surrey to deliver the apprenticeship message.
However, it might have made better optics if he’d chosen a location in the North of England, such as South Yorkshire, where advance manufacturing firm Sheffield Forgemasters, for example, has recruited almost 300 apprentices to date on its award-winning apprenticeship scheme.
Perhaps next time Starmer decides to remind us that his whizz-bang apprenticeships idea is the key to social mobility, he needs to get mobile himself, and be clearer about what apprenticeships will bring for all our young people, whether they’re leaving school with a handful of GCSEs or considering alternatives to university.