Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-69)
PROFESSOR EWART
KEEP, PROFESSOR
LORNA UNWIN,
AND MR
ALAN WELLS
OBE
21 FEBRUARY 2007
Q60 Chairman: The 16-18-years-olds
are different; they are not on benefit, are they, and they are
still children?
Mr Wells: The 16-18 argument,
it always seems to me, is a slightly bizarre thing. If you increase
the amount of time they have got to spend in education or training
against their will, if you know what I mean, then the people you
get at are broadly the people who have done poorly in the education
system and who want to get out of the education system. Giving
them more of seemingly what they have had already seems to be
a bit perverse, in those terms. I would want increasingly to encourage
young people to stay with learning, wherever that takes place,
and I do not think necessarily it takes place in schools, and
I would give them incentives to do that. I would be largely averse
to trying to make them do it, because I think the policing system
which has to grow up around making them do it, in the end, becomes
almost an industry of itself.
Chairman: I had a vested interest in
that question.
Q61 Paul Holmes: Can I ask Lorna
about apprenticeships. I had somebody in my constituency surgery
last week telling me how he left school at 15 with no qualifications,
did a seven-year apprenticeship to be a gas fitter, and we need
more of that today. Do Modern Apprenticeships fill that bill;
should we expand apprenticeships, in the way that Leitch suggests?
Professor Unwin: I am a great
believer in apprenticeships because I think that if you look at
apprenticeship as a model of skill formation, which has evolved
over time and is still internationally a very well-understood
model, if you go anywhere in the world they will have some form
of apprenticeship system and they will value it. I think it links
to Barry's point about 16-19-year-olds. If we want to try to ensure
that our young people stay within learning, to use Alan's phrase,
then apprenticeships are going to be a key way to do that. For
many young people, a decent apprenticeship is what they want because
they want to experience the workplace and they want to carry on
learning. The system we have at the moment, however, is a long
way from that. We have some superb apprenticeships, always have
had, in this country, in all sectors, but we have far too many
programmes which are labelled apprenticeship but which are work
placements. Again, it goes back to earlier points about targets,
the role of this system, which is to put far more emphasis on
placing people on these programmes rather than the actual quality.
At the moment, the apprenticeship numbers are dropping, particularly
on the Level 3 apprenticeship. The idea that we can go from the
numbers we have got now to half a million is very, very fanciful,
because I am not quite sure where the young people are going to
come from, but the main problem is where are the employers who
are going to provide proper apprenticeships. Lots of employers
will provide work placements, and my fear is you could easily
reach the half a million through that placement level.
Q62 Paul Holmes: One of the criticisms
has been that often, to people who have been in apprenticeships
and those other courses, the employer will say "Oh, don't
bother finishing that, we're going to employ you anyway and you
don't need to have the bit of paper to prove it".
Professor Unwin: That is happening
a lot, again, across most sectors actually, although very heavily
in the service sectors, and that is why we have such a low completion
and attainment rate in some sectors.
Q63 Chairman: Good apprenticeships
have good staying-on rates and completion, and the poor apprenticeships
have poorer performance; is that right?
Professor Unwin: Yes.
Q64 Chairman: Is there the research
to show that?
Professor Unwin: Yes. The completion
and attainment rate across apprenticeship at the moment hovers
at around 50%, but in some sectors it dips way below 50%, down
into the 20s%. That is linked partly to your point, that the apprentices
stay with the same employer but they are pulled off the programme,
so they have completed only part of it, and that is a big issue
in terms of individual progression opportunities, and so on. There
are other reasons for poor completion though; they are partly
to do with mismatch initially, where young people are sent to
the wrong sectors, to the wrong types of employment. That might
be because their basic education is too low and they struggle
to cope, but generally it is because of poor careers guidance
and cajoling by the training providers, again to meet the targets.
Q65 Chairman: I am really embarrassed
that we are pushing apprenticeship into such a small frame, because
it is very important to our inquiry.
Professor Keep: Many of our apprenticeships
at the moment would not be recognised as such in Europe because
they are at too low a level; they are at Level 2, not Level 3.
One of the scariest things in Leitch is that Leitch gives a sort
of throwaway remark which says, "Perhaps we could have more
apprenticeships if we made them less demanding and more flexible,"
because this is what I worry about. "Employers can pick and
choose but will have greater control over what is in them."
At the moment all that is in them is a minimum Level 2. There
is an NVQ Level 2, three Key Skills, and that is it, because many
of them never had technical certificates. If we make them even
more flexible, what I fear is an apprenticeship which will have
no Key Skills and individual units for NVQ Level 2 and some work
experience; almost going back to YTS but without the stipulated
13 weeks' "off the job" training. It will actually be
weaker than one-year YTS was in 1984. That is not a good way to
go.
Q66 Chairman: What is the core element
then of a proper apprenticeship?
Professor Keep: It varies. In
my imagination of a good, European standard apprenticeship, there
would be an element of some general education in it, because that
is the norm in Europe, it is not the case here. There would be
a technical certificate, if we are going to carry on using NVQs,
because they are not good at certifying underpinning skills and
knowledge. I would like to think a Level 3 NVQ, and certainly
a wide range of formalised efforts to create generic skills. I
am not sure whether I would certify them or not, but it would
go beyond the three Key Skills, so there would be team working,
there would be problem solving.
Professor Unwin: Importantly,
you need to have full employer involvement. What is happening
at the moment is that a lot of employers have apprentices but
they are not involved in the apprenticeship.
Q67 Paul Holmes: Will the Sector
Skills Council involvement solve that problem?
Professor Unwin: No.
Q68 Paul Holmes: How do we solve
it?
Professor Unwin: We reorganise
it completely so that, to be able to take on a young person, as
an employer, you have to prove that you understand what an apprenticeship
is and that you can provide the learning opportunities and the
proper work experience required. At the moment, we let anybody
take an apprenticeship.
Q69 Fiona Mactaggart: I want to ask,
if you use the Learning and Skills Council, does it help? I have
heard you talking about how the present system seems to encourage
what I conceive of as gaming, and the Learning and Skills Council
is supposed to make sure that things are strategic, and that is
not what I am hearing from you, and I wanted your view about how
it would work better, whether it is needed?
Professor Unwin: The Learning
and Skills Council, I think the remit is too broad. Originally,
when the FEFC (Further Education Funding Council) and the TECs
( Training and Enterprise Councils) were merged, and we had one
Funding Council for post-16 education and training, I think, at
that time, it was seen as a way to tidy up the messiness of the
funding system. One aim, certainly, was to get more equity, for
example, between further education and schools. I think, over
time, its remit has become very, very diverse and the structure
of the local Learning and Skills Councils has created bodies which
actually still appear to be in quite severe tension at local level,
with colleges, with schools. I think, to be fair to the Learning
and Skills Council, they have also had a problematic relationship
with the DfES and you could argue that the DfES, on the one hand,
has let the Learning and Skills Council take the blame perhaps
for things that are not of its making. So, on the one hand, it
is supposed to be quasi-independent and get on with the operation;
on the other hand, from what I can see, there is constant interference
in what it is doing. I think it is a very problematic body. A
key part of its aim is to deliver the targets that are set for
it, and it itself does not really have much say in whether those
are realistic or not.
Mr Wells: I will not duplicate
what Lorna has said. I think the answer is that there are some
real problems. Interestingly, I think the problems have been the
structure of it in the beginning, for instance, with lots of local
councils now seemingly, to some extent, replaced by regional bodies,
actually going back to what Barry said, massive staff mobility.
Frankly, you never speak to the same person twice, I have found.
Also, there is no collective history, so if you had worked on
something with the Learning and Skills Council they could not
remember it because that person has moved on to somewhere else.
I think then there is a real concern about who is responsible
for what. When I left the Basic Skills Agency I was told that
the DfES in future was going to be responsible for strategy, and
I have heard that certainly in every year of the last 30 years
I had a relationship with the DfES, so I would be pleased to see
that, although I think there are some real concerns about it.
Interestingly, of course, in Wales, where there was a similar
Council, it has been taken into the Welsh Assembly Government
now and they administer it. I am not sure that reform is the answer
any more. We need to try to find a funding system, which is simpler
and clearer and which makes lifelong learning a reality. Lifelong
learning means post-16 below the level of a degree, it does not
mean really lifelong learning and yet people do not see their
lives in that way themselves. I do not think it is entirely the
fault of the LSC; I think they have had some real struggles with
structure, and things like that, but I am not sure that it is
fit for purpose for the long term.
Professor Keep: I would agree
with that and I think the LSC does end up taking the blame for
lots of decisions and priorities which have been set for it and
then it lands up being the fall guy. The other problem is that
the LSC is simply a reflection of a broader problem, which is
that there is no other developed country in the world, that I
am aware of, with the possible exception of Singapore, where central
government makes so many of the decisions, designs so many of
the things and manages things to such a level of detail within
the education and training system. That centralisation itself
is a massive problem because it means that the people who are
designing and running the system can address the system only through
blanket, "one size fits all" interventions and through
universal targets, and they never get to understand the system
they are managing because they cannot, it is enormously complex,
see your diagram, and then there are all the individual employers
beneath that. They cannot get to grips with it, but they control
practically everything which happens in it, or the priorities
that they are in control of, I think, which happen in it. I think,
until central government learns to let go of it, of the way the
education and training system operates, and they move from rhetorical
partnership to some real partnership, which would mean sharing
a bit of power, however you configure the institutions, there
will continue to be this problem.
Chairman: I think that is not a bad note
on which to finish. Thank you very much. We have had a splendid
evidence session; we have learned a great deal. If you did not
mind, perhaps you would help us further with the inquiry by staying
with us, not right now, in case you panicked; and I am sorry that
we had a late start. Thank you.
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