Apprenticeships

1. Summary: This submission comments on the funding arrangements for apprentices, role of the NAS, the quality of apprenticeship qualifications in the Cultural Heritage and sets out the impact which funded apprenticeships have had in the museums in the South West which hosted them in 2009-11.

2. Eleven Creative Apprenticeships have been employed in museums across the South West of England in 2010-11, using a combination of funding: funding distributed by Creative and Cultural Skills (CCS) on behalf of the Museums Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), together with funding from Renaissance South West. Renaissance South West helped to bring together the participating employers and training providers and co-ordinated a network for the apprentices, the training providers and the employers. As part of the programme a comprehensive evaluation was conducted with the apprentices, the employers and the training providers via in-depth telephone interviews.

How successful has the National Apprenticeship Service been since it was created in April 2009? Has it helped bridge the gap between the two funding Departments? (BIS and Department for Education)

3. Our experience of the NAS centres around it’s service listing apprenticeship vacancies for employers. Our college partners helped the participating employers to access this service and this worked well. By themselves, the listings on the NAS website would not have filled the vacancies we were involved in (awareness of apprenticeships in our sector is low; candidates were more likely to pick up on the opportunities through local press / council web site. However the NAS listing ensured clear information about the vacancies was readily available.

The FE training providers we worked with seemed to be well plugged in to the NAS.

Is the extra funding promised by the Coalition Government necessary for apprenticeships? How can this funding best be spent?

4. The additional funding is needed given that unemployment rates among those aged16-24 according the ONS reached 1.02 million in November 2011.

Funding could be spent in the following ways:

- Fully or partially funding apprenticeship wages in sectors, like Cultural and Heritage, where awareness and uptake of apprenticeships is still relatively low. This would lead to greater employer uptake, with a knock on, significant impact on workforce diversity and impact in terms of ensuring a more appropriate match of skills, aptitudes and qualifications to job role. This investment would enable employers to explore creating more financially sustainable job roles; for example, since this funded apprenticeship programme has come to an end some employers have gone on to employ their former apprentices in roles that relate to income generation, enabling the new job role to continue. Without the initial full funding, these employers said they would have been unable to take part. Therefore initial funding is a prerequisite to enable longer-term sustainability.

- Fully funding the qualification element, regardless of apprentice age. The move towards only 50% funding for 19-24 year olds is putting apprenticeships further out of reach of employers.

- More money and resources are needed to advocate the benefits of apprenticeships to Cultural Heritage employers, to engage them into a new way of working.

- Funding could be spent on further ensuring qualifications are ready, fit for purpose and that their delivery is of the required standard. Particularly in 2009-10, qualifications did not always appear to be complete or user friendly. This has improved in 2011-12, but in particular there seem to be variations in the nature of information on content and delivery of the qualification, the ways it is shared with employers, and adherence to timetables for sharing and communicating this with employers. We experienced quite significant variations between different training providers.

- Money is needed to implement lessons learnt from the 2009-11 Creative Apprenticeship Programme in order to ensure that future apprenticeship in the Cultural and Heritage sector are of the highest standard. With further awareness of apprenticeships safeguards are needed to ensure consistent quality of the qualification, and that more employers could be brought on board to take part.

· Are apprenticeships of a high enough quality to benefit apprentices and their employers? Should there be more Level 3 apprenticeships?

6. Our evaluation leads one to conclude that there is a demand for advanced (level 3) level qualifications. For most of the museums involved, hosting an apprentice had a long-term impact in terms having people who held relevant practical skills and in some cases significant organisational change was experienced. The apprentices to reported long-term impacts on themselves such as being more confident, skilled and qualified and in some cases more engaged with their local community. However, the evaluation also showed that more coordination and more quality control of the qualification aspect is needed. This shows that the Creative Apprenticeship programme was of a very high quality, however improvements are needed in order to maximise the positive aspects for both the sector and the apprentices involved.

7. According to a report published by LSC (learning Skills Council) in 2009 the top ten sectors for apprenticeships were Construction, hairdressing, engineering, customer service, business administration, children's care learning and development, hospitality and catering, electrotechnical, health and social care, vehicle maintenance and repair. The Cultural and Heritage sector does not feature in the top ten, it seems that apprenticeships seem to be concentrated in a few sectors. If this trend continues it means that the Cultural and Heritage sector, one that is already typified by employees who hold post- graduate qualifications will become increasingly exclusive to those that have the means to pursue such as route. More funding and more apprenticeships are needed in the Cultural and Heritage sector to diversify its workforce in order to insure that Cultural and Heritage institutions are ‘fit for purpose’ in relation to the communities they serve and that it’ workforce have the correct skills to ensure they are sustainable organisations

· Is the current funding arrangement for training of apprentices of 100% for 16-18 year olds and 50% for 19-24 year olds appropriate?

8. There appears, anecdotally, to be a preference for recruiting older apprentices in our sector, Cultural and Heritage. This may be because this sector has traditionally employed more graduates and post-graduates, who are older (whilst not necessarily possessing appropriate skills for changing job roles). It seems that making the shift towards new entry routes such as apprentices will be likely to start with older recruits. Therefore, cutting funding of the qualification for older apprentices is likely to have a disproportionately negative effect on employer engagement and uptake.

3 February 2012