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The number of people undertaking apprenticeships has increased significantly during the current Parliament and the number of young people doing an apprenticeship of a year or more has increased from 46% to 97%. Nonetheless participation by 16 to 19 year-olds remains low. The central challenge for the Government's reform programme is to drive up the quality of provision while ensuring that more employers commit to providing apprenticeships for young people.
Good quality apprenticeships provide real benefits for apprentices, those who employ them and the country as a whole. Apprenticeships that do not offer substantial training and do not have a positive impact on income for those who complete the apprenticeship should not receive Government funding. Level 2 apprenticeships which comply with these principles should be retained. Better quality destination data is needed to allow young people to make comparisons between different apprenticeships and assess the likely impact on income.
Apprenticeships offer excellent opportunities for young people and should not be seen as a second class option because of cultural preferences for academic routes. Part of the solution lies with schools, which need to provide their pupils with good quality careers advice, including information on apprenticeships, as well as worthwhile experiences of the workplace. There are insufficient incentives for schools to provide good quality advice and work experience to their pupils. We recommend that the Government urgently review the incentives for schools to provide effective careers advice and recognise that the mantra of "trusting schools" does not work when the interests of schools and young people are not aligned. We also recommend that the Government look at reviving the Young Apprenticeship programme or developing a model that replicates its core academic and work-based components.
We congratulate the Government on listening to employers and providers and abandoning its initial proposals for apprenticeship funding reform. New proposals must be brought forward swiftly to minimise uncertainty over how apprenticeship funding will be managed.
As the Trailblazer scheme comes to an end there is work to be done to ensure proper oversight and management of standards in the longer term. We recommend that the Government review, and come forward with proposals to strengthen, the involvement of SMEs in the Trailblazer scheme and set out its expectations about what will happen to apprenticeship standards following the conclusion of the Trailblazer scheme.
Traineeships are still in their infancy, and it is too early to tell whether or not they are effective in assisting young people who might otherwise end up not in education, employment or training to continue into employment or further learning. The Government should provide greater clarity about the purpose of traineeships and what the success criteria for the programme are.
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