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Our report is yet another milestone on a very long route. As the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, told us during the recent debate on the Address, the shortage of skills in British industry was first investigated by a Select Committee back in 1868. Since then, many other parliamentary committees have continued the search for solutions to this seemingly very British problem. One explanation was offered by Professor Martin Wiener in his fascinating study, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit: 1850—1980. England may have been the cradle of the new industrial age but, alas, Professor Wiener argued, its bucolic myths and innate conservatism esteemed the gentleman above the entrepreneur, the landowner above the factory owner, and thus contributed to our economic decline.
At the start of the 1980s, that academic critique was shared with a mass audience through Granada television programmes broadcast in peak time. As a Granada producer at the time, I remember well the angry chorus of agreement tinged with real sadness at the eclipse of traditional industries that had once made Britain the workshop of the world. Along with millions of others, I shared that sense of loss, having served a five-year apprenticeship as a marine fitter in a Clydeside shipyard now long gone. It is worth recalling what it was about those lost crafts that meant so much to many skilled working people.
We may have left school at 15, but apprenticeship was a rite of passage to adulthood and the status of a time-served tradesman. What we missed in schooling was compensated for by the disciplines engrained by skilled manual work. As an engineer, for instance, you would grind away to one-thousandth of an inch until the job was just right, knowing that if you got things wrong it would not work and, worse, it might break and do someone damage. With that came a sense of responsibility and, in heavy industry, teamwork—and, perhaps in time, leadership. Back then a good apprenticeship was the foundation of many successful careers to the highest levels of industry.
Of course, the education system has changed radically since then and mostly for the better. For instance, when I left school in the 1950s, only one pupil in 20 went on to university, mostly boys. Today by contrast the status of women is transformed and nearly half of all young people go on to higher education. That is as
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Elitists still claim that in higher education more means worse, but I would argue that their overly academic view fails to appreciate the range of expertise required in a changing economy or indeed to value properly the natural aptitudes, emotional intelligence and social skills of many people now excluded from worthwhile employment. As a former visiting professor of media studies at Stirling University, I am familiar with the mockery of so-called Mickey Mouse degrees, but our record for graduate employment was very good—and there was nothing Mickey Mouse about the profits that my company used to make, producing “The Disney Club” in Scotland.
In recent decades, the growth in service industries and financial services has more than compensated for the loss of traditional manufacturing jobs, yet too many have been left behind as their options have narrowed with the decline in unskilled jobs, with hundreds of thousands of young people not in education, employment or training—the so-called NEETs—or living on disability allowances. The social benefits of putting significant numbers of these youngsters into apprenticeships could be considerable.
It is worth noting that almost half of all jobs now require computer skills and that the proportion of jobs needing less than one month’s training has fallen to just 19 per cent. We can see ever tougher challenges ahead in the rapidly globalising economy. All this gives renewed urgency to the historic parliamentary search for a solution to Britain’s skills shortages, in particular to proposals for a revivified system of apprenticeship, recruitment and training as outlined in our Select Committee report. The noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, in his characteristically fair-minded introduction, summed up our continuing concerns very well, and I wish only to underline some issues and ask some questions.
Can we trust government departments to deliver on recent promises? The former Department for Education and Skills and its predecessors had a pretty poor record of innovating and nurturing vocational education and apprenticeship schemes in particular. Recruited as they are largely on academic prowess, one fears that there might have been a cultural aversion among senior civil servants to giving vocational training its proper priority. Of course, the same may also be true of Ministers, very few of whom have now climbed up from the shop floor. Whatever the reasons, our concern, as the most recent Select Committee to address the issue, is that having so many unskilled young people with restricted employment opportunities is one reason why productivity in Britain still cannot match that of other advanced economies.
We suggest, as we heard from my noble friend and Professor Lord Layard, that the main route to skills below graduate level should be through apprenticeships combining work and learning. I therefore welcome the recently published Education and Skills Bill which, at long last, raises the educational leaving age to 18 and establishes new rights for young people to take up
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As I understand it, a tripartite structure will be put in place. First, A-levels remain as the principal academic route to higher education. Secondly, new diplomas are being introduced, and thirdly, there will be work-based apprenticeships. The new diplomas are being designed to bridge the gap between academic and vocational studies. Diplomas in languages, humanities and science will, it seems, be largely academic. However, most are vocational—construction industry careers, for instance—yet they will be based mostly on classroom learning. I hope that we can be reassured by the Government that the introduction of diplomas will not leave apprenticeships branded by vested academic interests as the inferior low-status option. What prompts that particular concern is evidence that we took suggesting that schools, with their laudable academic aspirations, sometimes do not appreciate the importance of apprenticeships to many young people and to our economy, and that teachers, consequently, fail to promote apprenticeships as an attractive career option.
I look for assurance that the new diplomas, with their classroom bias, will not be allowed to become a vehicle which takes away either esteem or resources from apprenticeships. That would be particularly damaging since the world-class skills that the noble Lord, Lord Leitch, seeks to encourage in his report, will surely require many more young people to progress through the apprenticeship route into higher education, as they aspire to greater professional expertise.
Our committee’s conclusion that apprenticeships should be the main route to skills below graduate level implies that there should indeed be a shift in the balance of resources away from other post-16 provision in favour of apprenticeships. Since the Government's response to our report did not address this matter, perhaps the Minister can today.
Our committee also expressed concern about the lack of encouragement given to apprenticeships through careers advice in schools. The new Education and Skills Bill intends to transfer careers responsibilities to local authorities. That will be most welcome if we can anticipate that this switch will lead to more impartial information, advice and guidance being given to young people in the future, particularly about apprenticeship opportunities.
The Bill also strengthens the duty of local authorities to collaborate with partners in the provision of education and training for 14 to 19 year-olds. The most important local partners, in our view, will be local employers. They should be at the centre of all apprenticeship provision. Additionally, I support the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, in saying that we believe apprenticeship funding should be routed through employers, who could then subcontract off-the-job training and other services which they cannot themselves provide—subject, of course, to appropriate regulation and supervision.
It was encouraging to read last week that the Institute of the Motor Industry wanted to double the number of its apprentices over the next five years. Retail motor businesses at present have more than 11,000 vacancies—
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The positive counterpart to that problem of skills shortages is on the supply side—the reported demand from young people for high-quality apprenticeship places, with no fewer than 200 applicants for every apprenticeship place offered by BT. This shows the potential for well planned progress based on employer demand. Already, 130,000 employers offer apprenticeships in 180 different lines of business. I hope that the CBI and other industry bodies will encourage companies to create even more training opportunities, particularly for young people from ethnic minorities who are not well served at present. A wider range of opportunities for young women would also be welcome. At departmental level, government should insist on more comprehensive monitoring and reporting to strengthen the statistical base required for better delivery across this field.
That said, I applaud the relative success of the Government’s policy on apprenticeship in the past decade. Since 1997 the number of young people in apprenticeships has trebled to about 250,000 in England. Completion rates, which were such a problem, are also improving. We should note the energetic promotion of the skills agenda by the Secretary of State, John Denham, at the new Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills. Particularly welcome was his announcement in November that funding would be made available for the 400,000 apprenticeship places in England targeted by my noble friend Lord Leitch in his review of skills.
A departmental review of the existing apprenticeship programme is under way on the scope for reform and the need for any legislative change. Echoing the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, I am sure that your Lordships would be interested in any “preview of the review” that could be offered to us today.
In conclusion, I hope that the report of the Select Committee on Economic Affairs will be judged to have made a useful contribution to the continuing debate on this issue of national importance and, indeed, to the forthcoming apprenticeship Bill.
8.36 pm
Lord Sheldon: My Lords, I am happy to follow my noble friend Lord Macdonald, who spoke about his five-year apprenticeship, because I also did an apprenticeship but many years earlier than he did. I do not think that mine was as good as his. The important thing is that a higher number of people took those apprenticeships. Not only the quantity but the quality was greater than we have now although we should bear in mind the way in which these matters have changed over the years.
The noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, rightly dealt with the Bill to reform the apprenticeship committee. That will be very valuable. I am not sure that it will deal with most of the matters that we had in mind but we shall need to examine it with care. He mentioned the nine reports that we had produced, all of which were unanimous. Much of that success is due to the role that he played as chairman of the committee.
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The noble Lord, Lord Layard, mentioned the very important combination of the learning and skills experience. It is not only learning that you require but skills as well. The ability to combine them is enormously important and has been very much underplayed over recent years.
The number of apprenticeships has declined greatly. In 1988, it was 341,000; in 1996, it fell to 174,000—half the figure that it was only eight years previously. It has risen a bit—215,000 is the latest figure, but I think that it is probably a bit more than that now. There was a very big drop-out rate and it is important to tackle this.
At question 354 of the evidence, Sir Digby Jones, as he then was—now the noble Lord, Lord Jones of Birmingham—said:
“We have a lot of apprentices who do not complete the course ... If employers were better engaged with schools, let alone colleges, so that it would be a natural progression, it would be seen as part of an education system and not something that is completely divorced from it, that would probably help”.
He is quite right in that very useful contribution. It is important to have a link between employers and schools. The education system must take account of that.
The major difference that I had in mind was from my experience and that of the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, when we went to Germany and saw the apprenticeship system there, which was very different from what we have in this country. In the United Kingdom we have a system of apprenticeships that average about one year, and only half of apprentices complete them. In Germany, the apprenticeships last for three years and are important decisions for employers and apprentices; some 75 per cent complete their three-year apprenticeships. There are great expectations and subsequent employment is pretty well guaranteed. In the United Kingdom, such employment is more limited and frequently there is none at all. In Germany, we saw people with great enthusiasm and expectation during their period of apprenticeship. They had great hopes as to what they were going to achieve—quite different from the experience of the sort of people whom we would see in a similar situation here.
There is no record kept in the United Kingdom, as compared with Germany. In paragraph 44 on page 18 of our report we state:
“There was strong competition for apprenticeships in the DÃ1/4sseldorf department store we visited; this was symptomatic of increasing difficulties in Germany in providing sufficient places to meet the demand from young people”.
We saw those people and they were impressive and felt that they had a great future ahead of them. Our report continues:
“Currently, around half the age group in Germany enters apprenticeship but often only after a considerable waiting period. We learned that it was normal for young people to improve their qualifications in fulltime further education in order to be considered for an apprenticeship; the average age on entry is now 18 years. The apprentices we met in both the hotel and department store saw apprenticeship as the gateway to further career advancement; they appreciated the support and training provided by the company, less so the courses provided at the vocational school they attended”.
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That was very important for those people and we do not have that situation here. Apprentices felt that they were successful and had achieved what they wanted. Apprentices here do not have anything like the same feeling of achievement and of the wide opportunity that lay ahead for those in Germany.
We cannot copy Germany, of course, but we should have a role in encouraging and possibly in determining the role of apprenticeships. There needs to be in the Government some responsibility for apprenticeship that does not exist at present. Neither the Department for Education and Skills nor the Learning and Skills Council have a proper attitude to this. There is a division between the two departments; they collect information, but different kinds of information. The important thing is that there are no data on the number of people seeking apprenticeships and we do not know how many are doing so. We do not know how many people are being employed in apprenticeships. We do not know how many businesses employ apprentices. This is fundamental information that we should have in order to deal with these matters.
Perhaps I may quote from paragraphs 75 and 76 of the report. It states:
“It is clear that many young people who have the capacity to benefit from apprenticeship fail to find a place. There should be an effective clearing house where all apprenticeship places are advertised and through which young people can apply—as for university entry. It should be operated by the LSC ... The DfES has neglected to compile any record of young people who unsuccessfully seek an apprentice place and keeps no central record of employers seeking apprentices. No reliable data are compiled on prior qualifications. Urgent measures are needed to ensure both the production of proper statistics on apprenticeship and also effective monitoring”.
That is absolutely essential here—to know what is happening and to be able to meet requirements that follow from this. We hear from the response that the review is to look at ways of improving data on apprenticeships. That is pretty modest, is it not? I was hoping that it would be much clearer than that, and perhaps we might hear about that from my noble friend when he replies.
8.45 pm
Baroness Sharp of Guildford: My Lords, I join others in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, and his committee for producing this excellent report on a very important topic. Rightly, it was critical of the Government for their failure to develop a set of coherent initiatives and to carry them through consistently and with consistency over time. I agree very much with the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, that the answers that we have had from the Government in their response are very disappointing. In most cases, they merely repeat the initiatives that the Government are already making and in no way respond to the criticisms in the report.
At this point, I declare an interest. I am a member of the Guildford College Corporation, which is involved in work-based learning and, in that sense, in training apprentices.
At present, apprenticeship is in essence, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Layard, training on the job, which combines earning and learning with a
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In 1975, there were 400,000 apprentices in the UK, many of them on five-year or even seven-year apprenticeships. By the early 1990s, this number had dropped to fewer than 100,000, and that led to the introduction of the modern apprenticeship programme. This was to be a three-year post-16 training programme, rather like the one in Germany mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Sheldon, leading to a vocational qualification judged to be equivalent to A-level. Sadly, this proved to be too difficult for most of those entering the new programme and, in 2000, the intermediate, or level 2 NVQ, qualification was introduced. Today, of the 250,000 studying for modern apprenticeships, three-fifths are doing the one-year level 2 training and only 100,000 the full three-year level 3 training, in spite of the fact that, as came through very clearly in the evidence received by the committee, most commentators agree that the level 3 qualification is required to confer full craftsman status and that it is at this level of skilled craftsman or technician that Britain’s key skills shortages lie.
Why do we find ourselves in this position? The committee pinpointed a large number of issues but perhaps I may start with the two identified by the noble Lord, Lord Layard. The first is the fact that for the past 40 or 50 years the secondary school curriculum in this country has failed to interest or motivate some 50 per cent of young people. In consequence, far too many leave school having been turned off learning and have a totally inadequate command of literacy and numeracy to be able to join the world of work. The Tomlinson proposals for an overarching diploma that offered a mixing and matching of academic and vocational qualifications was supposed to be the answer to this, and Mike Tomlinson worked with a group of experts for two to three years to try to come up with the right answer. Sadly, the Government rejected those proposals and instead have chosen to introduce a separate diploma stream, with specialist diplomas that will be rolled out from September this year and which will provide an alternative practical and vocational option to the GCSE/A-level route.
At present, it is not at all clear where apprenticeships lie in relation to those diplomas. In his evidence to the committee, the Minister implied that apprenticeships were a third and different route to qualification. Surely it would be logical to align the two and to make, say, a level 2 diploma the requisite entry point to an apprenticeship. I would like the Minister to clarify the relationship between apprenticeships as the Government see them now and the diploma system that they are introducing.
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Side by side with the failures of the school system have been the failures of careers guidance. The committee points out that neither teachers nor young people and their parents know what is involved in apprenticeships these days. Many of them assume that apprenticeships are for those who fail GCSEs, yet, when they learn more about them, many young people and their parents are very interested and like the thought of being able to earn and learn and gain substantive qualifications. I pay tribute to the programme being put forward by the Edge group in promoting apprenticeships. Its advertisements on television are opening up the minds of many parents about what is involved in apprenticeships. We need to see more of that kind of initiative.
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