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In 2005-06 there were 99,000 completions, and a similar number is expected when the 2006-07 data are published in April. The former wide differences in completion rates between sectors and age groups have been largely eradicated, and as I have said, we are on track to achieving similar completion rates to the best in Europe over the next few years. The number of advanced apprenticeships has fallen since 2001 while the general numbers at level 2 have grown. That is plainly not welcome, and I will not say that it is. We need to bend our efforts to doing something serious about it. However, the number of young people actually completing the full advanced apprenticeship framework has grown from around 17,000 in 2001-02 to some 33,000 in 2006-07. I take heart from that because I am more concerned with outturn data than input data, although there is usually a relationship between the two. I want to know what we have achieved at the end of it all.
I do not want to put words into her mouth, but the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, said that there is still not enough at the advanced level. That argument has some merit, but the truth is also that the balance between the higher and non-higher levels seems to reflect what employers are saying they want from the
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My noble friend Lord Sheldon was right to detail again the differences between the German and UK systems, and I agree that the anecdotal evidence suggesting that there is greater demand for apprenticeships in the United Kingdom is not as good as having hard data. That is plainly needed and I accept the point. Statistics and monitoring are indispensable and they must be more effective. Overall, there is not a bad story to tell, but the Government and the country cannot afford any complacency, so we aim to do better in a number of areas.
In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, the commitment across government is to reduce bureaucratic burdens. I am a compulsive deregulator by instinct, an attribute which I believe is shared by others, but it is plain that we need to make sure that burdens are wholly proportionate to what they are intended to achieve and do not go beyond that. As I said before, we need to increase the number of advanced apprenticeships. Many employers see their needs being met predominantly at level 2, and that is why apprenticeships at that level have grown since they were introduced in the early part of the decade. For example, Sir Terry Leahy of Tesco has made it clear that that is a level of skill, if properly achieved, that is essential for his business. However, even in these sectors advanced apprenticeships will offer excellent work-based preparation for supervisory roles and more specialised functions. We are working to persuade more employers and learners of their benefits.
The public sector, I am sad to say, although it accounts for 20 per cent of the workforce, still provides only 10 per cent of apprenticeships. We will be working hard to make sure that those figures are changed. We are working with our partners to improve participation rates and to broaden the range of occupations available to women, black and ethnic minorities, and to under-represented groups where it is not only numbers, but also peculiar distributions that we need to overcome. Men are very dominant in some areas while women are almost the only workers in others; hairdressing is an example of that. We aim to ensure that advice and guidance provision for young people in the new advancement service will give them and adults a more comprehensive picture of the range of career options open to them. This will be dealt with in the review. Indeed it has to be addressed, as the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, said in his introductory speech.
A sentiment also expressed in the debate this evening, and one that I feel as well, is that the school culture itself needs to change. It has been so focused on higher education that it has not hit some of these other targets. I have begun to wonder whether the very many hours that pupils in schools spend with specialist subject teachers much more attuned to working out where the higher education options in their specialist subjects may be is proportionate when
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In order to make that work, the Connexions Service needs to be improved. It is currently going through a process of transition and discussions are taking place in all local authority areas to determine future delivery arrangements for services that are funded by the Connexions grant. A transitional fund is in place to assist with reasonable costs. It has features that are quite popular, including its award- winning national website and its helpline, but there is plainly more to do if people are to understand the options that are open to them.
We aim to increase significantly the number of apprenticeships available in order to meet the challenges set out in World Class Skills and the fulfilment of this ambition is dependent on more high-quality employer places becoming available. However, I am confident that employers will want to participate as they become more aware of the benefits to their businesses of apprenticeship. This leads me to a cardinal point: the best advocates of apprenticeships are those businesses involved in the programme. The Government are very fortunate to have the assistance of the Apprenticeship Ambassadors Network, led by Sir Roy Gardner, in promoting apprenticeships to employers of all sizes.
It is in this spirit of seeking to achieve greater things that I welcome the report, which will help guide the further discussion and work which is inevitably needed. The response from the Government so far is of course not the final word; they presented their response in early October but there is much more to do. The Government agree unreservedly with the report in reaffirming the benefits and value of apprenticeships and we have outlined a number of actions being taken which relate to some of the recommendations made in the report.
Let me mention one or two of the recommendations. The clearing house system for apprenticeships, which was one of the key parts of the report, is very important. We are trialling such a service and the national rollout will begin in 2008—a practical response to a very practical proposal. In this context it seems to have a parallel to UCAS: it is the beginnings of something which will place people alongside the opportunities that should be there. Why should that not be the case in this area as it has been in higher education?
It is for those reasons that I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, that, like everyone else, I greatly admired her speech. I thank her for it and I look forward to her speaking often. The late Lord Garden was a remarkable man who often gave me a very hard day when I was a Foreign Office Minister; I hope that I am none the worse for that. The noble Baroness’s reach across higher education and further education brings much knowledge, and that reflects the knowledge that the FE sector has. The sector skills councils should draw on that knowledge
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The report asserts that too much emphasis has been placed on the quantity of apprenticeships and not enough on quality and subsequent destinations. For the past six years at least the focus of our attention has shifted towards quality rather than numbers. There has been a rigorous inspection regime; there has been a quality assurance arrangement; and thorough contact management, funding changes and incentives are being used among the mechanisms to drive up quality. The result has been seen principally in the proportions of those who complete the full-time apprentice framework.
Rigorous inspection has also meant that we have reduced the numbers of poorly performing providers. You cannot have a proper inspection regime unless you live with the consequences of having it. It is no coincidence, in my view, that more people in these circumstances complete, because quality predominates. It is no accident that there is more progress from apprenticeship to further courses and qualifications.
We did not accept the report’s recommendation that funding for apprenticeship training should go exclusively to employers. While employers are clearly at the heart of the apprenticeship programme, not all of them wish to contract directly with the LSC. Many do, and the LSC has arrangements in place to satisfy that demand. But our experience is that many employers, especially those in small and medium-sized businesses, prefer to operate through a training provider, who takes on the administrative burden for them. That is a business choice which reflects a business model that they, not we, have chosen. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Cotter, that this is one of the key points about the operation of small and medium-sized businesses. You have to listen to what they say, as he was advocating, and take it seriously. In engineering, the largest of the apprenticeship sectors, some of the smaller firms have been very vociferous.
I have emphasised the role of businesses. The UK’s most successful businesses have been at the forefront of the design of apprenticeships. Firms such as Rolls-Royce, Tesco and many others have set the terms and tens of thousands, going into hundreds of thousands, of young people follow the courses. I celebrate the fact that great British businesses do that. I celebrate the application and achievement of those young Britons who have decided to do that. Since these firms and apprentices are under the spotlight this evening, I invite everybody, on all Benches, to celebrate their accomplishments, rather than feeling that this is almost always a futile effort. Perhaps people will say that I am overstating some of the criticisms that have been made, but I feel that the tenor of our debates does not always acknowledge fully people’s accomplishments and contribution, and I wish to do so.
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The noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, argued in a very powerful letter to the Financial Times that successive Governments have not really supported traditional apprenticeships enough and that they have been allowed to wither. I do not wholly accept that view; I look around this Chamber and see my noble friends Lord Sheldon and Lord Macdonald, and think of the Speaker of the House of Commons, who left school at 15 to become a sheet metal apprentice at Rolls-Royce. I understand the standing that apprentices have, because that was their standing when I was in my teens. I have been given one other unhelpful statistic, which means that I should not go too far back alongside the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, to the guild system. Two-fifths of those hanged at Tyburn in the 18th century were apprentices apparently; I am not sure what that says about the quality of the scheme then.
I share a lot of the sentiment, because I felt it as a young person. There are several causes for the decline of the system. The Government may have played their role; employers have invested too little and decided at one stage that the range of skills was too narrow and inflexible to deal with the sea changes in production and construction and other lines of work, let alone the newly emerging businesses. To be candid, some unions tried to use their influence on apprenticeship schemes to hold on to restrictive practices that flew in the face of modern and efficient forms of employment organisations. So businesses modernised or they went out of business and the old apprenticeship, for all its historic resonance, did not align itself at that time to the changes that were taking place. That is a wide current of economic change.
Businesses looked at this environment and decided that in the new environment, apprenticeships had to modernise. They reach wholly new areas; step by step, they fit people for jobs which employers insist are the jobs for the future. It is they who lead in this, not Whitehall. That is the basis for my optimism this evening.
We are improving numbers and quality, and I think we are improving the relevant levels of preparation for jobs. The character of employment will always change; nothing will be static in the economy; it is the economy, rather than Sir Alan, which finally says, “You’re fired” to any number of people whose skills do not fit the real circumstances of the economic
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I conclude by stating my belief that more is to be done. That is in the nature of what we are discussing. All in all, there are grounds for optimism rather than the reverse. The Government will take what has been said tonight not only as a set of constructive criticisms but even more as a thoughtful affirmation of an ambition to do vastly better in the area of apprenticeships. My noble friend Lord Sheldon urged greater ambition. I believe that he is absolutely right, and that that is the sentiment of the House.
9.35 pm
Lord Wakeham: My Lords, this has been an excellent debate. I congratulate and thank everyone who has played a part in it. I congratulate in particular the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, on an excellent maiden speech. Every time I hear an excellent maiden speech it takes me right back to when I made my maiden speech in the House of Commons many years ago. One of my friends said to me afterwards, “At least it will read well in Hansard”. The noble Baroness need not worry about that; her speech sounded well tonight and will read well tomorrow. It was full of matters of substance, which we appreciate.
I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Triesman. I am not absolutely sure about how timetables work or whether I am saying the right thing at the right time, but if he is off to pastures new in the not-too-distant future then this is the probably the last time he will be replying to a debate that I have started. I think I speak for everyone I know of when I say that he has been highly respected and admired in all the jobs he has done here. I tell him, though, that if he is going where I think he is going, I shall keep an eye on him. I went to one of the very few schools whose old boys have ever won the FA Cup. That was about 130 years ago, around the time when it seems to be the general view of the House that all the problems with apprenticeships started, so that may be a lesson for all of us.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
- House adjourned at 9.37 pm.
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