Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-30)
Rt Hon John Denham MP and Mr Stephen Marston
20 MAY 2008
Q20 Chairman: Just as a matter of
information, will the NAS be approaching employers directly?
Mr Denham: The NAS in its work nationally, through
the National Employer Service, will have that discussion and will
be looking for people to do it. In terms of the cold-calling work
(as I described it earlier) done by brokers, we are trying to
avoid a situation where two separate organisations are ringing
up the same employer in the same week with one of them saying:
"Would you like to do Train to Gain to Level 2?" and
the other one saying: "Would you like to do a Level 2 apprenticeship?"
I would not encourage you to feel there is going to be that sort
of duplication of cold-calling. On the other hand, if you said
to me as a Minister: "Who do I look to to lead on banging
the drum for the number of apprenticeships?" we need to,
in a general way, be engaging the employer community and to be
working with the Sector Skills Councils and their employers, and
saying: "How are we going to get the number of apprenticeships
we need in this sector in this area?" That is what I would
see the National Apprenticeship Service doing, and doing in a
very big way.
Q21 Lord Layard: I wonder if you
could give us any idea of the number of field staff that you imagine
it having nationally.
Mr Marston: We are still doing the design work
on the National Apprenticeship Service, I am afraid. Within the
LSC currently we are talking about a couple of hundred staff—somewhere
about 250—working on the apprenticeship service at present.
We are looking at how far that needs to expand and how they get
distributed across the country.
Q22 Lord Best: Do you see a problem
of people failing to qualify for apprenticeship places because
they do not have the basic literacy and numeracy skills? If you
do, are there going to be funds available for that part of the
equation as well for bringing them up to standard?
Mr Denham: Certainly as of today that would
be a problem. We are working with schools, obviously, to raise
achievements in numeracy and literacy and basic skills all the
time, although standards are rising. There are particular parts
of the changing curriculum which will introduce functional skills
into the curriculum over the next few years. We have developed
the Foundation Learning Tier which is meant to address a whole
range of basic skills issues, and for those young people who are
set on going on an apprenticeship but would not yet have the qualification
to go on to an employed apprenticeship there is a programme-led
approach to bolster those basic skills. Our view, at the moment,
is that there should be sufficient resource in the system to make
sure that those young people who would not at the age of 16 have
the necessary achievement to get there can be supported to do
so. That is probably good news in that sense. There is a substantial
amount of money in the system for addressing those young people
who do not have that level of achievement at 16 or even 17 or
18.
Q23 Lord Macdonald of Tradeston: How
many young people are expected to need help with literacy and
numeracy?
Mr Denham: It is a little hard to judge accurately.
One measure is that if you took the basic criteria for getting
on a Level 2 apprenticeship as having a GCSE in maths or English,
and that is a pass grade not an A-C grade, I think you have something
like 10 per cent of young people who do not achieve that at the
moment. I think that is the right figure. So that would be one
measure. However, we also have to recognise that that may be the
minimum entry level; not all employers, by any means, will be
prepared to accept that as a sufficiently high level. So if we
are looking at this in the real world rather than a theoretical
world, there will be a number of young people who would need more
help and more support to get to the level that could get them
into an apprenticeship than that figure might imply. If I left
you with the impression that 90 per cent of young people can walk
straight into an apprenticeship and 10 per cent cannot, that might
be slightly misleading if you look at the apprenticeships that
will actually be on offer from employers, who will often be looking
for a higher level of attainment.
Q24 Lord Kingsdown: I think, in a
number of sectors, the technical certificate element of the apprenticeship
has been dropped.
Mr Denham: Yes.
Q25 Lord Kingsdown: What is the reason
for this, if I may ask? May I make the comment that it seems to
be rather a dumbing-down of apprenticeship standards just at a
time when there is so much demand for them.
Mr Denham: As I understand it, the history of
this is that the technical certificate has been dropped in some
cases where it was regarded that the certificate covered almost
exactly the same area as the vocational qualification that the
apprentice was also doing. One area was hairdressing and another
was accountancy. So where it was felt that this was a duplication
of effort, work and record-keeping, it was not held to be worthwhile.
The certificates have not been dropped in those areas where you
cannot say that somebody is doing the equivalent level of qualification
in work. I do not think we are dumbing-down in that area.
Q26 Lord Turner of Ecchinswell: Could
you comment upon the balance of how government funding for apprenticeships
is spent as between different headings? Obviously, at one level,
we would like as much as possible to be spent on the actual training
that is occurring rather than the necessary processes of administration,
etc, but they are necessary. There is also the issue of how much
is spent on training versus how much is spent on actually assessing
skills. Do you have a feel for what that balance is, and is that
a balance that you are content with and believe is roughly right?
Mr Denham: I do not have a figure that I can
give you on that, and I am sure it varies from sector to sector
and to individual circumstances. I think it is a good question
to ask, and it is one that I have asked myself often in relation
to the information that comes from inspections throughout the
training system—particularly, perhaps, in other parts of
the training system where one worries that it is too easy just
to spend your time assessing people who have more or less got
the qualification already rather than training the people who
need to be raised. In terms of apprenticeships, I am less concerned
in the sense that I think this is an area where there is quite
rigorous inspection. There is quite rigorous attention to outcomes
where we know that completion rates have increased, where we know
that a lot of people who were not really very good no longer provide
apprenticeships, and the focus on the outcome quality suggests
that whatever the detailed balance might be in each case we are
getting what we want out of the system. I do not think that anybody
is actually challenging the quality of outcomes that we are now
achieving in the way they certainly were a few years ago. I do
not dismiss the question out of hand; I think it is something
that we need to try and get a feel for, at least to inform ourselves
about it. I mainly rest on the monitoring we do of the quality
outcomes and the inspections that take place.
Q27 Lord Paul: In the course of our
inquiry we visited a Group Training Association—a not-for-profit
organisation where small and medium-sized businesses collaborate
to provide apprenticeship places. We found that the Association
did not differ substantially from other training providers. So
why is the Government so keen on using Group Training Associations
to boost apprenticeships? What, if any, new ideas or new information
does the Government have about these Associations to suggest that
they could, in time, represent a significant advance on current
provision?
Mr Denham: I suppose it is about ownership,
really. At one level, I suppose, a good commercial training provider
will provide in a technical sense very much the same support and
training co-ordination as a Group Training Association. However,
part of the feedback we have had is that where in an area the
smaller employers in a particular industry (who know each other
and who work together and they are both competitors and collaborators)
work together to provide a Group Training Association there is
a sense that: "We own this; it is going to be responsible
to our particular business, our particular culture, our way of
doing things", and if that means that the employer has a
greater trust in the Group Training Association to provide what
they need and they are, therefore, more likely to offer an apprenticeship,
that is I think really what we are after—that identification
between the employer and the Training Association. We would be
quite alarmed, I think, if we thought there would be a massive
difference in actual quality between one and the other, but we
are all the time looking for ways of saying to, particularly,
smaller employers: "What makes this a service you are likely
to take up?" If there is a sense of: "This is ours in
this particular area; this is our Group Training Association for
this city", then I think there are some people who will work
with that who would not work with a commercial provider.
Q28 Chairman: Are there any other
questions that Members would like to ask? Are there any other
points, Secretary of State, that you wanted to put to us that
you have not been asked?
Mr Denham: I think, my Lord Chairman, just to
say that we would very much welcome the continued interest of
your Committee. The targets we have set for ourselves are ambitious,
but we absolutely believe that we must get to a position where
this choice is seen as available and as an equally valid choice
for young people, if this is where their interests and their capabilities
want to take them. We have got some way to go to get there, but
we are determined to get there and the continuing interest and
support you have given us would be enormously welcome.
Chairman: Thank you.
Q29 Lord Kingsdown: One question,
my Lord Chairman, rather out of the blue. The merits of apprenticeships
seem to be two-fold: one to assist the economy by producing skilful
operators and, secondly, to assist young people in making the
best of their lives—one might call that the social service.
Is the balance of the Government's support for apprenticeships
related to the economy or to the social service, or to both, and,
if so, is there any difference in the proportion? I imagine, like
all departments, you are struggling for money. When the Government
looks at this, do they look favourably on the social side of it
or on the employment side?
Mr Denham: The great thing about my department
is that so many of the things we do hit both of those targets
at the same time. So if you talk about training in general, we
can say that if you get somebody qualified in numeracy and literacy
at Level 2, that is what the economy needs. For that individual,
if it means you have got them out of a dead-end job into a good
job, not only do they feel better but their children will probably
have higher aspirations and be more likely to succeed at school.
The great thing about so much of my department is I do not have
to choose: the same aim—getting somebody into training and
developing their skills—does deliver the economic need and
does deliver the social imperative at the same time, without any
contradiction between the two objectives. It is one of the most
satisfying parts of my work, really, that we can push these things
forward and it does not really matter—the same apprenticeship
delivers for the young person and it delivers for the economy.
We do not have to choose between an apprenticeship which is designed
for social reasons or one that is designed for the economy. If
we get a good apprenticeship it delivers both of those things,
and that is why they are so central to our thinking.
Q30 Chairman: Thank you, again, Secretary
of State, for your time, and thank you for answering our questions.
You can be sure of our continuing interest.
Mr Denham: Thank you very much.
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