Apprenticeships

Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts

Wednesday 26th March 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to increase the number and quality of apprenticeships for 16 to 18 year-olds.

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, by our normal conventions, we would start the QSD but there was wide expectation in the House that there would be a vote now and at least half of our speakers are not present. Perhaps I may put it to the government Whip that she adjourns the House during pleasure for 10 minutes so we can all assemble for the next debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, now that we are all sitting comfortably, we can begin. In a recent debate about apprenticeships I was accused of being churlish, so I will endeavour today to keep my criticism constructive and reasonably positive.

The beginning of March was National Apprenticeship Week. Should we be celebrating? I will give the Government one cheer. They definitely recognise the importance of apprenticeships and vocational training. There is more investment in training and I was pleased to see the announcement in the Budget. However, announcing expenditure is one thing; driving up the number of apprenticeships is the real task that we face. Surely, the major question that we need to address is the nearly 1 million NEETs in the 16 to 24 age category—those who are not in employment, education or training. I took those statistics from the Library briefing.

We can muck around with statistics, but at the end of the day that is the problem we face. Even if we look at different groups, eventually we will be faced with people looking for jobs and apprenticeships. Of course, the situation with graduate recruitment is not particularly rosy, either. However, I want to focus on the 16 to 18 year-olds because they are the most important group. If we do not find a way of motivating and incentivising them, we know their capacity to lose hope in ever gaining meaningful employment and all the bad things that can flow from that.

When the Government quote figures on apprenticeships, I have complained time and time again because they always include the over-25s. I have said that I am not going to be churlish and so I hesitate to use the word “disingenuous”. However, the figures are certainly misleading. My fear is that it could lead to complacency. Although the government statistics have shown significant growth in the number of apprenticeship starts between 2008 and 2012-13, the recent trend for numbers of apprenticeship starts for 16 to 19 year-olds has actually shown a decline in both 2011-12 and an alarming 12% decline in 2012-13 from the previous year. Those are figures from the Skills Funding Agency. In the period reported, apprenticeship starts as a whole increased by 113%, which makes you think, “Good”, until you disaggregate it. The growth in apprenticeships for the 16 to 19 year-old age group during the period was only 12%, while apprenticeships for those aged 24-plus grew by an astonishing 293%. I will come back to the question of apprenticeships for those aged 25 and over.

One of the good results of calling a debate—I am grateful to all noble Lords who have agreed to participate in it—is the briefing you are sent. I received a really interesting briefing from the City & Guilds Group. It points out that apprenticeships are still seen as being “just for the boys”. For instance, the difference between the advice received by men and women is particularly notable in the construction industry, where only 0.6% of women are encouraged to make it their career compared with 12% of men. The same worrying statistics can be seen throughout apprenticeships in relation to the advice that young women are given as opposed to that given to young men. We need to work a lot harder if we are going to encourage more young women to take up apprenticeships.

The area I want to focus on now is the construction industry. I recently received a letter from the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, giving a breakdown of construction apprenticeships. The figures set out in his letter suggest that things are looking reasonably rosy. However, perhaps I may suggest to the Minister that he looks at a report on construction apprenticeships issued just yesterday by a cross-party group of parliamentarians. It states that some 182,000 construction jobs will need to be filled by 2018, but last year only 7,280 construction apprenticeships were completed. The report includes some recommendations that were made in the 2011 review by Doug Richard:

“Apprenticeships should be redefined. They should be clearly targeted at those who are new to a job or role that requires sustained and substantial training … There should be recognised industry standards at the heart of every apprenticeship”,

which should be linked to professional registration. The report also recommends that all apprentices should achieve NVQ level 2 in English and maths. Doug Richard thinks that apprentices aged over 25 should not actually be called apprentices. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response to those recommendations. The Chartered Institute of Building has talked about a 33% decline in apprenticeship starts in construction. Surely that is another worrying statistic.

The Minister should take a look at the briefing provided by the Local Government Association. I shall start with the positive. It states:

“We welcome the measure in the Budget 2014 to extend subsidies to create youth apprenticeships. However, it will not resolve the structural issue facing young people. This requires ambitious reform, bringing skills and employment services together around local labour markets”.

The briefing says that the current system is not working for 16 to 19 year-olds. The number of under-19 apprenticeship starts rose for a bit, but then declined over the past couple of years. It goes on to say that the increase in apprenticeships can largely be seen in only a small number of sectors that are generally associated with low skills. It also talks about instances of large employers using apprenticeship funding to subsidise training for existing employees, and issues with leading apprenticeship contractors effectively exploiting their workforce.

The Government are seeking to improve the qualifications and the skills requirement for apprenticeships. I am not arguing about that, but where I think that the Government do need to be careful is with regard to the new GCSE requirements in both English and maths. These are demanding requirements. It is interesting to look at the briefing from the Oxford Cambridge and RSA organisation, which says that the really important thing about getting qualifications for young people and improving their ability in English and maths, which we know is an employer requirement, is to ensure that learning is contextualised. We can see that feedback coming. The noble Lord, Lord Baker, is not present today but if you look at the success in university technical colleges, you know that that is good advice.

As I have said before, the quality of careers advice in most schools is still appalling, with very few examples of young people being encouraged to go for apprenticeships. The drive is still to push people towards A-levels even though we know that there is real need and demand for apprenticeships. What more could the Government do? Time and time again I have made the point that if the Government really want to send a positive signal to employers—boy do we need to do that as the best statistic I have found on how many employers recruit apprentices is 13%—surely it is time that they made it clear that bidders for public procurement contracts will be required to indicate the number of apprentices they are going to employ. To drive up the number of apprenticeships, as we should be doing, and to win the battle against youth unemployment, we ought in a way to be putting the country on a war footing. We ought to be determined not to have another lost generation of young people.

In the Local Government Association briefing there are some good examples of authorities such as Lincoln which has appointed apprenticeship champions and driven up the numbers of apprenticeships for those aged 16 to 18. We need to ensure that all schools, colleges and universities are themselves recruiting apprentices. We ought to drive up the number of group training associations and apprenticeship training agencies. I look forward to the Minister’s response and I thank those who are going to participate in the debate.