Apprenticeships

Adrian Bailey Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I will try to summarise my 11-month Business, Innovation and Skills Committee report and its recommendations within that time frame. I welcome this debate in national apprenticeship week. Notwithstanding the political differences that we may have between the parties, it is important that we take the opportunity to demonstrate and recommend to young people the advantages that come from an apprenticeship.

Recent figures show that it is anticipated that there will be about £3.4 billion-worth of additional growth per year in 2022 if we adopt a certain target for apprenticeships. Similarly, apprentices can expect to earn about £150,000 extra during a lifetime. Those are key figures that the House should be highlighting in order to underpin the Government’s drive to get more apprentices.

However, the Government have to recognise that there is also a perception problem. Fewer than one in five 16 to 19-year-olds think that apprenticeships offer the best career option for them, and the great majority still think that GCSEs and university do so. Fewer than one in 10 parents support apprenticeships. They still prefer the higher education route and still think of apprentices as being blue collar workers, whereas in fact the great majority are white collar workers.

Notwithstanding the obvious economic benefit and the drive and support from all parties in the Chamber, there is obviously a problem that has to be addressed in fulfilling the potential that is offered by this career route. With great respect to the Minister, I do not think that he did justice to some of the recommendations made by the Opposition and the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee to achieve that. I stress that the Select Committee has a Government majority and all its recommendations were passed unanimously.

The solution lies, first, in not just trying to drive up the number of apprenticeships, but in looking at our education system. The Prime Minister talked yesterday about an alternative career option. If we are to get young people to take it up, we must have some sort of parity of esteem between higher education and the apprenticeship route. The most depressing thing that the Committee heard was when an apprentice in Sheffield told us that he had the option to go to university, but when he told his school he wanted to take an apprenticeship, it ignored him and did not even invite him to its awards ceremony. That is symptomatic of a culture within our schools and education system that must be addressed if we are to change.

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

There has been a system through the years where there has not been that close working relationship between educationists and industry, and educationists need to provide the courses that are relevant to today’s industry.

[Mr Bailey]

I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman, and if I have time I will come to that very point.

One of the Select Committee’s recommendations was that the Ofsted assessment criteria should include the number of students that a school puts into vocational and further education. It is only by changing school targets that teachers will change the culture of schools to overcome this discrimination between higher education and the vocational route. Unfortunately, the Government declined to take up that invitation.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) for a very good Select Committee report that highlighted the problems of the careers service. By delegating careers advice to schools, the existing bias within the education system to encourage students to take the higher education route rather than the vocational route is being reinforced. We need careers advisers who are aware of apprenticeships, aware of the benefits of vocational education, and prepared to advise students in schools that that is the best possible route for their particular range of aptitude.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

The point that the hon. Gentleman makes about careers advice is absolutely right. Does he agree that one of the Government’s successful initiatives has been the National Careers Service, and there could be a role for that service, working with schools, to ensure that they fulfil the duty that they have been given? All too often the institutional interest of the school and the individual interest of the young person are not the same, and that is why we need some kind of arbitration to make sure that the interests of the child are put first.

[Mr Bailey]

I read the recommendation of the hon. Gentleman’s Committee on that, and in the current situation I think it is probably the best option. I await the Government’s response to it with interest.

Work experience is another topic that has been raised. Removing the obligation on schools to have their students involved in work experience removes from those students an experience that potentially will enthuse them to pursue an apprenticeship. In my area, many of the apprentices in the foundries went there as a result of work experience they undertook. Removing this obligation undermines the overall thrust of the policy, which is to get young people into vocational education.

The hon. Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson) raised the issue of business involvement. That is another crucial element in developing a strategy that works. I believe that, first, there must be a vocational qualification, and the BTEC, as outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool South (Mr Marsden), should provide that. I support the Government’s employer ownership scheme as I believe that our vocational qualifications must be determined, monitored and assessed by business, in conjunction with the education service. I also believe more group training associations and apprenticeship training associations should be developed so we can reach the smaller small and medium-sized enterprises, which are the hardest to reach and which otherwise would be unable to provide the resources for apprenticeship training.

I am not going to repeat my hon. Friend’s arguments in support of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee recommendations, but I will emphasise that my local authority of Sandwell is pioneering in this area, and has so far obtained 250 apprentices, is playing a brokering role for students with local businesses, and has taken 300 people off the unemployment register by giving them work experience in a pre-apprenticeship scheme.

If local government can do this, why cannot the Government? The half-hearted response of the Government is to be lamented, and I hope we will get something more positive in future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bailey]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words. Does he agree that because we have a system in which teachers are judged on their ability to get pupils into higher education, rather than into apprenticeships, we cannot really blame the teachers or the system for doing so? It is the Government who need to change the system. That is not a party political point, because it existed under the previous Government as well.

[Mr Walker]

I heartily agree with the hon. Gentleman. We have to change those incentives and provide better ones and support from outside the teaching profession for the careers service in order to handle that better.