Apprenticeships

Andrew Turner Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hayes]

The hon. Gentleman has been a long-standing advocate of apprenticeships, and he rightly draws attention to previous Select Committee reports on the subject. He highlighted those reports in the Chamber on more than one occasion when I was present, and he is right in two particular respects: first, it is important that we focus apprenticeships on where they are of most value, and there is more evidence to suggest that they are of most value to young people between the ages of 16 and 24; and, secondly, it is important that we are relentless in our drive for quality. He is right, too, that as we increase the quantity of apprenticeships there will be a tension with quality, but I shall say a great deal more today about the steps that we have taken and the future steps that we propose to take to achieve just that ambition.

Having said that there is a broad measure of agreement, a point echoed by the hon. Gentleman, I should say, first, that the difference between us and the previous Government is that we have made apprenticeships the pivot around which the rest of the skills system turns. Secondly, we have made them fill a bigger space than ever before. Finally, we have put in place an unparalleled level of funding to support our single-minded aim to create more apprenticeships than modern Britain has ever seen. It is important to point out that that growth has not been only in traditional craft apprenticeships, but in the new crafts too—advanced engineering, IT, the creative industries and financial services.

Why, people might ask, do we put such an emphasis on apprenticeships? It is not just that apprenticeships work, although they do, or that an apprenticeship is probably the most widely recognised brand in the skills shop window, although it is; it is also about what apprenticeships symbolise—the passing on of skills from one generation to the next and the proof that that offers that learning by doing is just as demanding and praiseworthy as learning from a book. As William Morris said, all art and craft is

“the expression by man of his joy in labour”.

It is my ambition to dispel once and for all the myth that one can gain accomplishment only through academic prowess. The sense of worth that people gain through the work of their hands—through practical, technical and vocational skill—needs to be recognised, just as we recognise academic achievement.

It is that sense of apprenticeships as the embodiment of a continuum that guarantees their place at the heart of my vision for skills. I hope that, like me, hon. Members on both sides will welcome the provisional figures that show that, in the academic year that has just finished, nearly 443,000 people started an apprenticeship in England.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating HTP Training, an Isle of Wight apprenticeship provider, and its managing director Rachael Fidler? Most notable is its successful apprenticeship completion rate of 87%—significantly higher than the national average of 74%. Does my hon. Friend agree that none of that would have been possible without the Government’s help and support?