Apprenticeships

Baroness Humphreys Excerpts

Thursday 15th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Humphreys (LD)]

My Lords, I also add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, for securing this debate and presenting me with the opportunity to contribute to it today. I begin by paying tribute to my colleague, the former Liberal Democrat Business Secretary, Vince Cable, who, during the coalition years, took on the Liberal Democrat manifesto commitment to increase the number of apprenticeships and spearheaded the drive to ensure that this happened.

If we cast our minds back to five years ago when the coalition came into being, apprenticeships were uncommon and relatively low status, perhaps a second-best option for those deemed to have “failed” at school. My colleagues in the coalition Government insisted that more resources be put into good vocational training for the 60% who do not go to university. The results are beginning to be seen. It has been heart-warming to listen to the support given to the principle of encouraging young people into apprenticeships from all sides of your Lordships’ House today. I welcome the conversion of those who were perhaps initially sceptical.

There has been some criticism that the bulk of apprenticeship growth over the past five years has been among adults. According to the Association of Colleges, only around 6% of 16 to 18 year-olds are in apprenticeships. It says that this can be attributed to inadequate careers advice and young people lacking the relevant skills to enable them to be work ready. I think we would all agree that more needs to be done to overcome employer resistance to taking on young employees who might not stay the course. I also challenge the Government to reconsider their attitude to careers education and guidance, and to ensure that pupils have access to high quality, impartial and transparent careers advice on both academic and vocational routes.

A similar situation pertains in Wales. The Welsh Government’s flagship Pathways to Apprenticeships scheme aimed to get 75% of learners into an apprenticeship. However, even its own report published in July had to admit that it had missed its target by a large margin as just 35% of learners progressed on to their scheme in 2012-13. Some 32% said that there simply was not an apprenticeship open to them.

At the beginning of this year, I visited Ysgol John Bright, a Welsh comprehensive school in Llandudno. Its careers department had won a top award for the quality of its careers work and I wanted to see how a modern careers department operated so successfully—not a mean feat, these days. The careers education and guidance programme plays a key role in the raising of standards throughout that high-achieving school, helping to monitor pupils’ subject choices and progress, and providing the information that pupils need. However, I was met by the head teacher who told me: “If there is one message, and one message only, that you take away from here today, that must be that there is a desperate shortage of high-level apprenticeships in north Wales”. That is true.

North Wales covers a large area, of course, ranging from the rural west, through the coastal holiday resorts with their rural hinterlands, to the more industrial areas in the east of the region. It is logical that the availability of apprenticeships reflects the amount and type of industry and businesses in a particular area. Figures from the Welsh Government’s StatsWales website showing work-based learning programme starts reveal that last year, for the whole of north Wales, there were 15 level 4 starts in engineering, and 10 of those were to the east in Flintshire, the home of Airbus.

To a great extent, apprenticeships are a victim of their own success. Those young people armed with the relevant careers advice now see them as a viable alternative to university and the demand can only increase. Finally, will the Government introduce a new performance measure that counts how many apprentices gained sustained employment within 12 months of completing their apprenticeships? Will the Minister consider the proposal that a proportion of the funding currently given to providers is contingent on high performance against this new measure?