Apprentices: Financial Support

Marion Fellows Excerpts

Wednesday 8th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Ryan. I congratulate the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) on securing the debate.

I want to put a kilt on this debate, as everyone in this room would expect me to do, and in Scotland there is a good story to be told, but before I do that I will talk about my visit yesterday, as part of the Select Committee on Education, to Gateshead College. I was absolutely enthralled. It was like coming home for me, as a former further education lecturer, to see the commitment and enthusiasm in that well known and highly regarded college, and to see what it is doing with apprentices. It was very positive and I saw an example of a new type of apprenticeship—the PlanBEE—where apprentices are taken on at a much higher level and work within different companies in the north-east, gaining absolutely wonderful training that can eventually lead to a degree. The hon. Gentleman talked about funding; those are the types of course that also need to be funded to the maximum.

As some of my late preparation for this debate, I looked at the rates in Scotland and at what the Scottish Government have been doing. Scotland has led the way in many regards, because it has had modern apprentices for years, but the UK Government bringing in the apprenticeship levy and changing the law here has had a subsequent effect in Scotland. The Scottish Government consulted with employers across Scotland to see how they might best deal with the additional funding, so they set up a special skills fund. The distances in Scotland tend not to be so large in some cases, but are extremely hard in others. It is very difficult for some apprentices in the north of Scotland to secure work, but there is a real drive by the Scottish Government to look at how best that can be localised and help be given.

[David Simpson]

The hon. Lady is on a roll about Scotland. In Northern Ireland, the Government have new incentives for apprenticeships and there is now a closer working relationship between the business and education and apprenticeship sectors to tailor courses to suit industry, and to make sure we get apprentices for the jobs.

[Marion Fellows]

To that end, a lot of money from the Scottish Government is going to local colleges that are mandated to work with local employers. As I said, I have previous experience of this area. Now the focus has moved from being on when a large company goes bust and people need retraining, to getting business owners and companies in and saying, “What is it that you need?” and then planning courses around that.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

It is not for me to praise the Scottish National party or the Scottish Government, but is it possible that the British Government serving England and Wales could learn something from Scotland?

[Marion Fellows]

Of course I agree with that. In this case, there is a lot to be learnt because of the positive way forward and how the Scottish Government understand and realise the necessity of training a highly skilled workforce to move us forward with lots of economic opportunity. We have a different agenda—I will not go into that now—but it is important for economic growth that every country looks at how it best trains and prepares.

As a former further education lecturer, I understand only too well the difficulties young people have when they are in any kind of education, and how important it is that they are properly resourced. It is also true in Scotland that apprentices do not fare quite as well as others. Although the rates are higher, they have the same issues and do not qualify for some things—again, that is a DWP issue to do with child benefit and so on. I would like the Minister to look at that because it is important.

I am the product of an academic route, as are many people in this room. I know the academic route does not suit everyone, and even if someone goes down the academic route, it does not always guarantee them a job. In Scotland we have the graduate apprenticeship scheme, which is proving really useful because it gives people real, hands-on experience and makes them much more employable. The whole idea of apprentices being cheap labour, serving their time and then being paid off has to end.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way again and apologise for interrupting her speech. Like her, I used to teach in further education and one of the problems that occurred was young people being pressurised by parents to stay in inappropriate education courses because it was financially advantageous for them to do so. Such students were not only in the wrong courses, but unhappy in the courses and sometimes disruptive in class because they were not meant to be there. Will the hon. Lady comment on that problem?

[Marion Fellows]

I also have experience of that. For funding, the students had to be kept in colleges, but I used to do a lot of student counselling and I would counsel them to finish the course, even if they did not like or enjoy it, so that they could then move on to other employment and say, “Look, I hated this. I absolutely hated it, but I got there.” That shows proof of purpose and the fact that they can learn.

It is vital that across the UK we look at apprenticeships in a totally different light. This goes back to what I said earlier. Apprenticeships should not be cheap labour, but should be seen as a progressive and forward-looking thing for parents to consider. From my experience on the Education Committee, I know that there is often a real dearth of good careers advice for young people in schools; students are channelled into the academic route and schools want to promote that, and there is not enough good careers advice to show that some young people, especially those who are less academic, would benefit from a career starting at 16, 17 or 18.

Some of the young people I spoke to yesterday were highly qualified and had very good A-levels, but their peers and some of their families were horrified that they had not gone to university. They had chosen that route within the building and architecture sectors; it is an interesting and wide-ranging course, and those young people saw it as what they wanted to do. We need more of that across the UK.

When I studied to be a further education lecturer, I did a comparative education course. I looked at Germany, which the hon. Gentleman referred to, where there is true parity of esteem between the academic and non-academic routes, and that is reflected in the funding as well. We really need to promote that view across the entire UK. Apprenticeship is not a second chance or second choice, but is something we should actively encourage our young people to do because it will lead to good, well paying jobs that benefit the economy.

[David Simpson]

Another issue that is raised from time to time in Northern Ireland is apprentices being sponsored by companies to go into training colleges. With the economic crisis that we have had for a number of years, it has been very difficult for young people to do that. Is there another mechanism we could look at to encourage people to do that, rather than that route being solely based on sponsorship?

[Marion Fellows]

That is an absolutely crucial point and we do need some form of Government funding for it. Scotland still has education maintenance allowance for people going into college, but not for apprentices on day release. It still believes in funding, and our students do not pay fees. This is almost a case of chicken and egg—if there is not a thriving economy, it is more difficult. Government have to show business and industry how important it is that we carry forward a skills agenda that benefits everyone, but does not do it on the cheap as far as apprentices are concerned.

[Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)]

The hon. Lady is very generous in giving of her time. When I was the Lord Mayor of Belfast, I recognised that there was a deficit in apprenticeship opportunities. As a council, we went forward with 400 apprenticeship places. The local authorities in Northern Ireland are small, but we led the way. When we asked other anchor institutions in the public sector in Belfast to do the same, the largest came back and offered £500 to the scheme. There is a failure to recognise the opportunity and the benefit for the public sector, Government Departments, local authorities and here in Parliament of offering apprenticeships. Does the hon. Lady have a view on that?

[Marion Fellows]

Yes. Some of the things to do with the apprenticeship levy have affected local authorities in Scotland, as funding is not done in the same way any more. My local authority works closely with and gets a large sum of money from the Scottish Government to make sure that young people especially find work, which often happens through apprenticeships.

In Scotland, we have had modern apprenticeships for a number of years. They are linked to the Scottish qualifications framework, and apprentices are put on to all the different levels within that. I have known young modern apprentices who started as admin staff in a college and moved right through it, ending up later on part-time degrees courses. We should look at that.

The synchronicity between college and practical courses, and articulation later to universities, was raised yesterday. I know that I am going slightly off subject, but all that has to be funded. The root of the matter is that apprenticeships have to be seen as of equal value to academic courses. Students and parents can claim a number of benefits at present, and apprentices and their families should also be entitled to the same amount of money. I know that might be controversial, but I think it is the way forward.

I will leave my remarks at that, because this is not necessarily my area of expertise, but it is really important that people move this agenda forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Halfon]

I promise to answer my hon. Friend’s question, but I hope he does not mind if I answer it later because I want to deal with the points made by the hon. Member for Luton North, who initiated the debate. My hon. Friend raises an important issue. One of my key motivations in my job is to make sure that people from disadvantaged backgrounds can have the same equality of opportunity as everybody else, but I will come on to that in a minute.

[Marion Fellows]

On the question of careers, I met careers advisers and the students who talked to them. I think the Minister should address pre-college and what happens in schools to encourage children and schools to look at alternative academic progression.

[Robert Halfon]

The hon. Lady spoke thoughtfully in a previous debate on apprenticeships in this Chamber. She is completely right. I ask every single apprentice I meet—I have met a few thousand since being in post—“Did you get any apprenticeship or skills advice in your school?” and nine times out of 10 they did not. If they say yes it is usually because they have been to a university technical college or a place that specialises in technical work. That is depressing. I have mentioned before the story that Gateshead College told me about its own degree apprentice students and how the college was not allowed to talk to them about apprenticeships in their schools. It was the same with Heathrow airport and other apprentices I have met. That is shocking. We are reviewing our careers strategy and hope to publish a serious careers strategy in the coming months. We want it to be more focused on schools, and we are looking at the best way to incentivise schools to teach students about apprenticeships and skills, as not enough are doing that.

Women apprentices have been mentioned: 53% of apprentices are female. A survey showed that female apprentices earn more than men, so I do not accept the wage disparity point. However, very few do STEM subjects. If I go to a college that teaches healthcare, the room will be filled with mostly females and there might be one or two men, which of course is fantastic. If the subject is engineering or electrical, it is all men, and that has got to change.

There are enlightened employers. Among the Jaguar apprentices at Warwickshire College, 20% are women. There are lots of other examples of good employers and we need to encourage them, but a lot of that comes from careers advice in schools. I was told by one student yesterday that when they were given careers advice they were shown pictures. All the pictures of engineering jobs showed men and the nursing picture had a woman. That is why we face a problem. It is a cultural problem in our country, and schools need to do a huge amount more to promote apprenticeships. We are doing an enormous amount of work on that. We strongly welcome the Baker amendment, which the hon. Member for Blackpool South (Gordon Marsden) highlighted, because that will make it law that schools have to accept careers advice from further education and apprenticeship providers.

The hon. Gentleman said we were not doing enough on quality. Again, I take issue with that, although we have had a problem in the past. There were too many qualifications and an apprenticeship could mean anything. I remember speaking to people at a hotel. I said, “Have you got apprentices?” and they said, “Yes, we have got apprentices. In fact, we have a few in the kitchen who are here for a few weeks.” They were perfectly lovely people who genuinely believed they had apprentices. We have changed the situation and changed the legislation on apprenticeships. An apprenticeship has to be for a minimum of a year. Apprentices I met yesterday were doing two, three and four-year apprenticeships. They have to spend 20% of their time in training.

We have moved from frameworks to standards—we have had many discussions about that—because of the spaghetti junction of frameworks and qualifications. We have moved to standards that are primarily employer-led. From the beginning of April, subject to progress on the Bill in the Lords, the new Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education will design the new standards and training for apprentices so that employers will be given what they need, which has not necessarily happened in the past. Degree apprenticeships are not only about prestige, but quality. The Premier Inn apprentice I met yesterday is 23 years old. Having done levels 2 and 3 with the company, they were going on to do a level 4 and level 5 degree apprenticeship. That will transform the quality and prestige because it shows that apprenticeships are really serious and go up to different levels. They will offer students—again, as the hon. Gentleman rightly pointed out—an amazing chance to get a degree and earn while they learn. They will have no student debt and will be virtually guaranteed a job at the end of it. That is the future. That is what we need to encourage our young people to do.

When I visited Tyneside, I spoke to Accenture, which has degree apprentices, some of whom do not even have their GCSEs yet, doing coding. I said to Accenture, “How do you choose the people?” and it said, “It is attitude, attitude, attitude.” It offers people from disadvantaged backgrounds a chance to get a serious degree apprenticeship.

The hon. Member for Luton North rightly talked about the skills deficit. I have acknowledged countless times that we are way behind other OECD countries. Our skills deficit is a long-standing problem, and we highlighted it in the industrial strategy we announced a few weeks ago. That is why we put money into STEM apprenticeships and increased the frameworks by between 40% and 80%. We pledged £170 million to create the new institute of technology colleges and £80 million to set up national colleges focusing on nuclear, digital and the creative industries to try to change the skills base. We created an employer-led qualification to ensure that apprentice standards provide the skills that employers need. Through the Sainsbury reforms, which will be rolled out from 2019, every student aged 16 will be able either to continue with a traditional academic education, or to go down a state-of-the-art, prestigious technical and professional educational route. We are doing everything we can to address the skills deficit that the hon. Gentleman rightly highlights.