Placing the career ladder on a stable platform

Apprenticeships were front and centre of skills minister Nick Boles’ forward-looking speech on UK skills strategy. The focus, he said, will be on dramatically increasing the number and quality of apprenticeship programmes: he described the approach as “adding rungs to a ladder”, with the focus now on “adding some rungs to the top” by creating new, high-level apprenticeships. He also spoke of the importance of employers in taking on apprentices, and discussed changes to encourage more employers to do so.

With both main parties championing apprenticeships at last year’s party conferences, the scale and quality of apprenticeship programmes is set to remain a hot political issue in the next parliament. And this political consensus reflects the successes achieved so far under administrations of both hues. There has, for example, been a huge expansion in the number of apprenticeships: in 2013-14 around 440,000 apprenticeship starts were recorded, up 57% from 280,000 in 2009-10 (though panellist Nick Linford, a specialist journalist and businessman, stressed that success should be measured by the number of completions rather than the number of starts). There is also strong evidence that apprenticeships deliver better returns on investment than other further education programmes. Boles (pictured) quoted recent business department figures which showed that the average income of individuals undertaking a level two apprenticeship was 11% higher 3-5 years after they’d completed the course. For level three apprenticeships, the figure was 16%. Compare this to 2-4% for other further education programmes.

But does emerging political consensus on the need to expand the apprenticeship programme mean we’re about to see a new era of policy stability in further education? Not necessarily. As Jacqui Henderson – an education expert who is, among other things, the MD of Creative Leadership and Skills Ltd and a non-exec at UK Skills – joined Linford and Boles in the debate, it became clear that a fair amount of difference lurks beneath the broad consensus. To use Boles’ ladder analogy, there was less agreement on how many rungs there should be, what constitutes the bottom rung, what constitutes the top, and how, when and at what level people are encouraged to climb the ladder. Questions were also raised about the quality of many apprenticeships, as well as their effectiveness in meeting employer demand and helping people into sustainable employment. Policy debates of this kind are welcome, particularly where poor decisions have been made or new evidence comes to light. It is unhelpful, however, when differing approaches are manifested in year-on-year institutional chopping, changing and reclassification – as the IfG argued in our briefing on choice and competition in further education. As Henderson noted: “We don’t need any more new initiatives and institutions—our FE colleges are well equipped to add ‘new rungs’.” Challenged on whether skills policymaking could be amended to guard stability at the delivery end, Boles joked: “I always find it interesting that people asking for long-term depoliticised decision-making are people who never stand for election.” But he was quick to acknowledge the seriousness of the issue. Whilst highlighting the need for accountability and transparency, he rightly pointed out that there are areas of policy – monetary policy, for example – where policy decisions have successfully been taken out of elected hands. In the end, this need not be a binary choice between politicised and apolitical decision-making. As the Institute for Government and the LSE Growth Commission have argued in their work on the political economy of growth and institutional reform, many areas of policy require long-term consistency, stretching beyond parliamentary cycles. This requires political inputs into the process to themselves be run through a different – and longer-term – medium; and this, our research argues, can be achieved with the right institutional architecture. With appropriate structures in place, decision-making can remain stable and consistent, while allowing politics a space permitting both a degree of cross-party consensus, and healthy debate. Looking ahead, there’s a question over whether British apprenticeships can become as powerful a ‘brand’ as the German ‘meister’ qualification. Nick Boles stressed that we’ll only reach that point when the underlying qualification is widely recognised as being of high quality, putting down a marker for the next government. Whether that government can continue building the reputation and stature of apprenticeships, though, will depend in part on its readiness to create structures and conditions that support longer-term planning and stable policies in the fields where these are most required – such as skills and training. This is not easy, given our traditionally majoritarian form of government and competitive system of interest groups – both of which foster an adversarial culture in political debate and reduce incentives for co-operation, leading to regular policy U-turns as the control of government moves from one side to the other. By contrast, in countries more used to coalition government, these longer-term deliberative processes are the norm: Denmark and Sweden, for example, have political systems including multiple institutional veto-players that incentivise cross-party dialogue and consensus. Not convinced? Just consider which factors will decide whether the number of apprenticeships continues to grow. Both main parties have promised to drastically expand the programme – but this growth will depend on finding ever more willing employers; and companies don’t put time and money into projects that look vulnerable to change or closure if the wind changes in Whitehall or Westminster . No matter who’s in the job come June, the task of persuading more employers to hold the ladder of apprenticeships will be far easier if businesses are confident that its footing, structure and destination are secure enough to climb in safety.