Committee hammers UK apprenticeships programme (Comment)

Rarely does an official study hit as many nails so firmly on the head as the House of Commons business, innovation and skills committee’s ‘Apprenticeships’ report.

The Government invested a massive £1.2 billion into its apprenticeship programme last year, when 457,200 people started new training as apprentices.

But, from reading the report, it seems that this is a case of money being thrown at a problem without any real understanding of what the investment is meant to achieve.

There is a lack of strategy and purpose around the programme, with no definition of what apprenticeships actually are, the committee found.

Likewise, it said, there is insufficient data to advise where funds are best allocated. This shortcoming, it said, needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency, as does the complex delivery and sheer number of organisations involved in apprenticeship schemes.

More telling, though, is a comment by the committee that “the success of the apprenticeship programme should not be judged by numbers alone” - suggesting that the Government has been doing exactly that.

“At present, the National Apprenticeship Service’s objectives are too heavily weighted on numbers,” said the report. “In the future, the quality of the programme should be seen as an equal priority, and should be assessed rigorously.”

The report also went on to attack assumptions that vocational training is only for those unable to take an academic route.

“This is wrong and must be changed,” it emphasised. “The academic route and the vocational route should be given equal prominence in careers advice.”

In response to the criticisms, UK skills minister Matthew Hancock belted out that over a million people had started an apprenticeship since 2010 - unwittingly proving the committee’s key point about judging success by numbers.