Welcome, Members and witnesses, to our public evidence session of the Education Select Committee. This is the second evidence session in our inquiry on further education and skills. Before I ask the witnesses to introduce themselves to us, can I say that it is relatively unusual—you are all very welcome—to have four witnesses from the same organisation? You might help us with our timing this morning by choosing between you which of you is most appropriate to answer each question on behalf of the whole organisation, rather than following our usual practice of allowing any witness to come in on the questions. That will help us with getting through the session in time for Prime Minister’s questions at 12 o’clock. Can I ask you now to introduce yourselves to the Committee, starting with Mr Smith?

Good morning, and it is nice to see everyone here. My name is Phil Smith. I am chair of Skills England in this particular context, and I have a background in the technology industry.

Good morning, my name is David Bell. I am the vice-chair of Skills England and, in my day job, I am the vice-chancellor of the University of Sunderland.

Good morning, everyone. My name is Tessa Griffiths, and I am the co-CEO of Skills England.

Good morning, everyone. My name is Sarah Maclean, I am the other part of the job share and co-CEO of Skills England.

Skills England was established in July 2024 in a shadow form within the Department for Education. First, what is your timeline to be fully operational as the body that you will eventually become once the current legislation has completed its passage through Parliament?

Let me start by saying thank you for giving us the opportunity to talk here. As a forming organisation, it is important we get a chance to talk to Members of Parliament, and particularly to this Committee, so we welcome that opportunity. As I think was originally stated, the intention was to set up Skills England within 12 months of the announcement. The organisation has been running in shadow form up until now, and in fact the approach we are generally taking is to assume that we are up and running. Everybody I talked to—including some of your witnesses later on, who I have talked to—the assumption has been that we are trying to do everything we can to address this agenda. I will pass over to Tessa or Sarah to talk us through where we are in terms of timing.

As you know, the IfATE Bill is currently making its way through Parliament. Once that Bill gets Royal Assent, we will be able to transfer those functions and people from the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education into Skills England. Obviously, we are subject to parliamentary timescales, but we hope that will be concluded swiftly. At that point, our work will really begin in earnest.

Mr Smith and Sir David, you have been in post since February of this year. What has been the focus of your work in your time so far?

I have tried as much as possible, given that it is not a full-time role—although it does feel a little bit like a full-time role—to get out internally and externally to talk to people. The organisation is transforming. They want confidence that they are going to be in an organisation that will contribute and be successful, and so I have spent time talking to them. I have also been talking to as many people as I can at dinners, public speaking, assemblies and so on, to listen to what people are saying. In that role, I am hearing a huge amount of enthusiasm for Skills England as an organisation to be addressing this broad challenge that we have in the skills system. I have spent a lot of time doing that and of course trying to get my head around all the detail of what is going on inside and outside. You will not be surprised to know that it is a complex system, and one of the opportunities we have in Skills England is to address that complexity and to simplify it for the learner, the teacher and/or the small business owner or whoever else needs to engage with it.

My workload has not been as great as Phil’s. I probably had two areas of focus initially. The first has been understanding more about how the skills environment is going to work on a regional basis; obviously, I am based in the north-east of England. That has been important. Secondly, I have met one or two other organisations in further and higher education who have a lot to contribute at this stage. However, I imagine that once the board is fully up and running, and the organisation is full steam ahead, we will get into a much more systematic pattern of meetings around the country.

Thank you. As a follow-up to that, what is the vision for Skills England?

Let me take that first, and if necessary we can have others contribute. It was widely stated—including by the Prime Minister when he announced Skills England—that the skills system has challenges. There is no doubt about it. It is hard to navigate. It has a lot of historic complexity, and it has inaccessibility for certain parts of the community who may find it too difficult. Small business owners are a classic example of that, as well as younger people. However, with a changing environment, where we have 1.4 million new jobs by 2035 coming into the workforce and—as was stated in the first Skills England report—71% of the current workforce will still be in the workforce in 2035, this is not a job of waiting for people to appear. This is about saying, “How do we get the workforce of today skilled for the world of 2035?” With global tensions, challenges, security and other things, as well as technological disruption, there is a great opportunity there for us to take a world-leading position in building the best-skilled system we possibly can. We see that as a real opportunity to be data-led, to advise Government on the best approaches to take regionally and nationally, and to use international—even international in the UK sense—expertise to inform what we do. Doing that as much as we can with true data, which we have the opportunity to do, to form policies that are relevant for everybody is a fantastic opportunity. We are keen at Skills England, and I know everyone here is enthused about its success. Talking to staff and individuals out in the general community, people are excited about the opportunity for Skills England, as we are.

Skills England will operate as an executive agency within the Department for Education, and that means that it will have less operational independence than the predecessor organisation. What risks does that pose to the independence of Skills England as an organisation, and how are you planning to address those risks?

I will start, and I will ask David to comment a little as well. What we are trying to do is not to focus on barriers and obstacles but to focus on opportunity. I am not saying there are no barriers and obstacles, because clearly there are in any role that you have, but the fact that we have set ourselves up as an executive agency, which means we have independence, but we have a tie-in to the Department, is powerful. Our perception is that there are huge numbers of challenges that need to be solved, some of which I have mentioned before. We are taking that as an opportunity to get across all of government, and to get out to industry and work with industry. I am sure that my background and David’s background, through the university, with strong industry engagement, is important. We recognise those are not givens, but something we have to work through. David, you might want to say a little bit more about the model.

In a previous life, I was a Permanent Secretary at the Department for Education, so I had the opportunity to work with various bodies. My sense was that the impact and influence that those bodies had, almost irrespective of their “constitutional status”, was most important. The executive agency model works very effectively because you have the impact of being slightly removed from the main policy Department to focus on the delivery of certain activities, but you are also close enough to have an influence with Ministers. If you look cross-government, there are a whole bunch of executive agencies—the Met Office, the Health Security Agency, the Forestry Commission and the like—that do have a strong role to play, and I do not think people get terribly consumed about their constitutional status. It will be for Skills England to be able to demonstrate that impact and influence as it really gets up and running.

In a sector that needs not only transformational reform in the short term, but stability and strong leadership for the long term, does it not give you any concern at all that the Secretary of State or future Secretary of State—we had many of those under the previous Government—could decide to close Skills England without recourse to Parliament or to legislation?

Of course, you cannot predict the future of various bodies, but if Skills England delivers on the mission that Phil has talked about, has an impact and, with its partners, starts to change the skills systems in this country, there is less likely to be a risk about the future. It is all about the delivery of the Skills England mission, and all of us at the table here today are very aware that we need to start delivering on the basis of the way that we are constructed.

My question is for Sarah and Tessa. Can I just say how great it is to see two women job-sharing a chief executive role? I am very pleased to see that. As joint chief executives of Skills England, you will both have a crucial role in delivering the agency’s mission to drive growth and bring key stakeholders together, including other Government agencies. There have been questions about this in the sector, so I would like to know whether you think that the chief executives have been given the right level of seniority to perform these duties and to have a meaningful impact cross-government.

Thank you very much for the kind words about being a job share in a senior position. We are very proud to have this role and also delighted to promote job-sharing and flexible working. It is important that we can role model that, so I am very excited to do that in this role. We have job-shared together for over 17 years, so it is quite an interesting example. Obviously, that is not the subject of today, but outside this we would be happy to talk to you about that and our experiences. During the passage of the Bill, I know that there were some questions, and people have had questions about the seniority of the CEO role. Along the themes that David and Phil have mentioned, it is about impact and influence. The level of the CEO role is the same as in other executive agencies. It is the same as the CEO of IfATE, for example. We do not see that as an issue, but the proof will be in what we manage to deliver and how well we do that.

I would just add that Sarah and I have been working on these issues and in this sector for a number of years, and we are incredibly proud and excited to be leading this organisation. It is a huge privilege, and we cannot wait to get started. As Sarah said, hopefully you will hold us to account and judge us by what we are able to deliver.

Will you be encouraging the Government to periodically review the seniority of this position?

I was going to make a joke about promotion, but that does not feel right either. A review is already built in for the whole of the organisation within a reasonable timeframe, so we can look at that and see whether that needs to be reconsidered, but we are confident that we will do a good job.

Great. Lastly, what mechanisms will you use to co-ordinate cross-departmental working, and do you think they will give you the leverage that you need to operate effectively cross-government?

Skills England is only going to be successful if we are able to play that highly influential role cross-government. Phil might want to say something in a minute about his role on the Industrial Strategy Council. Sarah and I have already worked for the last few years cross-government, across the whole of Whitehall, to think about issues around skills and bring colleagues together across Whitehall. We meet our peers across Whitehall regularly, and it will be absolutely crucial that Skills England can play an influential role across the Government’s missions, so not just across opportunity and growth, but across net zero, the green agenda and so on.

As an ex-officio member, I sit on the Industrial Strategy Advisory Council, I chair the Digital Skills Council and I am involved with the DBT taskforce on technology adoption for small business. We are doing things across the piece as we can, but of course this is always about effectiveness and output. We have to keep stressing—it is not a difficult message to stress in the current limited environment—that we should not be duplicating things. There is no point in doing that because the outcome will be less effective. If we keep focusing on the outcome—on what we are trying to deliver for real people who need real jobs and real skills for the future—that is a much more powerful argument than, “This is our patch and that is your patch” and, frankly, I have no time for that. Both inside and outside, I think there has been slightly too much of stomping your own ground. Now we have to say that we have to get the solutions here, because we have young people who are out of work; we have people on disability who would like to have jobs that are appropriate to them; and we have people who left the workforce after covid, all of whom are great opportunities for economic growth. But to do that we need new solutions. We cannot say, “Oh well, we have done it, and it is not working”. We have to fix this. I think, with the Government’s policy levers and our collaboration and data lead, we have an opportunity to genuinely do something different.

I am conscious that the Government have commissioned a curriculum and assessment review. I know that Phil has been speaking to Professor Becky Francis, who has been leading on that, so he may wish to comment. This has been a long-standing issue, certainly for all the years that I have been in the education system, trying to ensure that there are equally valid and respected routes that meet the needs of individuals. We cannot solve this problem overnight, but there is a serious commitment now to try to find new ways to give people opportunities at all stages. For example, we already have the introduction of the new foundation apprenticeships coming. That will be an interesting and important route. We have the development of T-levels. I have seen great examples of schools in the north-east of England that are using T-levels to connect with industry to provide that parity of esteem. There are also the activities undertaken by employers themselves to emphasise to young people and others the value of what they do. We see it very much as our role to ensure that different qualifications are available. They are all seen as equally valid, but they all serve slightly different needs. Phil might want to talk about his conversation with Professor Francis.

I have met with Becky, and I think it is really valid; she has a shared objective with us to make this more effective. It is also worth saying that when we look at apprenticeships, which clearly have grown in esteem in recent times, there is no doubt that the people who use apprenticeships—when I used to run apprenticeships in the company I ran for many years, our apprentices were some of the best performing and most loyal people we had, and they contributed more in the longer term than many others. We have a big job to ensure that that role is not just from us uniquely but throughout the system, to make sure that apprentices are recognised as something of value. That is not just with schools, but with parents as well—maybe a parent who thinks that a talented 16-year-old girl should definitely be a doctor or a lawyer. I have two daughters who are accountants, which probably does not really reflect well on me, but anyway, the reality is we need to find a way of giving people effective role models and ways of making the prestige different. That is going to require some interesting thinking. The data-led approach that I would like us to take, and that we will take in Skills England, says: what are the real problems here? Is this a problem of visibility, because people do not know about it? Is it because they have a perception? In that case, messaging, communication, marketing and all that stuff that the Government sometimes frowns on is important. We have to talk to people in a human, natural, consistent way that makes them feel, “This is interesting. I could get a better job doing this”. We have to be holistic in that. It is about working with others, like Becky and the curriculum review, but also other people in the system—private provision and so on—to say, “How can this be done well?” It is being done well in lots of places.

I would say, to a degree, what I said before, which is that we need to make sure that the system is holistic and easy to navigate. There is no doubt about the complexity. I am not just talking about apprenticeships, but boot camps and all the other things: tier levels, and so on. How do they fit together? We have to do a better job on that. It is about the consistency of how you define apprenticeships, and maybe even some of the discussion around IfATE versus Skills England. In my terms, as a business, IfATE is essentially a product organisation. It has built great products and it is maintaining those great products, but it did not have any sales and marketing organisation, or organisation to talk to people, other than in the creation of the activity itself. What I see us doing is taking a much broader perspective and working out how we can make our products and others’ products—private and others—more effective in the system. That is very important. It would be crazy to have an organisation that only made products and assumed people were going to buy them. It does not work like that in real life. You need to tell people about them and how to use them, where they fit and how they map to other things. We are very much of the view that we need to get into that position. I don’t know whether Sarah wants to talk a little bit about the things we have done around apprenticeships and so on.

Yes. Some of the things I am proudest of in the work that Skills England has been doing in set-up mode is the engagement that we have done with partners, stakeholders, and businesses, to try to get under the bonnet and understand what it is that is working well and what is not working so well. That has drawn out themes around shorter apprenticeships, foundation apprenticeships and the alignment with those policy announcements that have been made, but also the flexibility around English and maths and the impact that may well have on the number of apprenticeships that are taken up. There are green shoots in terms of numbers picking up, and in fact the latest statistics show a 1% rise in the number of apprenticeships starts over the last period from August to January this year. There is possible movement in the right direction there. We will keep looking at it, because obviously it is a dynamic system that needs—

I would say that our intention is to try working with the Government, because Government ultimately own the policy about where they put the skills resources. But I think it is particularly important to inform that as much as we can to address the areas where we see most growth—where real jobs can be created, not just qualifications, and where we can genuinely help people to access that system. Of course, an important focus on numbers is right, but we have to be doing the right numbers in the right places regionally, as well as nationally and sectorally as well. Part of my role in the Industrial Strategy Council is to ask how we build the right capability for that in those perceived growth sectors and a couple of other sectors that we are focusing on as part of the mission: construction, building and health and social care. That is something that we are focused on: are we creating real skills that allow people to get real jobs in the future?

Can I just add to that? Last October and November, Skills England conducted a series of consultations and engagements with stakeholders. We talked to around 700 stakeholders, employers and others about these issues that you raise. It was interesting. As Sarah said, it was fascinating to hear the lived experiences. We heard from employers and others that some of the apprenticeships are longer than they need to be. We also heard that employers in certain sectors want more flexibility around apprenticeships and the offer available in the growth and skills offer. We also heard from employers and others about the benefits of modular delivery and what could be done there. There was also an interesting debate, as you allude to, on how the system should be geared. Should the system be geared more towards younger learners at the start of their careers, or should it be geared towards adult learners reskilling later in their working life? It is an interesting set of information, data and insight that we are going to build on as we move forward.

Skills England will be responsible for ensuring that technical training, including T-levels, meets the needs of individuals and local employers. We have heard evidence that small employers, in particular, face difficulties engaging with education and training structures. How will you assist the small employers, especially in rural areas, to participate effectively in the T-Level programme?

It is specifically around T-Levels, but let me slightly zoom out on it. Small businesses generally have a real problem in engaging with systems overall. If you look at current work that is going on in the Department for Business and Trade around small businesses getting access to finance, to export and to technology, they struggle with it all. I have done a lot of work in this area through the Digital Skills Council, which increasingly in this role is saying that the biggest issue that it has—if you summarise it hugely; there are many issues—is the complexity. A small business owner who is already busy and trying to make payroll or whatever will characteristically think, “Oh my God, look at this system. It is just so complicated. I do not have time”. When I ran Cisco I had full-time people working on apprenticeships, and so on. They were the managers who were looking after it because the complexity meant you needed people who understood the system. One of the things we can definitely do is to simplify things and to give these things relevance for people. We talked a little bit before about parents and others seeing that this is a good route to getting good jobs in the right area. As you say, in rural environments, that can be particularly challenging because they do not necessarily have access to peers who are doing it; they are not in big cities seeing lots of others. One of the things that has been successful in apprenticeships—I know David has had experience up in the north-east—is when you have communities of people around a core industry. In more rural areas it could be industries like tourism that might bring some of those together. There is definitely an opportunity to create more access and relevance for people—and of course the examples. People do not want to hear from me. They want to hear from businesses that do things like theirs who have apprenticeships and, “Oh, by the way, they are having weekends off now”. That is the difference you want to see. We have to get to that, both through messaging but also through delivery.

I have recently visited Blyth Academy in North Northumberland. It has a terrific T-level partnership with the Port of Blyth, where it is providing the skills that the port needs, which of course is important to that part of the economy of Northumberland. Also, the Academy is providing a T-levels programme with the local health system. Perhaps what that points to is those solutions that are created locally as people identify needs, the right partners get together and then they make things happen, in this case for young people.

Obviously we have heard about the relationship between employers and the programme itself. We have also heard evidence that employers are not as engaged in the planning and implementation of the T-level programmes as they might or should be. What measures will you take to strengthen partnerships between T-level providers and local employers?

There are some useful things to point to in this space. One of them is LSIPs, so local skills improvement plans, which are local plans bringing businesses and providers together. Skills England will have oversight of those. It will have the ability to look across the piece and see how they are stacking up regionally and nationally, but also to dig into the data and see whether there are patterns, trends and things that Skills England can do to help unblock, unlock, or pull people together to be able to have those conversations. The other thing that is important is to recognise that feedback from employers can help refine and improve things over time. In the case of T-levels, we now have the flexibility for 20% of industry placements with businesses to be online. That is up to 50% in digital T-levels. It is about understanding that there may be refinements over time that can ease those issues for T-level industry placements that we know we still need to work on, and Skills England will take a keen interest in.

Before I bring Jess in, Sir David, you mentioned the excellent work that is happening in Blyth at a local level. We have certainly seen examples of excellent place-based work on skills, and partnerships between different parts of the education sector and employers to deliver qualifications that are needed by employers and that help local people to get into well-paid jobs with good career progression. However, relying on good and innovative work at a local level is not a recipe for delivering opportunity absolutely everywhere. Explicitly, what role do you envisage Skills England having in the overview of best practice? As a former town planner, place-based planning for skills is important, but at the moment we have deserts with no high-quality opportunities at all, and best practice happens only where there is good local leadership. That is not what we want to see.

Some of it relates to what Sarah said about the flexibilities that are now built into T-levels, which will give opportunities across the country. The point about devolution is important, because we already see good work going on as combined authorities and mayors work up local skills strategies, building on the work that has been done through the local skills improvement plans. I certainly know from the north-east experience that people are starting to draw together the employers, education providers, schools and further and higher education to make that happen. There will be a complementarity between the national policy changes that might make T-levels more flexible and accessible, and the local dynamics and solutions. In some areas, there may be a different mix of qualifications on offer depending on the sectoral priorities set in a combined area. I see this as a complementarity between the local and the national on T-levels and, indeed, on all aspects of skills development.

Will you have your eye explicitly on the deficits or deserts, either in quality or availability of provision, and will you be able to intervene to drive improvements and additional provision where that is the case?

Phil, do you want to comment?

I was only going to say that I completely agree with you. That is what we need to do. We need to look at the entire system and address shortcomings where they are, whether those be sectoral shortcomings or regional shortcomings. Fantastic work is going on, as David described, in various areas. We know there is good work in the north-west and other places. It is not all about that, however, because it is like anything; if you have good leadership, you tend to end up with good solutions. Sometimes we have to help provide that. The kind of model where we can help share best practice and identify cold spots or hot spots is important. We have already talked internally about how we could map things better and give people a sense of where things are, no matter where you start from. That is powerful. As an employer, I wanted to be able to employ people anywhere and have similar kinds of capabilities. As a national deliverer, we need to make sure that we have the ability to give people that opportunity and not just to say, “Here is some money. Get it sorted”, but to say, “Here are some examples. Here is how it works. This is best practice. Talk to these people. Let us get you together as a combined body”, as David said, and try to get them to share that practice. It is remarkable when you do that. You will have seen many examples historically of doing that and having a significant effect. But you are right. We need to keep a focus on it all the time.

The Government have said that the new growth and skills levy will enable learners and employers to access a broader range of training offers, and that Skills England will play a crucial role in determining which training will be eligible for the levy. Could you update the Committee on the progress Skills England has made on this?

First, in the feedback we gained, there was definitely a lot of talk about it. We know that people were looking for more flexibility in how they can do things. Sarah and Tessa have already mentioned that we had feedback around things like modularisation and using different vehicles to do that. As part of the broader work that the Government are doing on the growth and skills levy, we are trying to inform where the shortcomings are and where flexibility around the levy would create some growth. I do not know whether you want to say any more, Tessa or Sarah, about the things you have done.

Since your last evidence session, we have had a bit of success with construction, which provides quite an interesting example. Based on Skills England’s analysis, the Government have been able to forge a partnership with industry, resulting in the announcement of £600 million more investment in developing that construction skills pipeline. That is a good early example of the work that Skills England can build upon, building these strategic partnerships with sectors and industry where both parties come to contribute on a plan. It is not just about focusing entirely on what can the Government do via the growth and skills levy; it is about what can we do together with industry. That gives us an interesting blueprint from which to work.

How has Skills England engaged in its shadow capacity with the skills sector to shape its decisions on the training to be covered by the new levy?

Going back to what Phil and Tessa have already said, Skills England has—and has had to date—an ongoing convening function in bringing together key organisations, whether they are providers, industry or small SMEs, to understand what is lacking. We have heard about some apprenticeship standards and how some apprenticeships may be too long, hence shorter apprenticeships in some areas, and some are difficult to access, hence foundation apprenticeships in some areas. We are hearing—this will be a focus of work going forward—things like how to maximise digital skills training, not just in the digital sector but across all sectors. The real theme came across from the engagement that we had over the autumn and winter that digital skills are needed in every single sector. But what exactly is needed to fill that gap? Is it a short course? Is it something that is spread out over time? Getting into the detail of what exactly is needed will help us with that next stage of work.

That is, again, an opportunity for Skills England not just to say, “Here is a product that might address that”, but to co-create that product and talk with people, including industry people, training providers and others who have expertise in this and can say, “This kind of thing works here”. We have already heard about the example of a combined heat pump installer, where the default was to create an apprenticeship on that, but they just wanted a short course because they do not want to do that for their whole life. They want to know how to do that now and then move on to other things. What is relevant in these environments is where we have a real opportunity to make the best products for the best fit.

I have couple of questions on funding, please. In December last year, the Government announced that they would retain until 2027 a number of the applied general qualifications that had previously been marked for defunding. That included quite a lot of BTECs. What assessment have you made of the potential merits of preserving those qualifications beyond 2027, when the Government have guaranteed funding?

Clearly, there is Government policy involved in that, but I do not know whether Tessa or Sarah can comment on any specific work that has been done or any input that we are trying to provide in that environment.

Skills England will be concerned about ensuring that every young person has the right good pathway through their 16-to-19 journey, whether that is a T-level or an A-level apprenticeship or something else. Our focus will be on making sure every young person has that access to high-quality information. We mentioned earlier—you may have come in a bit later—the work that we have been doing with the curriculum assessment review and the conversations we have been having in this area. Our views are closely aligned. Every young person needs to have good routes. We will be coming back to it, certainly.

Are you currently looking at it, or will you approach that closer to 2027?

When Skills England is up and running—we were saying at the start that it should be up and running and fully functioning in the next couple of months—absolutely, one of our key focuses will be making sure that young people have good pathways through the system, and that they are clear and well understood not just by learners but by employers as well.

The other question is more general, about the funding of FE. At various points, the Committee has heard evidence that the FE sector has experienced what is quoted as a prolonged period of reduced funding, and that the Government must increase spending urgently. Do you agree with the assessment that the sector is underfunded? If so, what impact does that have on your ability to ensure that skills needs can still be met?

One opportunity we have with Skills England—it is clearly an opportunity that is important—is to work with regional authorities to stress the best pathways for people. We all know that historically, people accessing skills through further education has been an important pathway. In today’s environment, we are working within a particular envelope of funding, which is difficult, but that does not mean that, as we work with regional organisations, we do not encourage them, as Tessa has said, to put the best things in position to allow people to get the best qualifications or support or skills that they need. That is important. We have to find a way of doing that. Working with not only the mayoral authorities but the regional authorities in general to make sure that their skill system is data-rich—in the sense that we have informed them what the real challenges are and how to address them best—and giving the pathways will mean that further education and other pathways, training providers and others, will be important to providing them. We are trying to put our focus on how we rally those regional organisations together with the assets that they have in their region to be most effective in delivery. We need to keep stressing that.

That is a fair point about rallying regional Governments and devolved Governments. Presumably, you still intend to make representations to the Department for Education on why it needs to ensure that the funding for this is sustainable. Can you say a little bit about what representations you intend to make or perhaps are already making?

Can I come in on that? It is also worth bearing in mind that the pattern that we have seen over the last few years is a decline in employer investment in the training and skills of their own employees. Putting that together and understanding the need for co-creation of solutions, whatever the funding envelope is, is important. Reflecting back on the success of the model with the recent construction announcement where the Government and industry come together to form a package of support of £600 million—over £30 million of that has come from industry—to provide industry work placements, some of the friction in the system can best be solved by industry itself and employers. It is important to think about the resource in the system across the piece, not just the education part of it or the skills provision part, but what industry is bringing to the table. That is where amazing things start to happen, like this construction announcement, which has happened since your last evidence session.

We are in a comprehensive spending review, relatively close to the start of a new Parliament, and the evidence that we have heard clearly from the sector is that, notwithstanding the deep commitment and hard work of many people who work in FE and skills, they are struggling with the underfunding of this sector historically over many years. It is affecting their capacity to deliver, not least with the disparity in pay and what that means for their ability to attract good people from industry to teach skills and also the more academic courses that are delivered within FE. The lack of parity between teacher pay in schools and teacher pay in FE colleges is causing problems for the sector. Are you saying that you are not making any representations to the Department or within the Department at the moment in relation to the comprehensive spending review on a series of critical spending decisions that we are about to see that will affect the ability of the sector to deliver your aspirations for it over the coming period? Is that the case?

I was going to say that we are working closely with other Government Departments—including the Department for Education—to prepare for that spending review. We think that Skills England’s role in helping to prepare for that spending review is clearly articulating where the skills gaps are. We have been focusing our efforts there. Our efforts are focused upon convening partners, talking to employers and talking to others to identify and, as we have all talked about, understand and get under the skin of the challenges in each of the different sectors. We are focusing our work at the moment on the industrial strategy priority sectors, plus construction and healthcare, because we think those are the sectors where skills are particularly problematic. Our work is important in the preparation for that spending review. That is where our focus is lying. We want to drive the best value from the system that we possibly can. All the things that you said we recognise and have heard others say, but we are interested in how we can drive best value. What can we do to remove duplication and friction for employers? What can we do to reduce inefficiency? We will be focused on that.

I can give you one last opportunity to respond maybe a little bit differently on this. At the beginning of our session, we asked you about operational independence and the structure within which you are set up. We have heard absolutely glaring evidence about problems with capacity and resources, and you have told us that your focus in terms of the comprehensive spending review is entirely on the economic growth argument, which is the Government’s own narrative about skills, and not particularly about the resources. Do you have the operational independence to speak about resources issues within the skills sector where that is needed? Our evidence certainly says it is.

Although we have said we will focus on growth sectors, I also mentioned briefly in passing that Skills England is also—even outside the industrial strategy—focusing on health and social care, and on construction and building. That is for two reasons. We want to deliver the Government’s missions, but those are important for the economy as well. We need to provide the skills for healthcare, most importantly, and for transition into newer sectors. The reality is that we want to focus on giving the right capability to the growth sectors, but we also want to provide it into sectors where it is vital for the economy to be successful, and that includes building and construction. In those environments, we know that it is good business for the companies that are hiring people if we do this, and it is good that they then get engaged into the discussion here and get involved in forming the solutions. We will clearly focus on priority areas, including our two additional ones, but that does not mean what we are doing is not reflective or beneficial to other sectors as well.

In broad terms, to succeed in your mission, you need the whole of the FE sector to work as effectively as it can. A series of FE colleges, not absolutely everywhere but in some parts of the country, are absolutely on their knees because of the underfunding of this sector over a prolonged period of time. What is your view about that and what are you saying within the Department about it?

One of the most important things, it seems to me, that Skills England does is to provide the evidence base for the skills requirements of the country. The first Skills England report published last autumn did that compellingly. I know work has gone on since to try to refine that picture on a sector-by-sector basis. It is then, during the spending review, for Ministers to determine the priorities both within the Department and across the Government as a whole. What we have done already is powerful in providing that evidence, but the decisions quite rightly will fall out of the spending review.

I want to come back to something that you touched on earlier, Mr Smith, about the pathway that children take through the education system and whether they aim for university or look at other careers. I wondered whether you felt that the whole education system in this country has moved too much in one direction. The goal is university, and we have lost sight of the attraction of other types of careers for children. They do not go through the system thinking that those could be a good pathway for them, particularly if they are not so academic. I am interested to hear your thoughts on how you think we can rebalance that and whether you think it is necessary. We will not have the skills that the country needs unless we have a strong further education system. It is quite clear that it is struggling financially, but also it needs to attract competent staff, and it needs to have a kudos that it does not have at the moment. Presumably, part of Skills England’s mission is to say that there is a whole other world out there that we are not focusing on in this country.

As we have said previously, we want to give people a sense of where the real jobs are and the real opportunities are. That is not necessarily tied to individual institutions per se, because private provision and apprenticeships can be done in many environments, but the important thing, as you said, is that we show young people in this particular context what the pathways are and what is a good job to go for, and we do not simply say, “If you do not go to university, you are not going to get a job”. Many people get valuable jobs, sometimes with degrees associated but sometimes without, and move into the system. That is important. From our perspective, we want to provide the data and the real focus areas to try to solve this problem. What is the issue? Is it that young people do not understand what apprenticeships are versus university, or that parents do not understand what apprenticeships are? What is the data for that, and how can we show where that is nationally and regionally and then start to address those issues? What do we do about that? How do we help people to get on to the right pathways that give them the right jobs?

One thing that we have been doing recently is looking at the occupations that are particularly in demand in those priority sectors. We have tried to break down the pathways into those occupations, and that starts to indicate the challenges. For example, in some sectors we see we need more people qualified at level two, for example, whereas in other sectors we see we need people qualified at higher education levels six and seven and beyond. That data we are planning to publish in the coming months, but the challenge then is how you communicate that to young people and adults and to learners in the system and say, “This is a potential pathway through. These are the occupations that are so much in demand”. How do we communicate that out to people? That will be a challenge for us, working both with industry but also with other Government partners. I completely agree with you. This is a long-standing challenge that we have had.

It involves the whole education system as well as children and parents choosing that route. There has to be a route for them to go down and it has to be properly funded.

Yes, exactly. You are completely right.

In light of the Government’s plans to support more people who may have health conditions back into work, how will Skills England both work with employers to ensure that they are willing to take on people who may have disabilities or fluctuating health conditions, and also make sure that education providers are supported and funded to be able to best support these learners, particularly those with special educational needs and disabilities?

Without reinforcing it too much, the reality is we are trying to find the most effective pathways to work. Like you, I share the view that we should try to provide that for everyone. It is important that we do that. Government policy is involved, and within the apprenticeship schemes there are already mechanisms for bursaries for people who have particular characteristics that they need to enter into the system. For younger people, money is given to training providers and to people who are in particular environments themselves. It is important that we do that, and that we make it visible that these are appropriate for people and that these opportunities are there. One thing I stress again is that although there is clearly an issue with supply in some areas, there is a lot of supply around. In a number of cases, it is matching the demand with the supply, giving people a view of what they can do and how they should do it, and finding an appropriate place for them. The Government’s decision about how they fund or support that, whether that be in the college or to the individual, needs to progress. I do not know if there is any more to say about that.

No, other than to stress the importance of cross-government working in this space. It is important that we continue to join up effectively with colleagues in DWP, for example, and our colleagues in the Department for Education, who are working around careers advice and guidance. That is critical to getting this right and making sure the information that Skills England can provide then feeds through into the system at all levels.

Thank you very much for coming to give us your evidence this morning. We wish you well in your endeavours as you get started as a fully-fledged executive agency, and we look forward to seeing you again in the future.

Thank you very much. We are looking forward to the report because, as the board is formed now, I would love to be able to share the output of the report with them to get them engaged in this. We have a board that is ready to be announced, and very excited about the opportunity from all different aspects. We would definitely be keen on more opportunities to come back again to talk to you, and we are certainly keen to see the output of your deliberations. That would be great to see.   Witnesses: Ben Rowland, Dr Katerina Kolyva, Emily Rock and Jane Hadfield.

We welcome our second panel to our evidence session on further education and skills this morning. First, I put on record that one of our witnesses, Ben Rowland, has been known to me in a personal capacity for many years. We studied together a long time ago. It is important to put these things on the public record. I invite our panel to introduce yourselves to us this morning, starting with Emily Rock.

Hi. I am Emily Rock. I am the CEO of the Association of Apprentices. We are a not-for-profit membership organisation set up to connect apprentices in the UK for peer support and personal development. Our mission is simply to improve apprentice outcomes. We have 40,000 apprentice members and reach a wider community of 150,000 in our partnership network. Those are partners that help us on that mission. Thank you to the Committee for inviting me to speak today and represent the apprentice voice.

I am Jane Hadfield. I am co-chair of the St Martin’s Group, a membership organisation made up of employers across all sectors, awarding bodies and education providers. We aim to focus on solution-focused advice, policy advice and critical friendship. We focus on our breadth of experience across the board on partnerships in education, focusing on apprenticeships but the wider skills piece as well. I am also national lead for apprenticeships for the NHS, and I have worked with IfATE for many years. I am a board member with IfATE currently. I have led the NHS apprenticeship programme to this date.

Good morning I am Katarina Kolyva. I am the chief executive of the Education and Training Foundation. We are the professional body for further education and skills. We support the professional development of all those educators and leaders that work across the system. Essentially, my focus and lens for today’s session is very much from the teacher perspective and all those supporting apprenticeships. May I commend you for this inquiry on further education skills? It is a sector that drives social mobility and impact and is often forgotten. Thank you for inviting us today.

Hello, everyone. I am Ben Rowland, the chief executive of AELP, the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, which is the membership body for organisations that deliver apprenticeships and other skills programmes with employers at the front line. We are perhaps best known for our independent training provider membership, but about one-fifth of all general FE colleges are members of ALP, as are a similar number of universities and awarding organisations and also a growing number of employers. It may also be of interest to the Committee to know I am the author of a guidebook on apprenticeships. Sadly, it is the only guidebook available at the moment on apprenticeships for students. Prior to that, I ran a training provider for eight years.

Thank you very much. Can I start with a nice broad question? Could you tell us your assessment of the current apprenticeship system? What is working well and what needs to be improved? I realise that is a broad question and a large topic. I ask you to be as concise as possible so that we can also ask you about everything else we would like to raise with you this morning. Perhaps we will start again with Emily Rock.

It is a broad question. I start with apprenticeships, which we know deliver return on investment for individuals, for businesses and for the economy. I come at this from an apprentice perspective in terms of what works well here. Apprenticeships do what they say on the tin. They help close skills gaps, providing essential skills, particularly for young people to progress and adapt. At the association, we completed a large-scale survey at the end of last year with over 2,000 respondents. They report gains of personal growth, of confidence, of enhanced employability. This, for me, is evidence that apprenticeships are helping them to adapt and progress. Apprentices’ view when they complete is that it also supports them with future progression or to be ready for the future. Apprentices report that among the top skills completed are analytical thinking, flexibility, resilience, self-management and awareness. Again, these are all things that as an individual you are armed with to progress not only in the apprenticeship, but beyond that. They are also great for social mobility. Around 40% of those who receive free school meals who responded in our survey said that they would not be in their current industry without access to that apprenticeship. They provide access to opportunity, they help people along their learning journey and they help people for the future. What may be not going so well is that there are still improvements to do, because a substantial proportion of apprentices still start their programme and leave early, and do not get to realise some of the outcomes that I have outlined. Certainly, as we get further into the discussion, I would be keen to go into suggestions around improving apprenticeships.

My perspective is largely from the employer perspective, and that is important. The most successful piece for me is employer leadership, employer voice and co-creation. I talk about pipelines, pathways and partnerships. Education partnerships at every level are hugely important in this, and having the employer hand in hand with that triumvirate is hugely part of the success here. One thing that I strive to do is to remind our new colleagues of the importance of the trailblazing that we have done over the last 10 years and how employers have led the way. This is a relatively young strategy, and I err on the side of being careful about what we stop doing, with regret, and think about getting into exactly where your question comes from. With our St Martin’s piece, we are clear about what works in terms of our research base. We also did research that shows that even those who do not necessarily complete still progress in life, in their jobs and in their earnings capacity. We think that quality measures in apprenticeships are not all about completions. They are about a much broader piece around success measures and life chances. With my broader piece, there is compelling evidence here that we see people in my own sector who reflect the people we are looking after. We are thinking about that systems approach and your earlier points about place-based and systems approaches and employers working together. There is a focus on large employers. It is not as easy as it seems for large employers. It is infrastructure. It is focus. That is a downfall, and it needs investment. We need partnering for smaller employers; thinking about my own sector—7,000 smaller employers and GP practices and pharmacies—they struggle. We need to focus on how those pathways articulate and how we can make them much more agile and have equality for all employers at all levels and all ages for all apprenticeships.

I am sure all of us today will agree with me that apprenticeships impact on employability, on inclusion and on social mobility, and so I am sure we are all on this together. The quality of apprenticeships, and the quality of the experience for learners and those apprentices we all serve, is down to the quality of the teacher. I use the word “teacher” broadly here. I mean the tutors, the coaches and the assessors. So many people are part of the wider workforce that supports apprentices. They lack consistency in terms of the quality of that teaching and training. It is not me saying that; it is Ofsted reports saying that and the Department for Education saying that. Also, they lack consistency in terms of parity of esteem. You mentioned earlier with the previous panel about how academic routes versus apprenticeship routes for those who teach and support apprentices are not of the same esteem and the same parity. I will probably focus on the quality of teaching and learning, the lack of consistency and how we need to bring more consistency within the system, and the importance of parity of esteem.

You asked a question about assessment of the system. Of course, the system is all about assessment of vocational quality. To assess something well, you need to have clear learning aims, you need to have clear criteria, and you need to have clear guidance and capacity on the ground. We are not yet clear on what we want from the apprenticeship system, but if you were to push me to give it a GCSE grade, I would give it a six at the moment but would be disappointed, given what we have in place, that it was not an eight or a nine. The potential we have is huge. Where people, where employers and where learners are using apprenticeships, as colleagues on the panel have said, they work well. The question is: how can we do more of that? Your question at the end to colleagues from Skills England about resources was bang on, because the people who will make this happen—whether they are the frontline teachers, the people who support frontline teachers, all the quality people, the people writing the curriculum or the people ensuring quality for Ofsted, making sure the money flows through and so on—all cost money. They are all people who need to be paid well to do the task. At the moment, the Treasury, as we know, sits on about £800 million that is raised from the levy that is not then diverted back towards programmes. That would make an enormous difference in allowing organisations at the frontline to not just do what they currently do but to expand that, to go into those cold spots, to go and reach those SMEs and hold their hands to go through what is inevitably a complex system. When people talk about simplicity, it is a holy grail. There is no simple skills system because we are talking about the whole economy, but you need people who are equipped to hold the hands of the people who are finding it difficult. That normally means providers, whether that is a local college, a university or an independent training provider. That money would make an enormous difference and would get us from a six to an eight or maybe even a nine.

In its first report in September last year, Skills England warned there were significant skills barriers in the UK and that 36% of UK job vacancies were due to skills shortages in 2022. We hear that the Government’s growth plans could be seriously hampered by skills gaps in areas like construction, clean energy, digital and many others. What should Skills England prioritise to address these barriers and to improve the skills landscape?

Perhaps a good balance between focusing on learners and on teachers. I was enthused to hear from the chair of Skills England earlier that they will focus on both. If I pick up your example around construction, the Government have set it as an important priority as part of this Government’s missions. We know that there are skills gaps in terms of getting people into construction, but there are significant areas for recruitment of those who will support them in the teaching and the technical skills. I should probably say that all those working in education supporting apprentices are dual professionals. They are a plumber, an engineer, a nurse or a hairdresser, and they are a tutor, a coach or an assessor. For us to support that, we need to support that flexibility and that duality to enable them to stay up to and trained at a level that keeps them always on a progression pathway and always up to date with their training.

Thank you for your question. The convener role that was discussed earlier is of great interest around our table, because it is about understanding the feedback that is taken through not just one lens but across all those Government Departments and industries. There is something key here about how Skills England will engage not just with the industrial strategy plus two, but the wider skills economy, and understand where the shortages are. It also winds back to something else that came up earlier around information, advice and guidance, and how we support not just our young people but also the people who are in work and out of work to access agile reskilling and upskilling. In some of the apprenticeship work, you will hear all the time that employers prefer to train the people they already employ. To be an apprentice, you have to be employed. There is something about job openings and aligning them to good technical education pathways. I am winding it all the way back to your excellent discussion earlier about information, advice, and guidance, which is where this all starts, but not just focusing on one section of the community but all learners at every stage in their lifelong learning journey.

There is a real risk for Skills England that it spreads itself too thinly across too many different things. I know it has been good at listening and engaging, but I am looking forward to a change in gear. It needs to be moving forward and driving forward—not just listening to people, not just waiting for evidence, but pushing things forward. I am looking forward to that. Skills England should be focused on one apex task above all others, and that is the creation of the programmes that can be used for the skills and growth levy. That could become the main blockage. In some cases, my members have hundreds of young people lined up—exactly what the Government wants—for industrial strategy sectors, for example insurance, who cannot start because the programme is not ready yet. If that happens across the board, that is a bit of a disaster. That is, for me, the biggest task that Skills England should focus on. This also gives it the authority. We talk about where its authority comes from. It comes from being able to do something that no one else can do and the creation of those programmes is the thing that only it can do. Then it needs to buttress and support that task by two things. One is doing what you were intimating it might be doing, which is pushing for more funding. The second thing is it needs to launch a serious marcomms campaign to get employers who like the idea of training but it is always next month’s task, not today’s task, properly engaged with doing more training themselves. Young people are already desperate for apprenticeships. The biggest blocker now for young people is not their own view that they want to go to university. Most of them do not. Many of them are now picking university as a second choice because they cannot get an apprenticeship. Young people we do not need to work on, but employers we need to enthuse. Those would be the three things: focus on the programmes, make sure that they are funded properly, and make sure that people are excited about training.

I would add only one bit, because I echo what colleagues have already said, and that is to keep what works well and improve that which does not work well. It is no use throwing the baby out with the bathwater when some of it works well. The other bit I would add to it is that, yes, consultation has happened, but it could be more far-reaching and particularly could include learner voices. That is important. Apprentices or wider learners should be around the table should be around the table with employers, with training providers, with awarding organisations. Simply, they have a unique and essential perspective on what works and what does not around positive experiences and better outcomes. It makes sense that they are there as well.

The growth and skills levy should fund three types of programmes. One is the existing set of programmes, level two to level seven apprenticeships, one year plus, the idea being that it is the start of a specific occupation where you are in work and you are getting high-quality off-the-job training, and your employer—this is the crucial bit—blends those two things together and takes an active role in making sure that your theoretical learning is applied in the workplace. That is product one. Product two is foundation apprenticeships, which should be aimed, but not exclusively, at young people who do not know where to start but are deployed in the sectors that have been the traditional stepping-in points to the world of work for many people, including me, which is retail, hospitality, some of the care professions, office administration and junior construction roles. By the way, it is absolutely crazy that the Government are not proposing to use foundation apprenticeships for hospitality, where they could get tens of thousands of young people supported in their first job. It is also crazy that they are taking foundation apprenticeships to the industrial strategy sectors that do not have a need for them. That is the second type, foundation apprenticeships. Then the third type—people are groping through the fog for it, but it will emerge soon—is these shorter programmes, which are mainly aimed at people already in the workforce who at the moment only have the option of using a 12-month-plus full-fat apprenticeship to get maybe three months’ worth of training that they want. Lots of people on some of the management training or the digital training—or indeed some of the plumbers and heat pump engineers we were talking about—need three months or so to upskill, still in the same construct, in a job, learning off the job, and with their employer showing how they deploy that in practice. It is not going off to a college or online training for five nights and getting a little certificate. It is genuinely about doing the job but in shorter forms than is currently available. If you have those three things, from talking to industry bodies, which I do, and to employers directly and to training providers, there is a growing sense that those three things between them would provide the kind of flexibility that people want but without opening the system up to every possible organisation who could come in and sell whatever shiny course they have. The benefit of keeping in those three products is that the same systems that apply for apprenticeships would work as well, in terms of Ofsted, financial assurance, and Skills England setting the programmes. There is no need to recreate a parallel system to make sure the quality stays the same.

We talked about flexibility. I agree with Ben on the shorter courses, but also training the trainer, retraining people later in life, with broader flexibility. We advocate at ETF that we would like the levy to focus on two areas—on learners and their progression, and on tutors and the workforce that supports the learners—and we don’t have that at the moment. There is something about enhancing the workforce to use the levy to train the trainer. We have 23,000 practitioners on our register at ETF. Many of them will have gone through a process of professional status, the so-called qualified teaching and learning skills, which is linked to the DFE register and now has parity of esteem with schools, which is a great achievement. If you know QTS, QTLS now has that equivalent. It does not really apply to apprenticeships, so we are working at the moment on how we make sure that with the levy and the wider policy framework we can create a status that is only for those who work and support apprentices. There is definitely more to do in that space.

I agree with everything colleagues have said, but I would also add focus on employer requirements and think about how that crosses over into those wider strategies, not just the industry, as Ben has said. Also, we need to think about protecting apprenticeships in this. I strongly advocate that training should be designed around the pathways that lead to occupational competence. I am all for modular, but what is the end result? Can I walk away? I am a bit old fashioned around skills escalators here—step on, step off, lifelong learning, thinking about not just where we are now but where someone is leading. We see with apprenticeships and work-based learning and vocational training that people stay with their employer, they work across the sector and they develop fruitful careers across that. You don’t want repetitive, duplicative training where they have to redo stuff if they want to go and train to be something else in the sector.

I agree with that. We hear from employers all the time that flexibility is needed, but also from learners. Apprenticeships are not the right solution for everybody, and they could provide, depending on the solution, great ramps on or great ramps off to apprenticeships, which helps with progression. You are absolutely right, apprentices in particular want to know what the long-term gain is, what their career path is. If we can somehow make those other flexibilities make sense to them, that is a good thing. There is a slight danger of confusion at the moment, certainly around things that have been announced: shorter apprenticeships because there is different content, shorter apprenticeships because of duration, foundation apprenticeships, level two entry. We are crowding the market here without it making sense to people coming into the system, so we need to be clear about what the flexibilities are and how it all works together.

We have touched on this a little bit in your answers to the previous question. The Government have talked about introducing shorter apprenticeships and new foundation apprenticeships. Is there anything you would like to add on what measures you think Skills England and the Government need to take to ensure the success of these initiatives?

Building on something that Emily mentioned—crowding this entry level market—I am working with employers in this space now and giving advice. We are going to launch shorter, and there is great support for shorter for learners who can achieve within that space of time, but I would like to see that these programmes are learner-centred and it is based on learner progression, so that we don’t close a door, but we open other doors for those who are able to progress. There is also something about how long the foundation apprenticeship will take and what it leads to—what is the progression pathway? That is the clarity we need on the questions that Emily mentioned. I have concerns that we are looking at starting these things all at the same time. The employer feedback in the discussions we have had and the advice we have been giving is make it clear now about what these are, are they ramp on, ramp off and where do they lead? Remember what I said about occupational competence? We need employers and sectors and service users that are confident in the people who are doing this training, that they are meeting occupational competence. If you are going to do a foundation apprenticeship, how does that dovetail in with your next apprenticeship? Do we end up seeing exactly what I just mentioned, which is duplication of effort because you might as well have gone straight into that level two shorter apprenticeship perhaps? There is something about how all of that comes together and we need that clarity.

On the clarity, in that list of three types of programmes, shorter duration is a footnote to the second type, which is the main apprenticeship. Somehow it has become the leading change and has got a bit confused. There are a number of reasons why an apprenticeship of less than 12 months might be useful, but the starting point should be that the concept is a year and that seems to work really well. Where someone is flying through it, we don’t want to hold them back. Where someone has already been in the job for 10 years but has never had formal training, we want them to be able to do it quicker, but those are amendments to the main product. There is a really important technical issue, which is around eight months. The Government propose to change the legislation for the minimum length of an apprenticeship from 12 months to eight months, and they are also saying, “Aha, that means we can do foundation apprenticeships for eight months as well”. They are trying to be efficient and smart about their legislative change, but people who want foundation apprenticeships—hospitality, retail and those sorts of things—only want a six-month programme, and that would keep it really clear. If you said a six-month programme in those sectors that are the traditional entry points for the world of work, those employers are going to say, “Got it; we don’t need to worry ourselves about these slightly shorter apprenticeships over here”. The people who are doing the shorter apprenticeships would not worry about these ones, so you could get all of those things up and running if you focus them on the sectors where they are needed.

Perhaps what these examples are demonstrating is how different leadership skills are required to lead apprenticeships than any other part of education and further education and skills. Those leadership skills are about systems thinking, the need to look across the industry, workplace learning and education, managing compliance and navigating employer relationships. It is a much more complex leadership development. We run leadership development in ETF, and we know—we have talked to Ben already—how complex it is in the apprenticeship arena rather than any other part of the system.

There has been a sharp fall in apprenticeship starts since 2017 when a new funding system was introduced. We know that there were 150,000 fewer apprentices starting their training in 2023 than in 2016. We have heard that this is due to low pay but also to a lack of information in schools about a clear route into apprenticeships as opposed to information available for routes into higher education or A-level. What steps should the Government take to address these issues? I will start with Emily.

On declining participation, we are starting to see starts moving in the right direction, but you are absolutely right, information at schools is not where it needs to be quite yet. We heard from some apprentices recently about careers advisers feeling ill-equipped to brief students and at the right time in the academic cycle. Sometimes the apprenticeship information is coming too late after the UCAS deadline, and the student is feeling a bit lost about where to go. From personal experience, my daughter was sat in a careers session and out of 30 students in a class when the careers adviser asked, “Who wants to go to uni?” only two put their hands up. They said, “This is the third presentation I have done, and it is the same answer”. It is like young people have this and parents are starting to get it as well, but it would be good to have careers advisers and teachers to support that information. There is also something around role modelling success. Lots of students don’t really understand what a data scientist or a production operative is, so if you talk about pathways and what happens at the end and entry to those pathways, it will help young people to understand what routes to go into.

I could not have said it better, really. It is about the pathways. I mentioned information, advice and guidance. It is at every level. There are pockets where I still hear—I work with a college and a school as a governor, and there are some groups of parents who still think that apprenticeships are YTS programmes and that kind of thing, but that is their lived experience. We need to do the role modelling and much better marketing. We work with some amazing apprentices who are the best ambassadors for their programmes, and we can’t do enough support for employers to release people to go in and talk to schools and colleges and young people’s organisations. Again, we need to focus on sharing that lived experience, but there is an additional cost in infrastructure for employers to be able to do that. We need to demonstrate the return on investment for employers to do these things. It is part of the holistic approach. You have to start at the beginning of the pipeline and join it wherever you can. It is that visioning about ”Where is this progression pathway taking me?” and allowing that aspiration to be built in. We talk a lot around all ages, all levels. We have talked about some levels’ issues here already. There are some proposals around changing how we fund it, but we need to keep the aspiration of the art of the possible within the technical and vocational pathways, whether they be apprenticeships or other kinds of programmes.

It is definitely about parity in status. As a culture, would the average member of the public say, “I value further education skills more than other parts of education. I understand what further education skills are. I know exactly what the pathway is for my children”? We know the university narrative, we know there is UCAS, we know there is a system and we know when our children are at school they are told about all those. We need to almost recreate that, and we also need to talk up the further education and skills sector. I don’t think we do that enough. We all have an opportunity as individual members of the public; you in your roles as Members of Parliament have a role in talking up the sector. That is why I mentioned earlier the importance of the quality in the system, because the more we improve the quality the better the impact we can demonstrate.

It is worth spending a bit of time understanding why the numbers dipped. I was delivering apprenticeships at the time of the change when it moved from frameworks to standards. We have to recognise that apprenticeships got a lot harder to do and to deliver. They got better. One of the problems before was that people always talked about how frameworks could be patchy quality-wise, because you just have to go through and once you have ticked every box—you might have forgotten what you had done 12 months ago, but as long as the box had been ticked 12 months ago, you got it. There is now endpoint assessment and it became much harder. There was a change, so employers were getting used to it and the numbers dropped, and then of course covid hit, so the numbers never had a chance to come back up. We have fallen into a set of habits as a country about how we go about using our apprenticeship levy, typically on people we already have employed, so there is not the risk of taking on someone who is unknown. The programmes have got higher end. We like that, that is a good thing, but they tend to be more expensive, leaving less money behind. I ran sales teams who, by the way, are the unsung heroes of the apprenticeship system, who go out and knock on doors and encourage employers to take this on board. It is much easier for any provider—a university or a college or an independent training provider—to go out to a big employer, a big engineering firm, a city bank and persuade them to put 50 people on an apprenticeship programme than it is to go around 50 SMEs, all of whom might change their minds at the last minute, and persuade them to take on an apprentice. We need to address that full on, and the way to do that is with incentives and behaviours. We all respond to incentives and behaviours, and we need to make sure that it is worth the while of our limited time, if you are somebody who provides these courses, to go and spend time with SMEs, who are traditionally much better at employing young people as well. Those incentives are a particularly effective use of some of that £800 million I was talking about earlier.

Some of the written evidence that we have seen in the Committee describes the apprenticeship system as “overly complex” and “rigid”. We began to touch on this, but what, in your view, are the ways of improving the entire process of taking and training an apprentice for employers? What is your perspective on that?

Duration is important for people—that there is a sense of choice. Giving people a sense of choice gives people a sense of agency in all of this, and duration is one of those things. One of the other key things that Skills England needs to bring into this is a small amount of optionality in apprenticeship programmes. At the moment, to pass an apprenticeship, to become qualified as an apprentice, you need to demonstrate you can show 100% of the knowledge skills and behaviours, which means it is absolutely all or nothing. Some of what is in the programme will not be as relevant for some people as it might for other employers. If you added a little bit of optionality into that, it would be more accurate for their needs and it would give them a sense of agency and ownership. The other thing that is slightly behind the scenes—Jane will know this better than me from her work within IfATE—is that some of the standards get delayed because two people disagree over some really arcane point. It has to be 100%, and any disagreement stops the whole thing. If you just said that 10% could be optional, one person would say, “I am going to die in a ditch over making sure this is included”, and you could say, “You can have that”. Someone else could say, “I definitely don’t want that in”, and you could say, “You can have that”. The entire system would move much easily if we could build that in. Some of the other things that people do not like—they talk about lack of flexibility—are really just that it is not quite working and it is not quite doing what I want, but some of the bureaucratic layers in there are there to protect taxpayers’ funding and it is okay that they are in there. Most people expect that there are some bureaucratic rules that come with government funding.

If I were to say one thing it would be making sure we have consistency in the quality of the teaching and in the quality of the experience that apprentices receive at the end. To do that, I would not advocate for mandation or further regulation. We have enough of that in the system. The predecessor to our organisation was the regulator for teaching tutors under new Labour, so we know and we have learned the lessons from that process. We are advocating for—we have put it in our evidence—a national framework, a kitemark, if you like, that demonstrates best practice and says, “This is what good teaching and learning looks like for apprentices”. Let’s demonstrate that. Use case studies and have that at a national level so that people can draw up to the standard rather than having the inconsistent quality that we are experiencing at the moment.

Functional skills policy will be interesting to see. Taking away the requirement of achieving your functional skills by gateway is potentially very empowering. It has been a bit rocky about how it was announced and, frankly, from the employer point of view, confusing, but we have to have the confidence that that will settle. We have to have messages that functional skills—that is numeracy, literacy and digital skills—are valued and still really important. They are valued by employers, so many of the apprentices will still require that, but I have had experience where functional skills has been a blocker to progression on to an apprenticeship because of the education provider requirement, and also people don’t complete because they can’t achieve their functional skills at gateway. They are occupationally competent all bar their maths and English. It is pursuing that policy and embedding it well, and aligning and attuning it to what this country wants around numeracy, literacy and digital skills. It is not using an apprenticeship standard as a Trojan horse to achieve what we need in those sectors, but really aligning and sorting that out. We need to see how that beds in and look at that, because it is cited by employers as one of the major issues for not recruiting talent and people not completing.

I will add a couple of points about getting employers engaged and the flexibility that they need—SMEs, in particular, because we see them as key to unlocking provision. Certainly, for the many students who are applying to oversubscribed programmes and not able to get on to them, they need a bit more enhanced and targeted support. That is not necessarily financial, although that is helpful for hiring and managing apprentices. Some of that may be down to communication. In particular, apprentices report that their employers do not understand the commitment. So, yes, there is bureaucracy in apprenticeships that has to be there, quite rightly, as Ben said, for taxpayers’ purposes. But the employers sometimes go into this not understanding, and that then manifests in a poor experience for the apprentice. I think we need targeted support for SMEs on understanding commitment, and then there is some flexibility still that could be offered up to make things easier. It does not necessarily have to be big policy changes, but if you look at some of the challenges that apprentices in particular report about balancing work and life and time management, there are things within apprenticeship programmes that we might be able to flex to support that.

Thinking about once you have apprentices in place, in the last academic year, 2023-24, there was an over 38% drop-out rate before they finished their training. What are the specific interventions that you think would be most effective in trying to tackle that drop-out rate?

It has improved. The latest achievement rates have gone up to 60% from the year before but, as you say, there is more to do. There are lots of reasons why apprentices leave their programmes, but a major one is simply lack of support. In our own survey last year, balancing work and study, time management, completing and recording off-the-job training and admin-related type activities were the main stresses, as well as preparing for employment assessment and understanding what is required. In fact, 62% of the people who responded to the survey told us that they felt stressed or anxious because of their apprenticeship. When you look behind the scenes at some of the data, if you are over the age of 25, if you are on a higher level of apprenticeship, if you are approaching EPA or if you have learning difficulties or disabilities, you are more likely to feel stressed than any other group. There are certain groups that we need to look behind for data—it is not a blanket approach to fixing this—and to understand what the best interventions for them are. However, it all leads to and highlights the importance of support systems and resources to help apprentices manage those workloads and to reduce stress. One way of managing expectations up front is being really clear with school students coming into apprenticeships about what they are going to get into and painting the picture of the clear progression pathways so that they understand the value at the end. The other is integrating support systems, integrating the financial assistance that is available for apprentices, integrating the mental health support that is available for apprentices and integrating the peer group that is available through organisations like the Association of Apprentices. Some of the resources already exist out there to support these things, and it is about making people aware and integrating. I, for one, would love to see it mandated as part of an apprenticeship that every apprentice joins a membership organisation like the association, because we know that peer group support and life skills development that we offer is essential for apprentice success and improving outcomes.

I need to wind up this session about 11.50 am to allow Members to get to Prime Minister’s questions, and we have a couple of further areas that we want to take your evidence on. If I can encourage you to be succinct with the remaining answers, that would be really helpful to us.

I will say just one thing—the lack of a workforce strategy. We don’t have a national workforce strategy for further education and skills. Other sectors do—the NHS long-term plan, and schools—but we do not have one. An important point we have made in our evidence is that we have not had one for a decade, so we need a national workforce strategy to support apprentices and support everybody who wishes to go through further education and skills.

I will say two things. One is that we need to understand what drop-out means. It means that someone starts an apprenticeship and does not complete it. It could be because they were promoted and, therefore, leave the apprenticeship because they don’t need it anymore. That is quite common. People might move and the new employer might not want to carry it on. It is not always a failure when someone does not complete their apprenticeship, so we need a more intelligent way of doing that. AELP is running a mini commission looking at exactly this point of: how do we actually measure the success of these programmes? There are some things where the completion rate is in the 80s and 90s, and there are others where it is 50% or less. Sometimes that is the industry. In some industries, that is the turnover of the workforce, so in cases where apprenticeship completion rates outstrip the natural churn, it suggests that that is the apprenticeship working, even though it looks like quite a low number. We need to be a bit smarter about interpreting that number.

Is that what your commission is going to look at?

Yes.

Great, we will look out for it.

We are going to look at employment assessment with Skills England. That needs to be a slicker, smoother process and absolutely that piece on progression. St Martin’s Group also did some research that clearly demonstrated that people don’t necessarily fail because they don’t complete; they progress. We can share that with you as well.

There is no requirement to repeat any part of your previous answers, because we have touched on this before. The Government have said that removing the mandatory requirement to do maths and English for adult apprentices will boost skills, cut red tape and support employers. What is your assessment of this policy? We will start with Emily and work down.

To be very brief, it gives employers flexibility to decide with learners whether it is the right route for them, and that is a good thing. Many employers I speak to say they are going to do it anyway, which makes me think that they value those skills. If you ask apprentices, there is a mixed response. Some think it will help them; some report that while maths and English is crucial for their jobs and they enjoyed doing it, some of it was unnecessary. There is some feeling that it might weaken transferable skills across the UK. There is a real mix from apprentices and there are unintended consequences about the discrepancy in age groups, what applies to 16 to 18, and what is 19-plus. Will that discourage people from applying until they are aged 19 or employers from taking apprentices until they are 19? There are unintended consequences that we may need to watch out for.

There is a point about equality here. I think all learners should be treated the same if it is an occupational requirement. Again, from the employer point of view, I am hearing that employers do value functional skills because they are core skills within the workforce.

I will say it is getting the balance right. It is important to reduce barriers but equally important to ensure that we have the conventional skills that are required for employability. I refer to ESOL learners—those for whom English is not their first language—and also to NEETs, not in education, employment, or training. Could they be disadvantaged here for their employability? I would say perhaps a more balanced approach.

I am massively in favour of the change and campaigned hard for it. In fact, our first mini commission was looking at the evidence for it. The main reason is that for many people it was a complete nightmare. That is for the learner, their line manager and the people trying to teach them, because they are taking someone who has failed for 11 years at English and maths and been told that they are a failure, and then you are saying, “You know that thing you were a terrible failure at and now you are succeeding in a vocation? Sorry, but you have to come back to that. We are going to drag you back to that”. That meant that what happened is people logically made a very sensible choice to say, if you are an employer, “I am going to take on someone who already has the English and maths skills, so I don’t have to inflict that nightmare on someone”. If you are a young person who does not have the English and maths already you say, “I am going to take a different route because I don’t want that. I have heard it is a nightmare”. It was supposed to be an exit requirement—you could not complete until you had done it—but it became an entry requirement. We did two snapshots, one in September and one in January this year, which said respectively that 75% and 84% of apprenticeship vacancies at that time required you to already have English and maths at the required level. They were using it to screen people out, so the very people who you wanted to get into the system and give them purpose and a sense of progression were being blocked out of it. For that reason and that reason alone, it is a brilliant change. There are some important things that we need to get right, but the most important is that it should be embedded into the standards. I went down to see a provider in Devon—I think the other side of Devon from you—who was teaching kids who didn’t have maths GCSE, trigonometry. They had no idea they were even doing maths. They thought they were learning how much wood to take off a bit of timber so the roof would not collapse. That is the way in which we should be teaching maths and probably also financial skills, because everyone cares about financial skills.

As a former maths teacher, these are things close to my heart. With time so short, I am going to skip to my last question. We have already touched on it. I think Emily mentioned it. With the removal of maths and English as a requirement, of course employers can choose to self-teach it. Is there a chance that we are now going to see employers gravitate towards employing people or putting people on to apprenticeship courses that are over the age of 19 at the expense of those aged between 16 to 18?

As I said earlier, possibly. Certainly, those are some of the fears that apprentices speak to us about as well. It is possible.

I have not heard that. What I have heard from a health perspective is that we value core skills, and we want to embed them in the occupational standard, but we welcome the fact that it is going to stop blocking people getting through the gateway.

I was looking at ONS stats, and 13.4% of 16 to 24-year-olds not in employment, education or training is up 110,000 from 2023 to 2024. There is compelling evidence here to ensure that we focus on level two to level five.

I think it will make a difference at the margins. I know this because if someone is 18 and does not have their English and maths, and they turn 19 next month, if I am their apprenticeship training provider, I am going to recommend for everyone’s sanity that they wait a month before they start.

The Government have said that the growth and skills levy will not fund all apprenticeships and that businesses must fund more of their level seven apprenticeships. What impacts will the need to remove level seven apprenticeships from the levy funding have on the system and potentially on social mobility within the workplace?

About £300 million or so is spent on level seven apprenticeships, and lots of that goes on people who if you looked at them you would say, “No, we want them to be funded”. It is people working in the NHS, and young people, exactly as you say, getting into solicitor roles or getting in to accountancy practice who would not have otherwise been able to do that. I think it is unnecessary and the way in which they have done it is—well, they have not announced it yet, because we think we have slowed them down, but if they want to save money, they will have to plan over a long period because these apprenticeships are quite long. They need to do it in a stepped-down way to give employers several years to increasingly get used to perhaps putting more of their own money in. At the moment, this proposal to put it as a cliff edge—employers are upset enough at the changes that the Government have brought about with NICs and the upcoming employment legislation. To suddenly pull the rug away with no time to adjust just does not look very business savvy at all. They need to put it on a taper down to give them the time to say to the employers, “You value these programmes. Now you can lean into them”, but they need to do it over time.

There is a risk that also you deter young people from taking on an apprenticeship. I have a couple of examples where somebody at 16 was encouraged to do a level three apprenticeship because she could see the end gain was a level seven. If you are sat at school and thinking that that level seven might not be there, would you take that level two or level three entry apprenticeship that the Department is trying to do more of? There are people currently in the system who are also worried about their progression being capped. I spoke to a level three paralegal apprentice who has finished her apprenticeship and is now worried she will not be able to go on and do her level seven. Will that make that young person think, “The apprenticeship is not for me” and go another route? There is a risk not just for employers, but it might deter young people.

There is a greater loss that does not get spoken about, in that the apprenticeship model gives us a quality education model set against national occupational standards designed by employers. I have grave concerns that if employers are going to have to pay for something at level seven, they will not choose an apprenticeship. We will go back to modular masters or self-funding or a mixed economy. As you know, the health sector has already had real fears around those very innovative training programmes. Back to my earlier point, and picking up on Emily’s as well, on long-term career aspiration, just the bare fact that it is a possibility has made a really significant difference to the parity of esteem. I also have concerns about thin-end-of-the-wedge stuff. Let’s not put too fine a point on it. We really value our degree apprenticeships, and we really want to keep them, but what happens next? All ages, all levels is really our strong message.

I don’t think it is either/or. It is about prioritisation. I made the point earlier about NEET and young people, and making individuals economically active, but you do need level seven for a leadership pipeline and those progression points my colleagues made. Again, it is back to balance. Yes, focus, but let’s not remove all of it.

Thank you very much indeed for giving us your evidence this morning. It has been extremely useful to us. If there is anything that you felt there was not the time to cover adequately that you would like to write to the Committee about after this meeting, please feel free to do that and we would certainly welcome it. We will feed your evidence into our report, which will be published in due course. That brings our evidence session for today to a conclusion.