My hon. Friend is right to raise the issue of a national framework. Various research reports over many years indicate that the privately funded training market has been exceeding the publicly funded one by considerable amounts, and that includes specialist management training, IT vendor qualifications, and project and programme management. The Government may need to look a bit more carefully at how this process is going to move forward. I absolutely agree about the need to have an overarching national framework, which we do not currently have.
Amendment 8 would ensure that the mapping of occupation groups had particular regard to people aged 16 to 24. This is crucial, because many apprenticeship training providers are reporting that, under the new levy system, employers are deciding to choose apprentices aged over 19 rather than 16 to 18-year-olds, particularly with regard to the new standards. Employers say that there is very little incentive left for them to take on younger learners, especially in the higher funding bands where a £1,000 employer incentive is a small fraction of the overall funding available. As the Minister will know, the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, which has, up until now, predominantly delivered apprenticeships to 16 to 18-year-olds, is seeing the majority of its business switch from this age group to older individuals.
If one looks at Lord Sainsbury’s comments and the skills plan commentary in relation to the changes in funding giving parity to older learners, one can see that the majority of apprentices in this age band are already 18, with little effort to change that through careers support. Perhaps that is the Government’s plan. If so, the Government need to be honest and to tell us that; if not, then something needs to change; otherwise, we are in danger of ending up with fewer apprenticeship opportunities for 16 to 18-year-olds.
I want to quote to the Minister some recent remarks of JTL, a training provider. About the new system, it says:
“Our employers say that under the new system when the traditional age differentials in funding rates are removed, they would sooner employ young people aged 19 and over. Some 16- and 17-year-olds aren’t allowed on site due to health and safety rules, and many of them have yet to pass their driving test, but the present funding makes it still worthwhile to take them on. Remove the incentive and employers will switch back to recruiting older apprentices.”
It went on to say—I hope the Minister will give this point careful thought, given the emphasis on STEM—that the
“so-called £1,000 incentive for employers to recruit 16- to 18-year-olds simply doesn’t work for STEM sectors. Our level three apprenticeships typically last four years, meaning the incentive equates to a mere £5 per week, which is of no interest to employers given the additional challenges of younger employees.”
That is a timely new year reminder to the Minister that the concessions he made after the Save Our Apprenticeships campaign, with which our party was very pleased to be involved—as he knows, the campaign involved a very broad range of people, whom he met and to whom promised changes—have not solved the problem. The concessions applied a temporary sticking plaster to the problem, and it remains to be seen how long it will stick. Coming on top of the continued lack of certainties about the new structures for apprenticeships and the delayed consultation, there must be concern about the fragility of the Government’s performance in the 16-to-18 area. In FE sectors, such as mine in Blackpool, we desperately need to get such young people skilled apprenticeships, which means looking for them now.
As I am sure the Minister knows, the AELP has raised the issue that a framework of only 15 routes across technical education might create an elitist system of education that denies many young people a work-based route to level 2 or 3. We remain concerned about that, given that so many young people in the service sector are not likely to be automatically covered. I know that there have been conversations saying that this is not really about apprenticeships, but about technical education. Whether it is about apprenticeships or technical education, however, young people in Blackpool and everywhere else need good training, whether from the service sector or the manufacturing sector. I would have thought that focusing on that would make a major contribution to this Government’s social justice agenda and even, arguably, to anticipating the impact of Brexit if controls on migrant labour are introduced. It is important to have a skills strategy that is inclusive, and this is a perfect opportunity to create such a coherent, inclusive strategy that covers a wide range of different abilities and aptitudes and that strives for excellence. That is what amendment 8 intends to do.
I want to talk briefly to amendment 9, which is about all apprenticeship standards needing to include a recognised technical qualification. As the Minister will know, it is not only we who have been concerned about this; a range of organisations—most recently, AELP—has been concerned about the omission of qualifications from some of the new standards. The investment in time and resource is leading to employer fatigue in some areas, and there is a lack of engagement. According to AELP, just under 50% of the current standards released still do not include a mandatory qualification. One alternative
solution is our proposed amendment, which would make the whole apprenticeship, rather than simply its components, into a recognised qualification.
I want to move on to amendment 10, which I will group with amendments 11 to 16 and, indeed, amendments 18 to 21. Amendment 10 on page 6 of the amendment paper is about the need to change the title of “course document” to
“standard or technical assessment design specification”.
That would ensure that copyright was acquired only at a level equivalent to apprenticeships. It is argued that underpinning occupational standards and technical assessment design specifications that are the equivalent of assessment plans is all that is needed for Crown copyright. City and Guilds has specifically raised with us the issue of the imposition of acquired copyright in evidence, as have other groups.
We have tabled the amendments because there is concern that imposing acquired copyright is one of the most significant risks to the future vitality of the technical education market in the UK. I accept that this is a complex and technical area, but the Minister needs to look at it carefully. It is not simply a question of existing providers wanting to set in stone a form of protectionism; it is about intellectual property, and where intellectual property starts and ends. The concern of many providers is that there has been a degree of mission creep in that respect in the way in which the Bill has been drafted. From a pragmatic point of view, I must say that if the broader definition of what the institute has to do on copyright remains in the Bill, even more resources may be required to police it, and I have already mentioned that there is a lack of such support. We need to look at these important issues.
The concern that each technical level will have only one awarding organisation has been raised by both the Centre for the Study of Market Reform of Education and NCFE. NCFE has said that, as currently set out, with some of the technical levels going to only one awarding organisation, having one would be unfortunate, but—to misquote Oscar Wilde—to have two might be beneficial. That would provide competition and enable providers to switch quickly in the event of problems, without the multiplication issues that have caused problems and difficulties elsewhere. NCFE has said, more in sorrow than in anger, that the
“current proposals do not seem to recognise the great expertise in designing and assessing Technical and Professional Education qualifications that already exists within Awarding Organisations.”
Our amendments 11 to 16 are consequential on amendment 9. Under an exclusive licensing model, the licence holder for a particular qualification may assume a quasi-monopoly position for the duration of the contracts. That is one of the reasons why the proposals are designed to move away from that principle. It seems to us that the principle should be that there needs to be a rationalisation of the operations of awarding organisations, but not necessarily to the point of having single operators on a licence, given the monopoly and single point of failure issues alongside all the intellectual property rights and Crown copyright ones. I repeat to the Minister that this is a complicated area and I appreciate that it is not easy to get the balance right, but I urge him to think very carefully about some of the
representations that have been made and, if he is not able to do anything about them tonight, to at least bring forward solutions in the other place.
The final area on which I want to comment briefly—I have talked about routes and all the rest—is the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education. Amendments 18 to 21 would ensure that the QAA was included in the list of organisations required to share information, and that degree apprenticeships were fully covered by such a requirement. Ofsted should have the authority to inspect every apprenticeship. We welcome the growth in degree apprenticeships and expect many more under the levy, but some are not genuinely work-based learning and are a rebranding of more vocationally biased degrees. Stricter monitoring is therefore needed. We argue that the involvement of the QAA is very important in this respect. It is vital that apprenticeships are just that: proper apprenticeships, with which Ofsted and Ofqual need to be well and properly engaged.
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I am aware that the Opposition amendments have had to be discussed in considerable detail and some are technical, but the broad thrust of what we are trying to do is: first, to ask the Government to act on their commitments in Committee; and, secondly, to go further than that and make the rhetoric around social mobility and widening participation a reality. The only way to do that is to improve the Bill with the amendments we have tabled this evening.