The ever changing role of the state in addressing sector skills

So the wait is over and the Government has finally announced how it will implement the apprenticeship reforms in England that Doug Richard recommended earlier in the year. Many employers have been on tenterhooks waiting for the announcement as they have the potential to bring huge changes to the way in which employers use apprenticeships and the role that apprenticeships play in addressing skills for our sector. However, to what extent is the sector dependent on the state to address its skill needs? How do the constant changes in government policy affect how skill needs are being addressed and how employers ultimately engage with the skills system?

Let’s look at the facts. The vast majority of employers are not dependent on the publicly funded skills system; in fact, 85 percent of training delivered is informal and in-house, with very little resulting in formal qualifications across the tourism and visitor economy. The smaller the business, the truer this is.

Most apprenticeships in the sector are at level 2 and therefore do not address the increasingly urgent skill shortages and gaps at higher levels. From a funding perspective, with the demise of Train to Gain in England, apprenticeships are largely the only game in town. Last year 38,442 individuals completed apprenticeships in the sector and the vast majority of these were employed by large businesses. Yet despite this take-up, skill shortages (generally at level 3 or above) remain unaddressed.

Research into Train to Gain, which provided funding for people to gain a level two qualification, suggests that it had limited impact on addressing skill needs because it was being delivered to employed people who already had the required skills. Similarly, there is evidence that a significant percentage of apprenticeships are what has been termed ‘dead weight’; meaning that an apprentice receives the same experience and training as they would have done from normal in-house training. The test will be whether employers continue to offer the apprenticeship when Government announces the need for greater financial contribution from employers. Clearly, if an employer sees the benefit of an apprenticeship over in-house training, they should be prepared to pay for it. It’s not clear which way this will go, but it has been suggested that there could be a drop as much as 70 percent in the number of apprenticeships if employer contributions were to be increased. Yet currently the hospitality industry has the highest instances of employers paying for apprenticeships without any government subsidy.

Employers are likely not to engage with the skills system because it is confusing and costs too much. With the increasing focus on transient recruitment, many employers see little point in investing in a staff member through the skills system if they aren’t going to be in post for long.

The confusion in the skills system is ever present, despite several attempts to hide or remove the wiring. But I think the problem is now so much about the amount of wiring and more about the extent to which the system is constantly changing. The skills system has frequently been the victim of attempts to address wider policies such as worklessness, entrance into higher education or low literacy and numeracy levels. Rather than addressing these at source, the wider vocational system becomes distorted trying to address wider issues and ultimately fails in its core role.

It is unsurprising then that many employers increasingly rely on their own solutions, but too often in-house training has been ignored or dismissed in relation to qualifications. This is crazy and creates an artificial divide between the skills system and day-to-day training.

Doug Richard’s recommendations about creating professional standards for key occupations provides a simple way forward that can address this divide. This would mean that employers set common standards that are independently assessed and focus on the knowledge and skills someone needs to perform their job. It then doesn’t matter how someone develops the skills –informally or through qualifications – but the focus shifts to the quality of skills acquired.

However, the Government’s approach to introducing this system is likely to be less than effective, as while the policy is coherent, the implementation is over-engineered and (once again) is likely to miss what the policy is aiming to achieve. We have already seen this with the introduction of traineeships and through the wider employer ownership agenda.

If the Government were to allow employers in different sectors to take real ownership of the skills agenda and let the policy do what it’s designed to, there is a chance that government interventions can help skills . We have to hope for the future, but the past suggests that the skills system may prove too attractive for governments to leave alone.