In the News
The Conservatives and Labour have outlined policies for the further education and skills sector during both the recent Conservative leadership elections and last month’s Labour Party conference.
How these will change with the new prime minister is unclear. But new PM Rishi Sunak did announce several education policies during his first run at the top job this summer.
Labour
If it wins the next election, Labour has announced it will turn the Apprenticeship Levy into a Growth and Skills Levy and allow levy payers to use 50 per cent of their funds to pay for non-apprenticeship training.
They will also establish a new expert body, Skills England, to oversee reforms to meet the national skills need. This would replace the Department for Education’s Unit for Future Skills, which earlier this year replaced the Skills and Productivity Board.
Labour would merge the adult education skills funding streams, such as the Shared Prosperity Fund and Multiply, with the existing adult education budget and devolve that to mayoral combined authorities.
The party's Skills Council, led by ex-education secretary David Blunkett, has this week published a report fleshing out several of the above proposals and recommending further reforms.
Conservatives
The offer from the Conservatives on FE and skills is rather sparser. Liz Truss promised during her leadership election to launch two ‘Voxbridge’ vocational colleges in the north of England. Her campaign also pledged to move subsidies from poor quality degree courses to vocational training and Truss' skills minister Andrea Jenkyns wrote in FE Week earlier this month that the DfE wanted to see more degree apprenticeships.
Thanks to Public First's useful tracker of the policies announced by the different Conservative prime ministerial candidates during the summer, we know Rishi Sunak made a similar promise to create a "Russell Group of new world class technical colleges".
According to the tracker, Sunak also pledged to strengthen networks of technical institutions and their links with industry and introduce a 'British Baccalaureate' so students would study English and maths up to 18. (This has been reported in The Times this week as well.)
Speaking outside Downing Street after he was made PM on Tuesday, Sunak also promised to deliver "better schools". Whether that bodes well or ill for post-16 is unclear.
All of this, of course, is in the shadow of expected cuts to the public sector after the government’s September Mini-Budget fell apart.
It is also unclear how Labour's plans for the Growth and Skills Levy would affect small-to-medium businesses, which use leftover levy funds from larger employers to pay for their own apprenticeships.
The party has said it would allow levy employers to use unspent levy money, which has accumulated to over £2 billion since the levy was introduced, FE Week and the Apprenticeships Data Insights service revealed this month.
Interview
For this month's edition of The Mark, we spoke with NUS vice president for FE, Bernie Savage, to find out what students need to see from the two parties' education plans.
What does the NUS make of the policies announced by each party for the FE and skills sector?
We support expanding apprenticeships and there being more ways to upskill and routes towards chosen careers – but there must be greater funding across the education sector, so that giving to one group of students isn’t taking funding away from another.
More flexibility around apprenticeships would be great – but the fact remains that apprentices are hugely underpaid. We’d like to see a pledge from all parties to bring the £4.81 apprentice minimum wage in line with the living wage.
We’d like the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education to be reformed. Currently, regulation doesn’t work for anyone, and partnerships with apprentices themselves must be at the core of IfATE’s work.
We also need to see day release to our high-quality FE colleges as the delivery method for off-the-job training. At the moment, the government contracts private companies to provide huge amounts of training – when the money and staffing would be much better placed in the hands of colleges.
Of the policies announced, which do you think is:
a) most useful for students?
Most useful, probably increasing the supply of degree apprenticeships and boosting their use in a more diverse range of areas and among small businesses.
However, we need apprenticeships to be a feasible option in the first place. The apprentice minimum wage is nowhere near enough for anyone to survive, let alone thrive in their studies or placement. I’ve heard stories of hard-working apprentices foregoing meals, not turning on the heating and sacrificing other essentials.
Only 30 per cent of apprentices think their income covers travel to college and placements, and one in five believe it covers the cost of tools and equipment.
These learners are crucial to the future of our economy and they need to be able to have the time and money to make the most of their education.
I want to see more routes into peoples’ chosen careers. There’s no one correct path to success and every individual has preferred ways of learning and accessing education.
b) least useful?
Least useful is the establishment of 'Voxbridge' colleges. Why throw money down the drain on institutions the sector doesn’t need or want?
What are the key demands of students in the FE and skills sector currently?
The NUS Cost of Living campaign is calling for targeted support for students and apprentices across FE and HE.
A survey we ran this summer found that one in three students is living on £50 or less a month after paying rent and bills – and this was before the massive hike in energy bills. Students have been left with no option but to cut back even further, and we’re getting to a point where there’s nothing left to cut back on.
The Apprentice minimum wage is nowhere near enough for anyone to survive
Students are working every hour they can to make ends meet, and many are faced with having to drop out as they can’t afford to lose hours or meet the cost of travelling to their courses or placements.
When colleges are expected to make yet more cuts, the first thing to go is often student mental health support and supported learning. This obviously has a really negative impact on the student experience as well as achievement and retention.
Short term, students need an immediate cost of living payment to get through the immediate shock of massive inflation and soaring energy costs. Students have so far missed out on council tax rebates, energy support, and help through Universal Credit.
Long term, grants, loans and bursaries need to be overhauled. We also need to modernise the hardship funding available to students – in many cases the application process is unnecessarily complex and requires proof of an extremely high level of hardship. Not all students are always able to access these funds either, such as international students.
What areas of the sector do you want the two parties to pay more attention to?
Both parties need to pay attention to FE and apprenticeships – they are always the last to be thought about and are severely underfunded.
We need government to take immediate action to support students and apprentices. They need money now to avoid dropping out but also, just to be able to survive.
Opinion
Gareth John, chief executive officer of First Intuition, rates the Conservatives’ and Labour’s skills reform programmes.
Staffing is currently a critical issue for organisations in almost every sector. Shortages of workers with necessary skills mean employers are struggling to recruit and retain high-quality staff at virtually every level. The looming recession seems all the more likely if businesses can’t access the human resource to meet market demand in many parts of the economy.
This makes it extremely concerning to have seen so little focus by the government on the education and skills sector since Boris Johnson left office. The current and continued political turmoil gives me huge concerns that one of the greatest challenges to business will go unaddressed.
It was however reassuring to see the Labour Party take the lead on this issue by setting out some of their plans to address these skills shortcomings, which affect the ability of businesses to cope with the economic challenges. The government must now rise to this agenda if we are to maintain an appropriately skilled workforce. What I found the most eye-catching element of the Labour Party’s statement was: Turning the apprenticeship levy into a growth and skills levy and allowing levy payers to use 50 per cent of their funds to pay for non-apprenticeship training.
It is clear that the Apprenticeship Levy needs to be reformed. Whilst it works well for some sectors and jobs, it is barely used in others.
One of the main reasons that employers fail to adopt apprenticeships is the rigidity of the Gateway rule: that a learner must be on-programme for a minimum of twelve months and a day before progressing to their end-point assessment.
The rule means that training programmes lasting less than a year do not qualify for levy funding. Employers and their staff are unable to fund a wide range of shorter training courses that could be of huge value to their business and the wider economy. This could include supporting the development of digital, green, and leadership and management skills, even basic employability skills to transition entry-level recruits into the workplace more effectively. Programmes to upskill staff in these areas are increasingly essential, and offer rapid and tangible benefit to businesses.
The Labour Party’s proposal to allow 50 per cent of levy funds to be used for shorter, more flexible training interventions seems better suited for regular, ongoing upskilling in the dynamic business environment we all face.
Employers and their staff are unable to fund a wide range of shorter training courses that could be of huge value to their business and the wider economy
The concern that allowing large employers to use their levy contributions for non-apprenticeship training could lead to less apprenticeship funding being available for non-levy employers needs to be addressed. SMEs are the backbone of the economy and employ far more people than levy payers. Labour has offered reassurance that SMEs would not see any less funding. Also that they would “be able to reclaim 95 per cent co-payments on approved courses in the same way as they do for apprenticeships”.
Creating flexibilities which allow a greater proportion of apprenticeship levy funds to be spent on skills training – including modular courses – seems like a priority the government is overlooking.
Making the most of levy funds to pay for non-apprenticeship training would require a streamlining of the compliance burden on employers and providers. Expecting modular, shorter training courses to meet the same level of regulation as apprenticeships would make them impossible to deliver economically. A proportional approach will make this plan far more accessible.
On balance the Labour Party’s plan has merit, particularly the proposal for more flexible use of levy funds. Let’s hope that this prompts the government to release similarly tangible plans soon. I will be watching the Autumn statement like a hawk!