AELP’s autumn conference took place on the 1st November with SCTP represented by Chair, Jo Bridger. The conference was dominated by concerns over the 20% off the job requirement for apprentices with employers and providers reporting that the requirement is not an appropriate quality measure and a big barrier to the successful implementation and delivery of the Apprenticeship policy and remains a priority issue to resolve.
Other themes were Social Mobility – the gap between the rhetoric of tackling social inequality and the reality of what is happening with the implementation of the skills policies with many aspects working against social equality and mobility. Also, there were concerns about Level 2 provision with confirmation being given that T levels would only be at level 3 only, IfA talking about the value of level 3,4 and 5 and Ofsted highlighting that over 40% of 16 year olds don’t even have level 2 in English and maths. If half of young people leave school with reaching Level 2 how can they progress to Level 3?
The IfA also came up with a very interesting stat – that for every school year group, by the age of 22, 27% of them will have done an apprenticeship. For so long we have focussed on the take up of 16-18 year olds but this shows how effective the apprenticeship programme is at supporting and developing people as they leave or drop out of full-time education and/or enter employment.
Slides from the conference are now available.