Apprenticeships are often seen as a key tool to improve social mobility and to ultimately ‘level up’ the country. They have the potential to open up a huge number of opportunities for young people when embarking on their career and can often provide an avenue for those who may benefit from more vocational routes into employment. For children from disadvantaged backgrounds, who are overrepresented in the number of school exclusions and on average achieve fewer GCSEs, apprenticeships can offer the kind of opportunities that are not available via other pathways.
In 2017, the government’s apprenticeship reform programme led to the introduction of the apprenticeship levy - essentially a tax on employers with an annual wage bill exceeding £3 million - and, an ambitious target of creating three million apprenticeships by 2020 was established. However, not only has this target not been met, it has coincided with an overall drop in the number of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds taking up apprenticeships. Whilst this was exacerbated by the pandemic, the Social Mobility Commission was clear that the introduction of the levy in 2017 has led to a "collapse in overall apprenticeship starts that hit disadvantaged learners hardest".
Creating equal access to apprenticeships should become an immediate focus for government to attract more young people onto both intermediate and advanced apprenticeships; the current system disproportionately benefits those from better-off backgrounds. Indeed, we know that nearly half of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds don’t achieve a grade 4 at GCSE in both English and maths, but this is often a minimum requirement for training providers or employers. This trend appears all the more counterproductive when considering the government’s recent push to encourage more people to start a career in the early years sector, in order to deliver on its planned expansion of provision, with apprenticeships being a valuable route.
The worrying trend we are seeing in apprenticeships is reflected more widely across the rest of the education system. The disadvantage gap amongst children is widening, yet national reforms introduced across the early years, school and FE sectors in recent years have exacerbated this problem. For example, in post-16 provision we are seeing a narrowing of the offer due to the removal of funding for a large number of Level 3 qualifications in favour of T Levels which are more heavily focussed on academic attainment and do not suit all learners. As a consequence, those young people, who would be well suited to fill a number of shortage occupation gaps, are unable to do so because the qualifications that would previously have offered them a pathway no longer exists.
We need better long-term and joined up thinking from government if we are to tackle the systemic issues that prevent those from disadvantaged backgrounds achieving a better future. There is rightly a national focus on levelling up and ensuring disadvantaged children remain in school, but if we don’t create the right opportunities for them once they leave, we risk undoing all of our collective efforts.
John Pearce ADCS President 2023/24
This column first appeared in CYP Now in Feb 2024.
