Panellists
Nick Harrison, chief executive, the Sutton Trust
Nick Harrison joined social mobility think-tank the Sutton Trust since April 2023. He was formerly chief growth officer for online retailer Matches Fashion and has a doctorate in physics from Cambridge University.
Harrison also sits on the Social Metrics Commission, which addresses the definition of poverty and its alleviation.
Gareth Evans, director of operations, Spectra
Gareth Evans works at Spectra which runs the Care Leaver Covenant on behalf of the Department for Education.
The covenant supports care leavers to access education, employment and training opportunities, as well as other benefits, provided by employers across England.
What is behind the recent decline in youth apprenticeships?
NH: The total number of apprenticeships have dropped a lot since 2017 when the levy came in, from about 500,000 five years ago to 300,000 today. When you dig behind that, what you see is the decline has been in the so-called level 2 apprenticeships, which are the lower-level apprenticeships taken up most by young people. We think it’s a supply problem not a take up problem, so really the question is how do we increase the supply of apprenticeships? There’s no easy answer to that – it has to be about the government and companies [working] in partnership. On the supply side, we would like to see government – that could be national or local government – working together with employers and educational institutions in a region to plan for what’s needed. For example, there’s lots of talk about green tech battery factories in the North East. Where’s the workforce plan which has the apprenticeships in those areas which are needed? Building apprenticeships into that co-ordinateded long term skills planning is the right way to go but that needs governments, employers and educational providers working together to get that to work.”
What other changes are needed to reverse this decline?
NH: We need to make it easier for employers to host apprentices too. For smaller employers in particular it’s not straightforward to take on and train a set of apprentices. We could allow some of the Apprenticeship Levy money to be spent on what we would call the surrounding infrastructure such as the human resources support and pastoral care for the apprentices. That would make it easier for companies to host apprentices therefore increase supply. The feedback from employers is that it’s not so much the skills teaching element of the placement [that’s the problem], it’s the ancillary support where it can be difficult for employers to actually make the sums add up. I was talking to an employer recently who was used to taking on graduates rather than young people straight out of school. So they’re not used to the type of support younger people would need in their workplace and haven’t built those skills in their HR department. So they would need to invest to build that HR support function and using some levy money to do that would help out.
Are there any changes you’d like to see to encourage more young people into apprenticeships?
NH: What we’ve seen over the last few years as level 2 apprenticeships have declined and higher level apprenticeships have grown is more of the places going to older people than younger ones, so younger people are getting fewer places. We wouldn’t want to stand in the way of older people retraining on apprenticeships, but there is an issue with quite a few employers using Apprenticeship Levy money to fund training for existing employees. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, but if it’s squeezing out places for younger people, that becomes a problem. I would be advocating for the government to look at a tweak to the Apprenticeship Levy by ringfencing a certain proportion of places for young people or to perhaps put a cap on the maximum salary for people who go on an apprenticeship to stop well-paid managers becoming apprentices with their existing employer.
Should more help to access apprenticeships be targeted at disadvantaged young people?
NH: We do think targeting is good. Targeted support can help young people overcome all sorts of barriers – it could be simple things like being able to live close to the apprenticeship or afford a suit.
We offer an access to apprenticeships programme which provides information about the application process, interviews, practical stuff like that. It also allows young people to experience what it would be like to be an apprentice. If that’s not something you have thought about before – maybe people in your family haven’t done that – it helps you think you could go and do that. That can really change the dial.
Is the apprenticeship system working for care leavers?
GE: I spoke with two young people during National Apprenticeships Week both of whom experienced significant disruption and instability in their mid to late teens. Going on to an apprenticeship gave them structure, consistency, and a kind of work ethic to succeed.
I think it’s very unlikely that university or other further educational routes would offer that stability and consistency that a workplace can bring.
Another thing that is pertinent that I’ve heard from young people is how apprenticeships, versus university, can take away emphasis from those long university holidays which we know can be very difficult for lots of [care-experienced] young people. They can be difficult in terms of funding places to stay and live, but emotionally they can be tricky – do you tell your friends exactly what your situation is through the holidays?
There is a financial element to the strength of apprenticeships for care leavers. If you can get an apprenticeship that enables you to pay rent and bills and have some spending money, that is potentially going to be a more stable financial situation for a care leaver than being at university.
How important is the £3,000 bursary for care leavers in encouraging them into apprenticeships?
GE: There’s one part of the bursary that goes to the young person in three instalments and then there’s a smaller amount that goes to the employer when a care leaver is taken onto an apprenticeship. It went from £1,000 to £3,000 recently and that was welcomed by the sector. There’s always going to be analysis of that bursary amount and whether the Department for Education should have made it higher. I have colleagues who are adamant that it should be somewhere closer to £8,000.
There are some concrete factors that you could look to when thinking about what that bursary amount should be for our care-experienced young people. Things like the average rental payment for someone who needs to live independently versus someone who can stay at home. There’s ways for us to think about that bursary amount and make it less arbitrary.
There’s also a massive challenge around raising awareness of the bursary. Last year, only 300 care leavers accessed the bursary and that’s out of the pool of around 10,000 young people. Whilst the proportion of care leavers that are doing apprenticeships is quite low (around two per cent) that 300 number is disproportionately low – a connected figure that’s often used is that about seven per cent of [care-experienced] young people go into higher education.
So there’s the need for us to communicate to our young people better about the benefits of an apprenticeship and also to communicate that if you take that route, there is a bursary available to you.
What are employers doing to adapt apprenticeships to make them more accessible for care leavers?
GE: There’s a construction company called GMI with a strong presence in the North of England, who promote all of their apprenticeship roles ahead of time to councils in the relevant areas. They’re going straight to leaving care services at councils and guaranteeing interviews for care leavers. That bit of engagement and promotion happens before those roles are advertised in a more mainstream way, so there’s a window [for] our young people.
Thames Water also do progressive work in apprenticeships which goes beyond care leavers. They are putting that emphasis back on lower-level apprenticeships. They’ve identified that kind of danger that apprenticeships keep creeping up higher.
North Yorkshire Council [is] very progressive in their care leaver policies in general. One thing they do is pay their apprentices at the same level of the equivalent role. So if you’re a business support apprentice, you get the same wage that you would as an entry level business support employee. This makes a massive financial difference and recognises that as an apprentice, you are a team member. Also, every apprentice in the council gets a mentor who’s not part of your line management structure and is typically in a different part of the business. That mentor provides support that parents or family members would be providing to an apprentice who lived at home or who still has that family support structure.
