Apprenticeships

Lord Lingfield Excerpts

Thursday 15th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lingfield (Con)]

My Lords, this is a welcome debate and I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, for securing it. I remind your Lordships of my interest as the chairman of the Chartered Institution for Further Education, one of the Government’s new initiatives, which I am delighted to say received the Great Seal on its royal charter just last Friday and has therefore been officially in existence for just less than a week.

I warmly support the Government’s target of 3 million new apprenticeships by the end of this Parliament and, like the right reverend Prelate, congratulate the Government on the fact that, of the 2013-14 starts, well over half were women. In the early 1990s, the Conservative Government launched modern apprenticeships, which provided the model that we use today. They ensured that young people worked towards a recognised qualification, acquired skills and earned a wage at the same time. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, said, the new 3 million target will not of itself deal adequately with the high level of vacancies caused by the skills shortages in so many sectors. To be effective, they must be really good-quality apprenticeships —as the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, said, we hope that many of them will be at level 3—and be recognised widely as such by students, teachers, parents and employers.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, I was anxious when I heard of the view expressed by the Ofsted chief, Sir Michael Wilshaw, to the Education Select Committee that too many schools fail to promote apprenticeship to their pupils, wishing to hold on to them for financial and prestige reasons and pushing them, in too many cases, towards weak university courses. It is a sad fact that they are then saddled with huge student loans and often poor employment prospects with which to face paying them. The problem is that most school teachers followed the conventional sixth form and university path while young and so do not understand apprenticeship and too often think of it as a second-or third-order option for their pupils.

So we badly need to promote the cause of apprenticeships as a viable and worthwhile alternative and a sure course towards employment. The Industry Apprentice Council’s survey this year showed that 40% of apprentices rated their careers guidance as either poor or very poor. Only 16.2% of those surveyed said that they were actively encouraged to undertake an apprenticeship, while 21.2% said that they were actively discouraged. This must change and there is clearly a need to improve the quality of information concerning apprenticeships that young people receive—many, understandably, have huge misconceptions about what they entail. At the moment, schools are simply encouraged to give guidance about apprenticeships; the Minister should conceive of the fact that it should be compulsory information for all secondary schools.

I want to use my last few words to draw attention to a high-quality apprenticeship development centre, also in Derbyshire, run as a partnership between Toyota and Burton and South Derbyshire College, with a dedicated facility within the manufacturing area of the college’s campus. This is well known to schools, students, parents, teachers and employers alike as a provider of first-quality apprenticeships because, of course, of the Toyota brand coverage. During the past two years, Toyota and the college have worked together to offer the apprenticeship programme to other small employers and to supply chain partners of Toyota so that they, too, can benefit from the high level of training development and discipline that is part of the Toyota ethos.

There are many other good examples of larger firms looking outwards in this way and giving apprenticeships real prestige. These are actively championed by the Government and will help us to continue to secure economic growth in this country and the high quality of technically skilled young people that that requires.