The Social Market Foundation’s ‘Skills Sidelined’ report has called on the government to back universities providing high-level skills provision to plug skills shortages.
The report, sponsored by University Alliance, analyses the Labour government’s skills policy, the current state of play for higher-level apprenticeships – and what the government could do to optimise skills policy to deliver greater economic growth, social mobility and regional development.
The research draws on a series of focus groups and in-depth interviews with politicians, advisors, policy experts and stakeholders with expertise in skills policy and vocational training in England.
The SMF’s paper comes ahead of the long-awaited plans for higher education reform as part of the government’ anticipated Post-16 Education and Skills Strategy White Paper.
Policy recommendations include:
1. More accountability for employers in the apprenticeship system
- A condition of using the growth and skills levy more flexibly should be that employers take on a greater role and greater responsibility for skills training.
2. Higher education providers should be integrated in local skills planning
- Universities should be formally integrated into local skills planning systems, including issuing a requirement for higher education providers to be consulted in the development of Local Skills Improvement Plans (LSIPs).
3. Skills England should facilitate and reward collaboration
- To ensure best practice, Skills England should collate and champion models for collaboration.
4. To widen access, richer data should be collated on student background
- Use the introduction of foundation apprenticeships to start collecting richer data relating to participants’ backgrounds, such as secondary school type and whether they were eligible for free school meals.
5. Improve careers education, advice and guidance
- Every school leaver should receive a minimum level of personalised careers support with an entitlement to three one-to-one sessions.
- Add careers provision to part of the new ‘report card’ judgements that Ofsted will be issuing to schools, following the government’s reforms.
- Prioritise reducing inconsistency in the level and quality of careers advice and guidance
6. Fix funding and cut bureaucracy for education providers and employers
- The Treasury should ensure all Growth and Skills Levy funds are spent on skills. This would have added over £700m to the apprenticeship budget this year, the SMF finds.
- The Treasury should consider expanding the tax base of the Levy. They should consider introducing a new, lower apprenticeship levy tier, charging a 0.3% tax on payroll from £1.5 million to £ 3 million of total spend.
- Uprate apprenticeship funding bands and tie to inflation. This should enable quality, rather than the lowest cost of delivery, to be a bigger driver of the market.
- Simplify the regulatory system to reduce costs: spare providers from the bureaucracy of managing two (or more) different regulatory systems, and have higher and degree apprenticeships be monitored by the main regulator of that provider (so the OfS in universities, and Ofsted for colleges).
