It seems like every week, just after midday on a Wednesday, Rishi Sunak finds a way to tell us that one of the cornerstones of his plan to get us back to growth is apprenticeships. As apprentices, you’d expect us to be in favour of apprenticeships being the silver bullet for getting us back to growth. The fact is, we really wish they were.
Apprenticeships at their best are exactly what we need; they provide people with the skills they need to thrive, they give employers a chance to grow their workforce in a sustainable way and they absolutely deliver economic growth. But we don’t have an apprenticeship system that is anywhere near its best. We have an apprenticeship system that’s in crisis.
The Education and Skills think tank have released a striking report into apprenticeship provision. No Train, No Gain shines a light on a system that is in deep trouble. It shows that off-the-job learning has serious and deep failings.
One in five of us aren’t informed we should have 20 per cent off-the-job training. Half, yes half of us don’t t receive the minimum one day a week off-the-job training, and one-third of us don’t get any. A shocking post-pandemic blip? Don’t you believe it. It’s the same shabby story all the way back to the 2014 apprentice pay survey.
