So Robert Halfon has resigned. It’s a good moment to weigh up where things stand with the apprenticeships system.
Halfon, as committee chair and later skills minister, was the most vocal advocate for degree apprenticeships you could have. This has coincided with a period in which the apprenticeship – as an idealised qualification type – has united politicians and media commentators fairly comprehensively, seen across a broad spectrum as a “better” way to do post-compulsory education (than a degree, say).
The arguments have been more over detail at this point – that drop-out rates are too high, that there are too many level 7 courses in business and management, that levy funding gets returned to the Treasury, or that regulation is too much of a burden as the QAA spelled out just yesterday.
The capacity issue is probably the big question remaining – you can’t really compare them to “traditional” higher or further education when the numbers of places available are so different.
We’ve had rumours of tweaks to how the levy is used, to avoid a supposed preponderance of already-well-qualified graduates taking postgraduate apprenticeships at their existing places of work. And there is something to be said here – recent analysis from the Chartered Association of Business Schools found that 30 per cent of level 7 degree apprentices studying through business schools in England already held a level 7 or 8 qualification.
