This week’s Government announcement of a multi-million-pound boost for apprenticeships is just the latest attempt to improve young people’s life chances with a smoother transition from school into education, work and training.
It’s a well-intentioned move, in spite of tart-but-accurate criticisms that Ministers are splashing taxpayers’ cash to undo the job-destroying effects of Government decisions which push up employer National Insurance costs and raise an increasingly-expensive Minimum Wage. But there are over 900,000 under-24s who aren’t in education, employment or training (NEETs) and the numbers have risen sharply (by over 250,000) since the pandemic. So, sadly, the problem is far too big and deep-rooted to be solved by a few more apprenticeship places.
There are three fundamental problems which push British students in the wrong directions, shoehorning them into courses and jobs which don’t suit them, limiting their life chances and making Britain’s economy less competitive as a result.
The first is that, while many British university degrees are valuable, internationally-renowned qualifications, others leave students with small jobs and big debts when they graduate. At the same time, many apprenticeships and further education courses create better job prospects and life chances at a fraction of the cost of university degrees. And yet they are often education’s poor relations; blue-collar, working-class Cinderellas that are looked down on by their white-collar, middle-class University sisters. A snobby assumption that academic courses are automatically better isn’t just out of date; it’s often an expensive waste of talent and lives as well.
Next is the way we treat students who leave school without going on to further or higher education. Some schools have high-quality careers advisors that help leavers find jobs where they build the experience and knowledge they will need to succeed without tertiary education qualifications. But many schools don’t, making their alumnae more likely to be jobless, or in poorly-paid, insecure employment instead.
Last but not least are the obstacles facing anyone who threads their way through the rocks and shoals of starting a career, and then realises they want a different direction later in life. Whether it’s because their younger self chose the wrong path in the first place, or because they’ve changed as the got older, or because AI has destroyed their industry and they need new skills, it’s much harder to change course mid-career when you’ve already got lots of bills to pay. If mature students have to sit through expensive and time-consuming foundational courses covering things they already know from a previous role, or which make it hard for them to earn as they learn, they are more likely to stay in a frustrating, dead-end job rather than switching to one where they can fulfil their potential.
How do we dodge these pitfalls? With three reforms which will cost taxpayers next to nothing, and solve the problems at their source.
The first is to publish information showing the percentage of students from every Higher and Further Education college, university and apprenticeship who have jobs 1 and 3 years after finishing each of their courses, and what the average salaries and accumulated student debts were in each case too. This information is already collected in the Longitudinal Educational Outcomes (LEO) database, but is not widely or publicly available at present. Unlocking it would reveal the best-value further and higher education courses in a directly-comparable way for the first time, stopping less-academic middle-class pupils being pushed towards lower-quality but expensive Higher Education courses, or clever working class ones towards FE courses which aren’t right for them either. The best FE and HE courses will attract more students and grow, while poor-value ones will either be redesigned or shut down. Student debts will fall as fewer people choose expensive degrees if they aren’t worth the money, and fewer lives and talents will be wasted.
The second reform is to improve secondary school careers guidance, so they all match the independent ‘Gatsby’ quality standards which the best are already delivering. In the same way that it is already impossible for a school to get an overall Ofsted inspection grade of ‘good’ or better if its safeguarding regime isn’t up to standard, it should also be impossible if its careers guidance isn’t either. And good careers guidance should include support to start and build your own business, particularly in areas where unemployment is higher. Once these changes are underway we should publish LEO information for every secondary school, to reveal which schools’ career guidance teams are better than others at taking responsibility for supporting their students through the transition into work, rather than washing their hands after the last day of term, so school leavers’ life chances and outcomes have the same value as their more-academic classmates.
The final reform is to push universities, colleges and FE exam boards to agree a universal accreditation system which can assess and recognise the knowledge and skills which career-changing mature students have acquired through practical on-the-job experience, so they can be exempted from wasting time and money taking foundational modules covering things they already know. The new system should be developed and agreed by the universities, colleges and exam boards themselves, with an independent audit by the Office for Students, so it stays up-to-date and free from political meddling. It would make switching careers faster, cheaper and more flexible, so the numbers of mature students will rise. More people will be able to fulfil their potential, the snobbish divide between further and higher education would be eroded by making comparable skills and knowledge fully transferrable, no matter where they were learned. And universities and colleges would have more confidence that students enrolling on their courses were properly-prepared, so the number of students who drop out part way through will plummet too.
The Government’s extra apprenticeships are welcome, of course, but aren’t nearly enough on their own. Knowledge is power, so equipping students to make fully-informed decisions about which course or job to choose, and to change track quickly and cheaply in mid-career if needed as well, are the answers to getting rid of those NEETs.
If you like this idea, you’ll find more details, soundbites and rebuttals about it under Pupil Power in the Policy Thumbnail section of our website
This article is the latest in a fortnightly series of policy proposals published in CapX from John Penrose and the Centre for Small State Conservatives.
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