Challenges for the Modern Apprenticeship scheme

Scotland is seeing an increasing focus on education pathways via an agenda based on Wood Commission’s ‘Education Working for All’ recommendations.

A main avenue for investment in this change is via the Modern Apprenticeships scheme, which now offers 80 different types of job with work-based training. Skills Development Scotland facilitates 25,000 modern apprenticeships each year, and this will rise by 500 this year as part of a £3.8m funding boost announced last week.  

By 2020, the aim is provide 30,000 places a year. Announcing the funding, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said: “Apprenticeships not only offer our young people better job prospects – they also have a positive impact on businesses and industry, bringing value to employers and our economy.” 

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A focus, she said, would be attracting young women to jobs traditionally thought to be male. “As we continue the expansion of our successful apprenticeship programmes we need to make sure that more young women are aware of the tremendous opportunities that an apprenticeship provides. I want our young women – as well as our young men – to be inspired and supported to achieve whatever they want in life,” she said.

According to a survey of participating employers this year, 89 per cent would recommend taking on a modern apprentice, and 89 per cent also planned to continue with the scheme. The challenge, however, is to encourage industries which don’t have the same traditions of taking on apprentices. 

Paul Mitchell, of the Scottish Building Federation, told the Scottish Parliament’s Education and Culture Committee cost and long-term insecurity were reasons why some employers are still reticent to take on apprentices in construction. “The aggregate wage cost of taking on a construction apprentice across the four years of the programme is just north of £50,000. That is a significant investment, especially for small employers.

"There is also the off-the-job training element; the average construction apprenticeship involves losing the candidate for about 32 weeks as they go to college, so the firm needs to be able to plug the gap with other resources while the apprentice is on off-the-job training. 

“Furthermore, employers must be confident that they have a substantial pipeline of work for the duration of the four years of the apprenticeship, which can sustain the apprenticeship itself,” he said.

Barry McCulloch, of the Federation of Small Businesses, also told the committee some 66 per cent of FSB members “did not see the relevance” of the modern apprenticeship model for their business. “There is a belief that apprenticeships are for hard-hat industries only; I think that that is a very strong view in the business community. Businesses in the service sector, such as retailers or those in hospitality, do not see the model as the best fit,” he said.

The most powerful cultural change, according to McCulloch, will take place through peer-to-peer promotion and support. “Those who benefit from their apprenticeship programme are evangelists about it. There is no question about that,” he said. 

But with an undercurrent of financial uncertainty, it remains unclear how effective the scheme will be in the long term. That was the conclusion of an Audit Scotland report last year into the scheme. Auditor General Caroline Gardner said SDS had done well to meet the Scottish Government’s target of 25,000 new apprentices a year, but would need to assess the financial sustainability of the target, and challenged government to better understand the long-term benefits.

Skills Secretary Roseanna Cunningham told the skills summit during Modern Apprenticeships Week there was an issue with some recruitment policies. “I was speaking to some young apprentices on Friday morning, and with all the discussion about the digital skills gap I was gobsmacked to speak to an apprentice in BT who had a computing science degree but simply couldn’t get a job. He said it was because companies were looking for the degree and something else,” she said.  

Badly thought through recruitment policies, she said, would act as a disincentive.
“I mean, I couldn’t believe someone with a computing science degree is not getting a job, yet I have people in that industry telling me they have a massive skills gap.”