Three million new apprenticeships – but how many of these are completed and achieved?

Matt Bursnall and Stefan Speckesser from CVER and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research ask what do we currently know about apprenticeship achievement?

The government’s target to create three million apprenticeships by 2020 is a key element of their programme for improving technical education for young people in England and helping to reduce skills gaps. However, the number of apprenticeship starts is only one way to judge progress. Of equal importance is how many apprenticeships are actually achieved. Published statistics do not answer this question well because achievement rates are calculated for apprenticeships that ended in an academic year using a relatively opaque measure.

The benefits of intermediate level skills

Using findings from a study of all countries of the European Union, CVER's Vahé Nafilyan and Dr Stefan Speckesser look at new evidence on the economic and social cost of low skills

A new major study by the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop) seeks to provide evidence for policy-makers on the economic and social cost of low skills in the EU. The authors [1] of this blog were part of the team which estimated the costs (and/or foregone benefits) of low skills to individuals, businesses, the economy and society at large.

Brexit and the skills challenge

Sandra McNally, CVER's Director, on skills in the UK in light of Brexit

The UK’s productivity suffered a shock in 2008 from which it has not recovered, and the ‘skills problem’ needs to be addressed. Within the context of a broader industrial strategy, improving skills is part of the solution – but Brexit may well harm these efforts if the feared negative economic effects put additional pressure on public finances.

Likewise, Brexit will not help if prolonged uncertainty discourages employer investment in skills; nor if employers substitute capital for labour as a response to migration barriers. However, Brexit does do is bring the skills problem into sharper focus.

Britain's skills problem

CVER Director, Professor Sandra McNally,  on the shortage of technical level skills

It is well known and acknowledged in the government’s Industrial Strategy that Britain has a skills problem: ‘We have a shortage of technical-level skills and rank 16th out of 20 countries for the proportion of people with technical qualifications’. As the Green Paper also says, ‘a bewildering complex array of qualifications, some of which are poor quality, makes the system hard to use for students and employers’.

Is there a benefit to post-16 remedial policies?

Clémentine Van Effenterre, a researcher at the Paris School of Economics and CVER, reviews the impact of remedial interventions for post-16 students

Remedial interventions in tertiary education are under scrutiny in most OECD countries. They are particularly important in a context of increasing demand for skilled workers. However, they are often costly, and their efficiency in boosting student performance has been questioned. This debate has gained particular relevance in England given recent policy changes that require students who do not get at least a grade C in English or maths in GCSE to repeat exams in these subjects. The low pass rate amongst those who re-sit has raised questions about the sustainability of the policy. What can be done to improve mathematics and English attainment to help students achieving these new requirements? What types of remedial interventions are efficient to address the need of students older than 16? In this context, we have reviewed economic literature on the impact of remedial interventions in tertiary education.

The decision to undertake an apprenticeship

CVER's Steven McIntosh, from the University of Sheffield, discusses what influences the decision to do an apprenticeship

What is likely to influence the decision-making of young people who are thinking about undertaking an apprenticeship? In this blog I discuss some research we have undertaken in CVER, answering just this question. The data source is the responses to a questionnaire that we developed ourselves, given to a cohort of apprentices at the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) at the University of Sheffield. These apprentices were surveyed in January-March 2016, having all begun their apprenticeship in September 2015. In total, 61 apprentices responded to our questionnaire (a response rate of around 50%).

The benefits of vocational education for low-achieving school leavers

Vahé Nafilyan, from the Institute for Employment Studies, writes on CVER's latest research paper which looks at a previously neglected group: school leavers starting low level vocational courses

Every year, about 65,000 school leavers start low level vocational courses. As underlined in a report by the House of Lords Select Committee on Social Mobility these young people have received much less attention than those who go on to A-Levels and university and, at the other end of the spectrum, the small minority dropping out of education, employment or training. Although this is a sizeable group (10% of a cohort), their participation in vocational education and labour market outcomes have so far been barely documented.