Educational and contractual attributes of the apprenticeship programmes of large employers in Britain

Abstract

The authors consider two quality‐related aspects of large employers’ apprenticeship programmes. The first is their contribution to national educational objectives, including the creation and strengthening of ladders of vocational attainment. Such ladders already exist in apprenticeship’s traditional domains, but the prospects for their wider development appear unfavourable. Few employers support an increase in the educational contribution of apprenticeship, whether technical or general, even in sectors in which that contribution is currently minimal. The second issue is the extent of the employer’s responsibility for its apprenticeship programme, which is often seen as important for training quality. No simple relationship is present across employers and sectors between the outsourcing of programme components and such attributes as apprentice recruitment, apprentice status and the employer’s investment in each apprentice. Within traditional sectors, however, sponsorship by a large employer means a substantially greater investment in each apprentice than that by a specialist training provider.

Notes

1. This research was funded by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. We thank the CIPD and our project officer, Victoria Winkler, for their support. We also thank for assistance: the managers of the case study organisations; Jim Foreman, whose contributions concerned the ICT frameworks in particular; Linda Clarke, Michelle Rogers, Hilary Steedman, Andrea Sudbury, Lorna Unwin, John West and Chris Winch; and officials of the relevant Sector Skills Councils, employers’ associations and trade unions, the Department for Education and Skills, the Apprenticeships Task Force and the Learning and Skills Council.

2. The General Certificate of Secondary Education denotes the externally assessed, desk‐based examinations, taken typically at 15–16 years of age, at the end of compulsory schooling—unlike A levels, which are typically taken at ages 17–18, after two more years of schooling. In both cases, pupils take various numbers and combinations of subjects. In the absence of an overall criterion of success and an associated unitary qualification, ‘five good GCSEs’ represents de facto a satisfactory level of attainment, which normally suffices for progression to either A level studies or apprenticeships that involve further technical learning.