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ABSTRACT
This paper reviews evidence on two serious imbalances in the UK education and training system:
The heavy bias in public spending on initial education and training (for 18–24-year olds) towards higher education at the expense of further education and vocational education and training.
The very weak government support for continuing education and training (for adults aged 25-plus) compared to that provided for initial education and training for new entrants to the workforce.
The effects of these imbalances are compounded by a marked reluctance by many employers to invest in work-based training, especially long-duration apprenticeship training.
In a concluding policy section, the paper discusses ways in which both major imbalances could be reduced by abolishing tuition fees: first, for all Further Education courses up to Level 5 (for example, Foundation degrees, Higher National Diplomas); and second, for work-related, community learning and general-interest courses which do not necessarily lead to formal qualifications.
It also considers options for short-duration continuing education and training for adults of all ages to be encouraged without undermining current efforts to reform and improve apprenticeship training
Acknowledgement
I am grateful to the Centre for Research on Learning and Life Chances (LLAKES), UCL Institute of Education, for support for this paper and to the Learning and Work Institute for granting access to data from the 2017 Adult Participation in Learning Survey. Particular thanks are due to Andy Green, Francis Green, Hugh Lauder, Paul Ryan, Tom Schuller, Lorna Unwin and Tom Wilson for helpful comments on previous versions of the paper. Responsibility for remaining errors is mine alone.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. ‘Intermediate’ here refers to skills and qualifications which are below university graduate level but above the low-skilled category
2. In this paper the term ‘long-duration training’ refers to training courses lasting for 12 months or more which focus on the development of new skills, not the certification of existing skills. As noted in Section 3.1, in many Continental European countries, the term ‘apprenticeship’ is only applied to much longer training courses, typically three years in duration.
3. LLAKES estimate of English share of UK apprenticeships in 2009-10 (details of underlying data and sources available on request).
5. https://apprenticeships.blog.gov.uk/2017/10/02/its-not-just-about-cars-toyotas-trailblazer-andrew-parsons-talks-about-what-will-be-involved-in-the-new-standards/; https://www.instituteforapprenticeships.org/apprenticeship-standards/infrastructure-technician/.
6. Being ‘very interested’ in starting an apprenticeship was positively correlated with a measure of debt-averse attitudes held by the students concerned (r = 0.060; p = 0.025). See Callender and Mason (Citation2017) for details of how the measure of debt-averse attitudes was constructed.
7. See for example, ‘Apprenticeship system failing the disadvantaged, say MPs’, https://www.ft.com/content/d533c714-7bb9-11e9-81d2-f785092ab560.
8. Sources as for .
11. Questions about upskilling needs are asked every 4 years in the Employer Skills Survey. The pattern of responses to these questions in 2017 was much the same as 4 years earlier. In 2013 some 72% of The UK establishments reported that some of their employees needed to acquire new skills or knowledge, compared with 4% reporting skills-related recruitment difficulties (Winterbotham et al, Citation2018).
12. Source: SLC/DFE (Citation2019), SLC OSP01/2019, Advanced Learner Loans Paid to Further Education Learning Providers on behalf of Learners in England ().
13. Source: DFE (Citation2019). Higher Education Tuition Fee Prices: Using 2016/17 Student Loan Company data to estimate headline tuition fee prices in the Higher Education sector by provider and qualification type, Refers to full time, English domiciled, first-year students (). ‘Access agreements’ in 2016–17 ‘set out how the provider planned to sustain or improve access, student success and progression among people from underrepresented and disadvantaged groups. If a provider received public funding from HEFCE but did not have an access agreement in place the highest fee they could charge in 2016/17 was £6,000’ (DFE Citation2019, Footnote 1).
14. The same is not true of mature students studying part-time in HE who are more reluctant than young people to take on debt (Section 4.1).
15. According to an analysis in FE Week, as much as 58% of the funding allocated to FE loans between 2013–17 was not spent. See Billy Camden, ‘Learners starting FE loans funded courses fall for third consecutive year’, FE Week, 24 January 2019.
16. In this study ‘prospective learners’ are defined as those who have considered or started studying for a new qualification in the previous 5 years.
17. See Jonathan Moules, ‘Apprenticeship levy funding curbs threaten to hit MBA courses’, Financial Times, 6 December 2018. https://www.ft.com/content/62ec2052-f950-11e8-8b7c-6fa24bd5409c.