ASSOCIATION OF APPRENTICES – WRITTEN EVIDENCE (YUN0050)

Youth Unemployment Committee inquiry

The responses below were the result of a discussion by the Association of Apprentice’s Apprentice Council, consisting of 17 past and current apprentices representing an association of 400 apprentices.

What more needs to be done to ensure parity of esteem between vocational and academic study in the jobs market and society? How can funding play a role in this?

• Employers must place less emphasis on degrees in job advertisements; skills, experience and values should be prioritised over tick-box qualifications when recruiting talent. They should be encouraged to think carefully about whether a degree is absolutely necessary for someone to perform a role effectively.
• Where universities are engaged with apprenticeships, they should be vocal about their involvement and actively advocate for apprenticeships as a valuable route into a career. 
• Funding may be used to incentivise employers to hire apprentice alumni, or to run alumni hiring programs similar to graduate schemes, preventing a bottleneck in which capable apprentices are losing out on jobs to less experienced graduates.

What is the role of business and universities in creating a thriving jobs market for young people? How should they be involved in developing skills and training programmes at further and higher education level?

• Universities should engage more with apprenticeships by providing apprenticeship versions of the courses they offer in partnership with employers.
• Businesses should provide more work experience opportunities for young people which provide a route into apprenticeships. The aim should be to directly attract young people into apprenticeship roles, recruiting from work experience groups.
• Businesses and universities could collaborate more to create apprenticeships that can be completed across multiple organisations and roles in a rotation to give apprentices a breadth of experiences.

What can be done to ensure that enough apprenticeship and traineeship placements are available for young people? Is the apprenticeship levy the right way to achieve a continuing supply of opportunities?

• Incentives for hiring apprentices should be reviewed to consider whether support should be weighted towards SMEs rather than making the offer the same for all employers.
• Designated Funding should be ring-fenced for new apprentice starts, with a separate pool for upskilling of existing employees.
• Increasing the flexibility of the apprentice levy so that large employers can give a greater proportion of their levy to other organisations.
• Government should review not just the number of available apprenticeships, but how accessible they are. For example, doing more to enable young people from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds to access apprenticeships where they can’t currently afford to take the opportunity. Financial support for apprentices should be brought up to the level of support available to traditional university students through grants and loans.

11th May 2021