City & Guilds – Written evidence (SMO0073)

City & Guilds Written Evidence Submission

House of Lords Select Committee Inquiry on Social Mobility

September 2015 

About City & Guilds

City & Guilds is a global leader in skills development. Backed by a Royal Charter, we exist to make sure that people can contribute to successful businesses and economies. We do this by working with education providers, employers and Governments in more than 80 countries. Approximately two million people are currently working towards City & Guilds qualifications in the UK, across more than 26 sectors.

Summary

City & Guilds recognises that the factors affecting social mobility are complex and interrelated, however our submission will focus more on the factors surrounding educational inequality; how technical education and training is key to improving social mobility and what barriers still need to be overcome.

We argue that technical qualifications and routes such as apprenticeships are essential to improving social mobility, especially among 14-24 year olds for whom academic study is not desirable or compatible with their future aspirations.

We propose a number of short-term policy solutions to address this: developing a broader curriculum; clearer progression routes; quality experience of the world of work; and impartial careers advice for pupils and parents. However, the only way we can address the UK’s low levels of social mobility must also be by tackling more intractable and long standing issues, such as, the perception of professional and technical education; employer investment in skills and instability in education and skills policy making.

City & Guilds would welcome the opportunity to provide oral evidence to the Committee.

Q1. What are the most significant factors that affect the social mobility and employment outcomes of young people in the transition from school into the work place?

1. At the heart of tackling the issues that affect social mobility is improving skills. City & Guilds is at the forefront of the UK’s drive to help young people gain the skills they need for future employment, employability and active citizenship and yet it is an alarming reality that the UK has one of the lowest levels of social mobility in OECD countries[1]. Whilst there is much debate around the looming skills gap, or high levels of youth unemployment, what everyone from Government to employers and the education sector agrees is that we need a better skills-based education offer, with apprenticeships at its heart.
2. In the Coalition Government’s Social Mobility strategy (2011), the link between technical education and social mobility was clearly acknowledged:

At the heart of the Government’s reforms will be a clear understanding that it is only by ensuring that the vocational education young people receive is of the highest quality and value to the individual student that we can tackle this country’s long-standing failure to value vocational education. Our proposals will be particularly beneficial for social mobility, ensuring that young people on vocational routes, currently disproportionately drawn from disadvantaged backgrounds, are studying courses of real worth, rather than channelled into low impact, low value learning[2].

City & Guilds calls on this Government to publish an updated Social Mobility strategy with a commitment to professional and technical education at its heart.

3. Professional and technical education has a unique role to play here- it is critical for engaging with those individuals who have disengaged from the current education system. Moreover, once someone has become disengaged from learning, it becomes harder to reengage them, further compounding their ability to become upwardly mobile. For example, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Social Mobility commented in its Seven Key Truths report: “Once a young person falls out of education, training and work, they encounter a range of barriers which make upward mobility more unlikely: youth unemployment is still impacting on individuals’ wages by 21% at age 42”[3].

4. The best way for social mobility to be encouraged is to enable professional and technical education and training to better serve these individuals, rather than hindering it’s effectiveness by successive Governments ‘tinkering’ with the education and skills system. We must have a system where learners trust in its outcomes, which is being threatened by the lack of stable and coherent policy making. Moreover, there has been a substantial amount of reform to the education and skills system over the past thirty years. Our report which surveyed the last thirty years of policy making in the education and skills sector, Sense and Instability, report found that:
• There have been 61 Secretaries of State responsible for skills and employment policy in the last three decades, compared with 18 for schools policy and 16 for higher education;
• Between them they produced 13 major Acts of Parliament

‘Reforming without reinventing’ the education and skills sector will be key.

5. Parents are a critical and often overlooked factor in influencing young peoples’ transition from school to work. The findings of the UK’s Social Mobility and Child Poverty (SMCP) Commission’s July 2015 research[4], identified a ‘glass floor’ that is inhibiting social mobility. The two underpinning pillars of this were found to be:
• More advantaged parents securing educational opportunities to help their children, such as providing better careers advice and guidance, and placing a high value on ‘soft skills’;
• Secondly, more advantaged parents securing advantages for their children into the labour market that are unavailable to less well-off parents, for example, securing informal and unpaid internships.

6. The importance of parental attitudes and interventions in shaping their children’s future aspirations and opportunities should not be understated. Our report, Ways Into Work, found that nearly half of young people agreed that their parents were the biggest influence on what they wanted to do with their lives[5]. In addition, City & Guilds took part in Demos’ Apprenticeship Commission, which reported in March 2015 that whilst 92% of parents think apprenticeships are a good option for young people, only 32% thought it would be the best option for their own child[6].

Q3. Does the current transition system support young people who do not follow the A-Level and higher education route to perform better in terms of employment outcomes? If not, why not? What challenges do these young people face in their ability to transition successfully into the workplace?

7. Helping learners’ achieve their potential and supporting them along their learning journeys is essential to improving levels of social mobility. High quality professional and technical education and training must be available to people of all ages and backgrounds and at a level that is appropriate to them. Benefits to the individual and the productivity levels of the UK hinge on breaking these barriers to social mobility. For example, research City & Guilds conducted with the Centre for Economic and Business Research (Cebr) estimated that by increasing professional and technical skills by 10%, UK GDP could be boosted by £163 billion by 2025[7].
8. Lack of status around professional and technical career options has compounded the earnings gap. Alan Milburn, Chair of the SMCP has argued that ‘ensuring fair access to higher education and vocational training’ is critical to reducing social mobility and reducing the earnings gap. ‘In the most mobile societies students are helped to make the transition to employment, via higher education for the most academically able and via vocational education for those wanting to develop their technical skills. In Britain by contrast we face twin challenges - unequal access to higher education and a low priority being accorded to vocational education’[8].
9. Lack of what is usually termed ‘employability skills’, but by this we mean young people having the confidence and competencies to operate in a modern workplace. This is not currently met by the current schools system and comes down to exposure to the workplace and a lack of quality work experience placements being available.

• Our research, Making Education Work, shows that 80% of employers think work experience is essential and 67% would be more inclined to hire a young person with work experience[9].
• City & Guilds Group have set a target to provide 100 work experience placements, and 100 one-day workshops for young people by the end of the year.
• With youth unemployment lingering at 16%, it's crucial that young people have the chance to immerse themselves in the workplace, so they are in a stronger position to enter the job market and develop the valuable skills that our economy needs.

10. More must be done to address the drop off in apprenticeships. Some qualifications and apprenticeships have less status than others because they lack the rigor of independent assessment, quality on-the-job training, and industry relevance that are the hallmarks of quality and what we at City & Guilds pride ourselves on. We offer 120 apprenticeship frameworks, across 26 industries and have over 136 years experience in this sector.

11. Our report, Remaking Apprenticeships[10], explored the features of high quality qualification programmes and apprenticeships. The report argued that quality apprenticeships should have six learning outcomes:

• Routine expertise in an occupation.
• Resourcefulness – the capacity to think and act in situations not previously encountered.
• Craftsmanship – pride in a job well done and an ethic of excellence.
• Functional literacies – numeracy, literacy, digital and graphical.
• Business-like attitudes – customer and client-focused, entrepreneurial and aware of value for money, whether in for-profit, public sector or third sector roles.
• Wider skills for growth – the dispositions and wider skills for a lifetime of learning and change

Q4. How can the transition from school to work be improved for all young people, particularly for those who do not go on to study A-Levels and higher education? How can employers be encouraged to employ more young people from this group?

12. Clearer, more flexile progression routes are needed. The report by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), Moving On Up[11] argues that this is a key defining feature of Denmark’s professional and technical system: ‘Having a single set of standards should also lead to the adoption of a more flexible yet coherent vocational route, as per the Dutch model. There, young people on a primarily work-based route would spend at least one or two days a week in college, focussing on off-the-job training and the broader elements of their programme of study’. Denmark is above the OECD average for literacy, maths and sciences[12].

13. We need more than just an institutional response to addressing educational inequality. Other interventions can increase social mobility that take place outside of schools and college. For example, through City & Guilds’ work with Business in the Community and London Youth.[13]

14. Promote Apprenticeships, but not as the only answer. Apprenticeships are an excellent way of improving social mobility. The earning potential of apprentices and others with professional and technical qualifications was found to compare favourably with the same £150,000 lifetime earnings advantage that a representative graduate would earn compared to a non-graduate. The Government’s target of achieving 3 million apprenticeship starts by the end of this Parliament must not obscure the range of quality technical qualifications which deliver for learners. This ambitious drive for higher apprenticeship numbers must also not come at the cost of low quality provision. City & Guilds has concerns that this could lead to a ‘gaming’ of the system and a subsequent lack of confidence in apprenticeships.

15. Improve careers information, advice and guidance. The Department for Business itself admits that more needs to be done on CIAG to increase social mobility[14]. We echo the findings of the Education Select Committee’s report on this subject as well as other organisation such as the CBI who have described the current state of CIAG as being on ‘life support’.
• Our research report, Making Sure Tomorrow Works, showed that 38 per cent of the young people we surveyed between the ages of 18-20 felt they lacked clarity about the career on which they will very shortly embark[15]
• More than ever, young people are relying on advice from their parents and peers in making these crucial choices about their next steps. The CBI found that 93% of students not getting the careers advice they need[16].

16. An important aspect of this question is also about raising the status of apprenticeships among men and women who would not usually consider these careers. We conducted a survey of more than 2000 young professionals (aged 18 - 34) on the careers advice they received[17]:
• We found that men are twice as likely to be encouraged to take an apprenticeship as women.
• Moreover, men and women were advised to pursue entirely different occupations, often in line with long-held gender stereotypes. This was particularly true in the construction industry, where less than one percent of women were encouraged to make it their career compared to 12% of men.

17. An example of good practice in careers guidance to bring to the attention of the Committee is the City & Guilds ‘Apprentice Connect’ initiative. Apprentice Connect is run by qualified City & Guilds apprentices who attend schools, colleges and careers events to deliver workshops, assemblies and advice to young people who may not have considered an apprenticeship as a route towards their desired career[18].

18. Employers need to do more to invest in the skills and training of future generations. Some commentators have argued that state policy has ‘socialised’ employers into thinking that they have less responsibility here, but with further cuts to FE and skills budgets, employers will increasingly be seen as the main drivers of skills investment. The Government’s proposals for an apprenticeship ‘levy’ may provide the answer to this.

Q5. Who should be responsible for improving the system to support the transition into work for school leavers?

19. Government alone cannot address these issues, but it has a responsibility to lead the change by raising the status of professional and technical education and the support of the UK skills system. Employers, schools, parents and skills organisations all need to work together to support these aims.

20. Local and regional bodies, such as Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs), have the potential to play an important role here, although the devolution of skills budget may pose a number of implementation and funding questions. We are working with LEPs and local bodies to ensure a strong local voice for skills.

14 September 2015