Devaluing the brand

An apprenticeship. What image does that conjure up in your mind? Something technical probably, not flower arranging or a retail position, nor a civil service office job. Of course, I am biased, having been one of those many '70s engineering apprentices that undertook a 5-year programme of practical work placement and academic (vocational) study. And I guess you, the readers of Machinery, are similarly biased. Such technical apprenticeships still exist, although not in the same form, but four years seems to be the maximum length, with three years more common. For non-technical apprenticeship frameworks, as they are called, the time can be much less. In fact, can you believe that the official reclassification of an apprenticeship to include only those that last at least a year has highlighted that, during 2011, 51.8% of apprenticeships for 16 to 18- year-olds were completed in less than 12 months? The 12-month minimum change, due to be introduced from August this year, is likely to require the extension of 65,000 apprenticeships each year, or their reclassification as pre-apprenticeships. While I won't dismiss training, no matter how short, as worthless, a few months' effort, even a year, doesn't sound like a rigorous apprenticeship programme, but an rather narrow element of instruction. And therein lays the problem. All the national publicity is on these shorter, non-technical apprenticeships. Most recently, Morrisons was raised up as an example of a company that had reclassified existing employees as apprentices. BBC's Panorama highlighted that fully one in 10 of the apprenticeships created in England last year was at Morrisons' supermarkets, with most of the 52,000 apprentices at the supermarket existing employees who were over 25. These apprenticeships last an average of 28 weeks. The same programme reported that the government in England spent £1 billion in 2011 to create more than 450,000 apprenticeships, a 63% rise on the previous year. However, some of that money went to companies that are training apprentices the Morrison way. Indeed, Elmfield Training, which runs Morrisons' apprenticeship scheme, has a £37 million government contract to train apprentices. Little wonder, perhaps, that Elmfield Training boasts on its website that it is "the fastest growing vocational training provider in the UK". This sort of publicity and activity just devalues the term apprenticeship, I suggest, but I accept that there is no actual definition of apprenticeship, in terms of length/content. But I also advocate that most people infer something more than a few weeks' training on how to operate a baking oven in a supermarket. But as Semta's Ian Carnell, then head of learning strategies, told Machinery in 2007: "I think it is fair to say that the [Labour] Government does not understand the concept of an 'apprenticeship', in the sense that it has tried to apply it to sectors that clearly do not want it and do not have circumstances in which it can succeed." Well, those sectors like the government money; as to the second, how are we measuring success? The Government just bashes on about numbers, as if all apprenticeships are equal, it seems. I'm not alone. The Forum of Private Business recently told a committee of MPs that "apprenticeships face an identity crisis" and that "business owners in certain sectors [are] concerned that shorter schemes do not provide the same value as longer courses". There is a need for greater clarity about the different types of apprenticeship, the FPB suggests. That would certainly be a start. First published in Machinery, May 2012