Training Today: Skills Plan - Less is more?

With the early years workforce strategy, flip-flopping over GCSE requirements, and root and branch reform of apprenticeships – all in the past three years – you’d be forgiven for curling up in a ball and blocking your ears to any mention of yet further changes relating to qualifications.

Tempting as this might be, the Skills Plan is ‘the most significant change in technical education in recent times and cannot be ignored’, says Julie Hyde, associate director of CACHE. ‘Education and skills policy is changing fast – more than ever before, providers need to adapt, or risk being left behind.’

Geraldine Donworth, industry manager at City & Guilds, agrees this signals ‘a big change’ for the early years sector. ‘The Government is planning to simplify the current range of qualifications and reduce them to fit within 15 occupational routes’, she says, while there is also ‘a move towards giving control of setting programme content and standards to employers.’

So what is the point of the Skills Plan?

‘Our ambition,’ states the Skills Plan, ‘is that every young person, after an excellent grounding in the core academic subjects … to age 16, is presented with two choices: the academic or the technical option. The academic option is already well regarded, but the technical option must also be world-class.’

As the Government’s response to the 2016 Sainsbury Review of technical education, the Skills Plan aims to replace the current system of 21,000 qualifications offered by 158 awarding bodies, some of which the Government says have ‘little value’. They will be replaced with fewer, employer-led qualifications placed in a single framework covering Levels 2 to 5. It is not the first time the Government has attempted to reform the vocational qualifications system, with the most recent attempt being the 14-19 diploma, which was dropped in 2013.

New system

The plan comes into full effect from 2022. When it does, school pupils will sit GCSEs, and then choose an academic (A Level) or technical pathway. Under the latter, they can opt for either a two-year, college-based programme (T level), or an employment-based programme – usually an apprenticeship. According to guidance from awarding body Pearson, ‘the two routes [college or apprenticeship] are designed to end up at broadly the same place, and take into account that at 16, not every learner will have access to an apprenticeship’. The college-based course will include a significant work experience placement of up to three months.

All vocational qualifications will be grouped into 15 different ‘routes’, 11 of which will be predominantly college- or training-provider-based, with the remaining four delivered through apprenticeships.

One of these routes is to be Childcare and Education. It will contain a number of occupations/occupational areas within it (see diagram, overleaf), which have one associated technical qualification at Level 2 and 3. This will be gained after a specialisation year (probably the second year of a course).

The first year will be spent learning a set of ‘common core’ requirements. What precisely this will consist of is not yet known, but the Skills Plan states it is aligned to apprenticeships (including English and maths requirements, and digital skills), and workplace skills such as teamwork and communication.

This is likely to mean that teaching assistants and youth workers will have the same English and maths requirements as Early Years Educators, as they are now in the same route and thus have the same common core.

Awarding bodies

A major change under the new system is that there will be just one awarding body delivering the qualification associated with an occupational area. Why? The Skills Plan states, ‘Instead of competition between different awarding organisations leading to better quality and innovation in the design of qualifications, it can lead to a race to the bottom in which awarding organisations compete to offer qualifications which are easier to pass and therefore of lower value … Any technical education qualification at Levels 2 and 3 should be offered and awarded by a single body or consortium, under a licence covering a fixed period of time following an open competition.’

This is widely expected to lead to both a reduction in the number of awarding bodies, and fewer qualifications (estimates vary on the number of qualifications per route, from two to four qualifications from Cache to 12-15 from Pearson, though the Government says no target has been set).

This move is, unsurprisingly, met with some concern from awarding bodies. Ms Donworth says, ‘The UK market for awarding qualifications is unique across the globe by being an open, competitive market with multiple players. A perfect open market has the advantage of securing better value for the consumer, improving choice, encouraging innovation and spreading risk.

‘However, it can also lead to over-supply of qualifications, resulting in confusion for the consumer and poor quality provision without adequate controls. This arguably describes some aspects of the current vocational awarding market in England and has contributed to the call for review.

‘We would also support limiting the number of players in the system who are licensed by Government to deliver technical and professional qualifications to the market as this would help maintain standards. However, we would suggest that there should be two to three licensed awarding organisations per route based on labour market demand, rather than a monopoly for one awarding body.’

Ms Hyde adds, ‘The reduction in choice for learners is also a major concern as it is possible some occupations will be excluded from the Skills Plan’s recommendations, or those included may be constrained by arbitrary system design requirements.’

Oversight

The new Institute for Apprenticeships will have a key role here. This new body currently manages the development and approval of all apprenticeship standards. It will become the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education from April 2018, reflecting its new responsibility to agree qualification content and for appointing the awarding organisations that will deliver it.

The Government says the same employer-designed standards will form the basis of apprenticeships and college-based courses.

There are several types of standard to consider here. We already have apprenticeship standards, (which contain existing qualifications), which are devised and drafted by the trailblazers. Under the new Skills Plan routes, however, there will be gaps to fill – standards which are needed and which have not yet been devised – so there are also occupational panels, deciding occupational standards for those. New qualifications would be derived from these standards, while the panel will also review existing apprenticeship standards to ensure they fit into the new structure. The trailblazer groups and the occupational panels may also end up being one and the same, and the hope is that the existing standards will be ‘retrofitted’ into the routes.

Above this sit IfA route panels, which are supposed to have a ‘strategic perspective across each route’ and will advise on the ‘common core’ of knowledge, skills and behaviours to be acquired for the standards in their route, and on suitable assessment strategies.

There is talk that this common core could be embedded in a ‘routeway standard’.

The chair of the Childcare and Education route panel is teacher Sir Nick Weller, executive principal, Dixons City Academy in Bradford. It is understood that appointments to the panel are in the process of being made. A panel will have a deputy chair (chosen to complement the chair’s expertise), and between five and 12 panel members.

Ms Donworth adds that the employer panels ‘will be influencing what they want, and we expect in each of the routes – this could be a real opportunity for the sector to have its say’.

A welcome move?

According to Paul Warner of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, ‘The Skills Plan is very welcome. It will be much clearer for people how to go to higher levels of skills in a particular occupation. It will be much easier for employers to understand.

‘But there is a lot of complexity around turning it into something deliverable. Our worry is that once again we are just charging at an arbitrary target – like with apprenticeships.’

Ms Hyde says that while she is concerned about lack of choice for students and employers, ‘The system allows for a structured approach with clear pathways and facilitates portability and technical excellence. Learners will benefit from a system that allows them to make well-informed decisions about their career pathway and the route they will take through proposed potential outcomes.’

Ms Donworth says she agrees ‘with the approach of trying to simplify the system, raise standards and make it more responsive to employer needs, but the proof will be in the implementation and we don’t have any details on that yet’.

MORE INFORMATION

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/apprenticeship-levy-how-it-will-work

www.aelp.org.uk

www.saveourearlyyears.org.uk

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