The Future Starts Today, Not Tomorrow

“We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.” – Franklin D Roosevelt

Whether 29th March 2017 is a cause for celebration or commiseration is contingent on how you voted on that stormy day at the end of June last year. Let’s face it; even our recollections of the weather on that day have been affected by the outcome of the referendum and how we personally felt about it. Despite the fact that thunderstorms and flash floods caused widespread havoc across London and the South-East, those of my friends (and family) who are proud Brexiters swear it was a balmy, tropical day and that they voted in their flip flops. Having voted to remain my memory of that day is unencumbered by romanticised notions of ‘getting our country back’ or anything similarly jingoistic so my recollections are suitably sombre; like the foreboding weather that I recall wading through with my son to get to our polling station.

A lot has happened since the 23rd of June 2017. We lost a Prime Minister and thus gained an unexpected new one who happens to be the second female to occupy the position. The national football team plunged to new and embarrassing levels of ineptitude, thereby ensuring that our European neighbours revelled in what they saw as some form of divine Brexit-inflicted hubris. And we ended the year in opposite world with the election of the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump. I’m sorry, but Donald Trump as POTUS still sounds like an oxymoron to me. However, I’m sure to some I’m seen as a snivelling, lily-livered, liberal wimp so what do I know? Mark my words, with Trump there’ll be hell toupee. But I digress.

The facts (ah, remember those?) are that Britain is embarking on a journey with no clear destination as everyone on the bus seems to want to go in different directions, we don’t all trust the driver and some of us still refuse to get on board, thinking that we can prevent the journey from starting. But the reality is that we are leaving the European Union and despite the fact that this may not be the desired outcome for the vast minority, this doesn’t have to be the apocalyptic scenario that many are anticipating. Things never change through fighting present day realities. You change things by building new models and methodologies, thus making the old ones obsolete.

There are undeniably potential opportunities that can arise from extricating the country from some of the restrictive, burdensome regulations that have ostensibly been prohibitive to business and innovation. Granted, there are some advantages such as the common market that will be lost but this is a time for courage. The future of the country depends on what we do today and with this in mind, today is an opportunity to reshape the economy for the benefit of the many, not the few, by improving the skills of the population. And one mechanism to do this is through the Apprenticeship Levy.

Back in 2013 it is highly unlikely that the then Prime Minister, David Cameron and his coterie of advisors could have anticipated that Apprenticeship Reform and Brexit would coincide on the political calendar and agenda. How could they? Brexit wasn't even considered possible - the word didn't even exist. With what seemed like an increasingly hostile perception of vocational training from Cameron's government, starting as far back as the Wolf Review of Vocational Education in 2011, some had argued with varying degrees of success that Apprenticeships had become unfit for purpose. A combination of poor management, apathetic recruitment policies by both employers and training providers and academic snobbery, created a landscape against which it was hard to argue the relative merits of various courses, despite the demonstrably positive outcomes some had achieved. Infuse this with exploitation of the funding system by some and it’s little wonder that Apprenticeship provision and vocational training in general was seen as the unwanted stepchild of the education system. It’s also fair to say that a succession of college principals were not enthused about championing vocational education in parity with academic courses – which to be fair they were more familiar with. Similar can be said for schools and Headteachers, whose motivation to recommend vocational education to cohorts of pupils was governed more by a desire to find ‘something to do for problem kids’ than matching said kids to appropriate provision; and who could blame them? Certainly OfSTED seem(ed) ambivalent about vocational flexibilities in the school curriculum.

Irrespective of the past and the less than rapturous reception to the Apprenticeship Levy, the fact remains that like Brexit, this is an opportunity to rebalance the skills, training strategy and agenda in our country. If there’s one thing that is universally accepted, it is that our European cousins are markedly better than we are at delivering and investing in vocational training. Their industries and private sector have a long history of partnering with educators to create and develop relevant, meaningful programs that result in skills which are both immediately useful to employers as well as eminently transferable to alternative career pathways, thus ensuring that Apprenticeships and vocational training are in some cases the preferred route to developing the skills that employers want and that students want to acquire, not the antithesis.

With the Apprenticeship Levy as an integral part of Apprenticeship reform the UK has a chance to encourage meaningful investment in the type of training that employers want. A chance for employers to be proactive in up-skilling the next generation who will need to be innovative and creative to engage with what we all hope will be the brave, new, post-Brexit world. Inevitably there will be some challenges and the naysayers are already complaining about a botched procurement process which has left certain areas in the country (e.g. Birmingham) without a single Further Education institution with an Apprenticeship contract. There are also complaints about limited access to the provider workshops which the Skills Funding Agency are rolling out across the country. Such issues are indeed concerning but not at all insurmountable and to a certain extent, they are to be expected from bureaucracy.

The regrettable thing about bureaucracies is that they compel us to practice nonsense. Unfortunately, if we practice nonsense we may one day all find ourselves the victims of it. This is what we must avoid with Apprenticeship reform. It’s easy to point out problems, much harder to identify the remedial actions necessary to solve them. With employers, providers and yes, the bureaucrats, working in an integrated fashion – which is essentially what the reforms are about – then this can be the bright new dawn which the skills base the UK needs. When we get so obsessed about what has gone wrong in the past we inevitably fail to see the possibilities in front of us. So, with Brexit and Apprenticeship reform let’s accept where we are, recognise where we want to be and work collaboratively to get there.