Agenda item

FINAL version

 

The Chairman provided an overview of the previous day, which had been the first day of the hearings. During this day Sue Dunn and Richard Little had been interviewed and the KCC point of view presented. Jon Thorn, Peter Hobbs and Lindsay Jardine had also been spoken to. One of the Committee researchers, Mr S Shrimpton, was asked to read out 8 areas of potential recommendation which the Committee was looking at.

 

Discussing these, the researcher was asked to circulate them to all Members. It was given as important that the definition of a ‘job’ and ‘apprenticeship’ be clarified in the report, with the latter being a form of paid employment while the apprenticeship lasted. Committee staff were also asked to circulate the presentation given the previous day to Members.

 

It was discussed that the Committee was waiting for confirmation from West Kent College (WKC) about the opportunity to speak to apprentices. Mr Razey made the offer for the Committee to speak to apprentices at EKC as well as or instead of WKC if it did not prove possible.

 

The Chairman also announced he was likely to have the chance to speak to BT and the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. A Member of the Committee commented that improving the skills to work in the manufacturing sector was the key to economic recovery.

 

The Chairman also said that one surprise from the previous day was the role of Ofsted. Dr Ian Craig was given as someone to speak to and a Member reminded the Committee that Mr Leeson had worked at Ofsted so would be another route to this organisation.

 

Please introduce yourself and outline your roles and responsibilities.

I have been in the FE sector for 19 years, beginning as a maths teacher. During all of this time I have worked in the South East. While I took the conventional academic route, my father, brother and grandfather have all been engineering apprentices. Rising from lecturer to Principal, I started at EKC when it was known as Thanet College.

 

EKC has 5,000 students, 400 staff and employs apprentices directly. It has a £15 million turnover. It is the smallest FE College in Kent, but would be categorised as a medium sized College by national standards.

 

My post involves being the guardian for further education in East Kent. It is a community-based college and the role of FE is to bring education to those not having the opportunity in the past and the enrolment stretches from school leavers to an 84 year old. EKC focuses on reaching the hardest to reach. This poses Ofsted challenges when certain results are demanded. EKC does not do A-levels. It covers pre-GCSE Level 1 skills, L2 (GCSE) skills, L3 and up to L4 skills, equivalent to higher education.

 

Please talk to us about the benefits of apprenticeships.

The purpose of apprenticeships is technical expertise. It is a route to being a master craftsman in the manufacturing, productive, creative and other sectors. The employer is looking to safeguard his business. There is an ageing technical skills base and businesses need young people taking on these technical skills, which current graduates with higher education do not have. The economic recovery needs to involve the UK producing more as other countries are overtaking us.

 

Employability is ensured through a structured programme for those up to 25. I am uncertain of the benefits of expanding apprenticeship to those older than 25. Having a trade will help safeguard the future. Many businesses in Kent are small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with fewer than 50 workers. They are struggling to cope as the people with skills are getting older. There is a real opportunity to stimulate economic recovery if apprenticeships are structured properly. East Kent needs to grow its SMEs. The Grow For It KCC campaign element on inward investment is fine but growing SMEs must be the true aim if economic regeneration is to be successful.

 

The impact on SMEs is something the Committee will need to address. Can you talk to us about qualifications?

There is a danger in this area with a tension between trade specific needs and employer specific needs. The employer has a very specific role which needs undertaking, but if this was taken literally, there would be 10,000 separate qualifications. There is a need to bear in mind what the trade requires – ‘manufacturing’ as a whole against the specific role a given manufacturer needs to be carried out. There needs to be enough apprenticeship frameworks to cover all needs but not so many that the value of the qualification is called into question.

 

What about degrees and the phenomenon of, for example, history graduates becoming accountants?

Accountancy firms don’t want those with accountancy degrees. It doesn’t preclude those with them becoming accountants, but accountancy firms, law firms and others hire people with broad skills and provide them with the accountancy skills and so on. A degree does give you wide options; I did a placement with HSBC. However, in a trade like engineering the higher level skills cannot be taken on without the lower level skills having been learnt. This is not the case with accountancy.

 

Can you comment on the need for school leavers to have gained a measure of financial literacy?

This is a concern. There is no requirement now for work based learning in KS4 and this is wrong. The National Curriculum is very rigid and I have sympathy for schools as the league tables demand an inflexible way of teaching. The consequences of not performing well in GCSE maths and English are severe.

 

I was on the education board of the Institute for Financial Services (IFS) for seven years, ending five years ago. The IFS initiated a schools programme to tackle financial literacy and there is a campaign to make financial literacy part of KS3 and KS4, with limited success thus far.

 

More broadly, there is a concern with the lack of life skills of young people. Colleges are criticised because of this lack of skills after students have been at college for a year, but more needs to be done earlier and there is a need to understand the quality of the students colleges receive. In Kent, 50% have no GCSE in maths and English, which is below the national average. Many of these go to FE colleges. Sixth forms tend to pick up L3 students.

 

There is a need to encourage employers to get involved with 12/13/14 year olds and there are some good examples, such as Cummings. Unfortunately SMEs do not have the time.

 

After the Student Journey Select Committee, it took a year to put in place a scheme by Denne and have it taken on by KCC. What more should we be doing pre-apprenticeship?

It is unrealistic to expect SMEs to get involved at that level. The target should be on larger employers, including KCC as the largest employer. Kent needs to tap into national employers based locally.

 

There is a key role for schools, but what are the drawbacks?

EKC has offered apprenticeships to all schools locally but only 1 accepted. The question is whether schools have the right infrastructure to support apprentices. Caretakers do maintenance but may not be able to train people and otherwise there is only business administration. Schools do not offer the right sort of skills for the economic recovery in East Kent.

 

Do you mean schools have teachers of quality but this does not show in results?

I have written to Paul Carter on this. Schools don’t have people employed who have worked in industry, so they struggle. People with knowledge of industry need to be brought in as you can’t expect teachers to deliver this. EKC prides itself on its catering and has nine Michelin star chefs, with people like Gary Rhodes, having trained there. Chefs lecture young chefs. Chefs are hired and trained to teach. You can’t get this from a school education.

 

There is an opportunity now where providers (including FE) can work with 14 year olds on a full-time basis. This in turn poses other problems for schools about how to tap into the deliverers. Where skills are taught by schools, they have often failed.

 

For your pupils, how many apprenticeships do you have, for how long, and what is their employability?

EKC has run apprenticeships at least since it moved to Broadstairs in 1967. It has around 150-200 apprenticeships with employers at any one time, but this fluctuates. 91% of apprenticeships lead to employment. By this, I mean 91% of those who complete. 25% drop out and 50% of the drop outs in 2011/12 are due to the employer having to lay people off due to having no work. What needs to be developed is a safety net scheme for SMEs. This is something KCC can help with.

 

If a big business goes under, everyone runs around helping, but there is nothing for ‘Joe Bloggs the Builder’ who only has a few apprentices. Rather than spending £2-3 million on a scheme to encourage employers to take on apprentices, KCC should fund the safety net. Employers find there are enough grants already. A bricklaying apprenticeship lasts two years but a builder with only six months of work will not take on an apprentice if he may have to be made redundant. This may be something the National Apprenticeships Service can take on; someone needs to.

 

The Committee is willing to make national recommendations. Is it the case that the fixation on GCSE maths and English creates a distortion in education, and are all apprentices capable of achieving them?

GCSEs in maths and English are not achievable by all; if they were the qualification would be worthless. There is an opportunity here pre-GCSE and pre-apprenticeship. Apprentices can still be expected to work towards them whatever, and this is still a good thing to do. The challenge is employers not wanting to take them on without the qualifications. Businesses want people to add value from day one and want them to have a work ethic, be punctual etc. Employers have a bigger impact on young people than schools or colleges and need to respond to the challenge of making people work ready.

 

There is also a problem in that young people today are different from those in the past. Education was received passively but now needs to be more involving and a form of entertainment, in effect.

 

There are pressures on EKC around the achievement of the qualification or the skill. The EKC approach is to teach the skills and let the qualification follow naturally. There are three parts to the education of a young person. Firstly there are the technical skills, but these come last. Secondly, there are the emotional, social and behavioural skills and these need to be learnt before anything else. Thirdly, there are core skills like maths, English and ICT. These latter ones do need to be got right and there is a need to ensure a young person’s expectations are the correct ones when they may think they can avoid the second and third set of skills to just spend time on the technical side of things.

 

There has been a change under the current government to less of an emphasis on qualifications and more on skills from which qualifications will naturally follow. However, there is a lag in the education system and a lag in the Ofsted inspection regime. It is about the quality of teaching and learning, and not all about outcomes. A focus on qualifications means education aims just at getting them past the post.

 

Some of these issues have been the same since the 1970s, at least. How does EKC choose its apprenticeship topics and what is the split between males and females? Is there any way you can tap into the regeneration projects at KCC?

KCC has a conflict of interest as it runs a training provider. EKC has had zero referrals in the last 30 months; all went to the KCC training provider. This is probably the same across the county. It is not a level playing field. EKC is one of the best catering colleges in the world; no KCC referrals.

 

KCC should not be a provider but should concentrate on the strategic level. There needs to be a clear strategy.

 

Training of 14-16 year olds predominantly takes place in KCC Skills Centres. EKC has no access to vocational education for 14-16 year olds as schools are told to use these Skills Centres. Paul Carter argues these Centres have been a great success. I say they have had some success but if KCC really wanted to develop high level skills, there is need to let those with technical skills deliver them.

 

Closer to home, EKC needs to look at what it offers and stop offering those courses which do not meet the needs of the East Kent economy or which the college is not good at delivering, even if this impacts the bottom line. EKC has done this over the past couple of years with the withdrawal of A levels and public services.

 

There is no clear technical education pathway in Kent; this leaves parents and children confused. What could happen in schools doesn’t, due to lack of access. There is no requirement any more for Independent Advice and Guidance in schools. While this might technically no longer be a KCC responsibility, it still needs to happen. The default otherwise is for more and more people to stay at school, go to university and leave the county. Kent has a lot of university students, but a significant majority leave afterwards.

 

What does Medway do?

I am not sure, but anecdotally I would say there are fewer barriers to vocational training. There are no Skills Centres for a start.

 

Any final comments?

I would like to invite the Committee to visit EKC, for lunch and to find out more.

 

Here is a sheet showing the breakdown of courses.

 

Regarding your recommendation about the September guarantee, just a word of caution that this might alienate a lot of employers as jobs become available at different times through the year.

 

Thank you for your contribution today.