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Apprenticeships Are Changing, And Nurseries Will Have Much To Keep Up With In 2017

When the move to standards takes place, apprentices will face a demanding and expensive ‘end-point assessment’.

Ross Midgley
by Ross Midgley
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Changes in apprenticeships are coming, and they have implications for the early years sector.

Here is a brief summary of four key areas – a word of warning, however: this is a very fast-changing area and things may well have moved on in the gap between writing and publication.

New apprenticeships

Apprenticeship starts from 1 May 2017 must conform to a very different view of what an apprenticeship is. There are already signs that the SFA and Ofsted will be policing this rigorously with both employers and training providers. An apprenticeship must be a real job that includes a programme of training and development. There must be an explicit, written apprenticeship agreement. And crucially, the apprenticeship is expected to be delivered wholly within paid working hours.

Most of the training can be ‘on the job’ (mentoring, supervised work, etc.) but at least 20% of the apprentice’s paid time must be reserved for off-the-job training. This can take place in the workplace (as well as at home or in college) but it must be quite separate from the apprentice’s working duties. And the 20% is a minimum – it may need to be increased if the learner needs English and maths, as these are funded separately.

This will be a big change for many settings, but one they absolutely must address. There is of course a lower minimum wage for apprentices under 19 or in their first year, and some settings will need to make use of this in order to meet their legal commitment to paid training time.

Funding changes

The new apprenticeship levy also applies to new starts from 1 May. Employers with an annual payroll cost below £3m will not pay the levy and, as larger employers will already be on the case, I will concentrate here on the implications for smaller, non-levy-paying settings.

Broadly speaking, the employer will choose a training provider and agree a price for the training delivery for each apprentice (in practice likely to be the provider’s standard price). The government will normally pay 90% of this price although there is a cap on the size of the government contribution. What is new is that the remaining 10% must actually be paid by the employer. Training providers have no discretion to waive this payment and will only receive the government contribution after the employer has paid.

There are some new incentives for employers to recruit young apprentices. Where the learner is aged 16–18 at the start of the apprenticeship, the government will pay the employer a bonus of £1,000. If the employer has fewer than 50 staff, the 10% contribution will also be waived.

Maths and English

The government has just announced a complete retreat from the ‘GCSE only’ policy for Early Years Educators, which it imposed three years ago. It has been fascinating to see the efforts it has made to avoid being impaled on any of the “GCSE good, functional skills bad” statements made by Liz Truss, the minister who introduced the infamous policy.

Although the maths and English requirements are imposed by the EYFS, the government made an unholy mess when it grafted them into the funding rules for apprenticeships. It now seems to be repeating the mistake.

Not only did it fail to warn the framework issuing authority – who learned of the U-turn via the government’s press release – but, as I write, we still await clarification as to whether those already engaged on an EYE framework will benefit from the new rules or whether they will still have to achieve GCSEs in order to complete.

The GCSE requirement was imposed following a Daily Mail story claiming that higher qualifications were needed to look after animals than young children. As the government has now just put the clock back three years without even reforming functional skills, it’s hard not to wonder what the grief of the last three years has achieved.

Frameworks to standards

Apprenticeship frameworks (government-specified lists of qualifications to be achieved by an apprentice) are gradually being replaced by apprenticeship standards (supposedly ‘owned’ by employers and defining the knowledge, skills and behaviours that an apprentice needs to succeed).

This changeover was intended to happen in line with the funding changes but was held up by a standoff between employers and government over GCSEs.

The government has just sacked the employers ‘trailblazer’ group and is looking for a new group of employers more prepared to do its bidding – a move that exposes employer ownership as a charade. Ironically, this came just a few days before the government abandoned the GCSE requirement, which had led to the standoff in the first place. Joined up government, anyone?

When the move to standards does eventually take place, early years apprentices will also face a demanding and expensive ‘end point assessment’ by an organisation that has not been involved in delivering the training.

The government has said that it will make more funding available for this but has not so far provided any figures. Settings already trying to cope with the government’s underfunding of the free entitlement can be forgiven for being concerned.

What next?

Where will this all lead? A combination of the minimum wage and the training incentives will probably lead many small employers to favour the apprenticeship route for training new staff aged 16–18.

However, the requirements for paid training time and lengthy end point assessments are likely to persuade them to abandon apprenticeships for older staff, especially now that cheap government loans are available at Level 3 for anyone over 19. A curious way for the government to achieve its target of three million new apprenticeships? You might well think that, but I couldn’t possibly comment.

Ross Midgley is managing director of PBD Early Years Training, a major apprenticeship provider which also specialises in post qualification development at Level 5 and beyond. He is also joint owner of a nursery.

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