The Government’s continued failure to deliver on its own apprenticeship take-up target is, in part, a symptom of its failure to properly inform school leavers of the realities of higher education, warns Lawrence Barton.
The Government is failing to achieve its own targets for the take-up of apprenticeships. Meanwhile, the symbolic target of 50 per cent of people going to university was met at the start of this academic year, 20 years after first being announced by the Blair government. Aside from the contrast in political effort to meet these targets, the bias towards university is reinforced by poor information about the relative value of these alternative pathways. In essence, taxpayers and students alike are being misled.
“Policymakers herald the ‘graduate premium’ but this figure is misleading”
While the number of apprenticeship starts has increased from 2017/18 to 2018/19, figures remain down on those preceding the introduction of the apprenticeship levy in May 2017. In 2018/19, 19 per cent (75,100) of learners started at a higher level compared to 13 per cent the year before. But despite this growth, the take-up of higher apprenticeships is relatively modest.
If we compare the recent trend for apprenticeship growth to that for higher education a different picture emerges. Barring a dip following the introduction of the Government’s tuition fees reform, over the past ten years 18-year-old entry rates have consistently increased. In 2018, the 18-year-old entry rate stood at a record high of 33 per cent.
