9 October 2015

Apprenticeships remain a university alternative in name only for too many young people

New research shows that those who do the best apprenticeships will earn higher salaries than graduates, but government targets undermine the quality of such schemes.

By Tim Wigmore

Rare is the week that passes by without George Osborne donning a hi-vis jacket and lauding the worth of apprenticeships. The Conservatives have made creating 3m apprenticeships a governing mission. Labour, both under Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn, are scarcely less enthusiastic about their value.

The best apprenticeships live up to the hype. Those with a level five apprenticeship (there are eight levels) will earn £50,000 more in their lifetime than someone with a degree from a non-Russell Group university, as new research by the Sutton Trust reveals.

But too many apprenticeships are lousy. In 2014/15, just 3 per cent of apprenticeships were level four or above. Over the last two years, there have only been an estimated 30,000 apprenticeships of at least level four standard. So while David Cameron comes up with ever grander targets for the amount of apprenticeships he wants to create, he neglects what really matters: the quality of the apprenticeships. And that’s why most people who can are still better off going to university: over a lifetime the average graduate premium is £200,000.

Proudly flaunting lofty targets for apprenticeships might be good politics, but it isn’t good policy. “The growth in apprenticeships has been a numbers game with successive governments, with an emphasis on increasing quantity, not quality,” says Sir Peter Lampl, Chairman of the Sutton Trust.

60 per cent of apprenticeships today are at level two – considered to be no better than GCSE standard. These might help people get a job in the short-term, but it will do nothing to help them progress in the long-term. Too often an apprenticeship is seen as an end in itself, when it should be made easier to progress from lower to higher apprenticeships. The Sutton Trust is right to advocate that every apprentice can progress to an A-Level standard apprenticeship without having to start a new course.

Apprenticeships are trumpeted as an alternative to going to university. Yet the rush to expand apprenticeships has come to resemble the push to send half the population to university, focused more on giving ever-greater numbers a qualification then in ensuring its worth. For too many young people, apprenticeships remain an alternative to university in name only.