Tag: Matthew Hancock

Below is the text of the speech made by Matthew Hancock, the Minister of State for Skills and Enterprise, at the London Film Museum on 4th March 2014.

Thanks Ben [Pike, Managing Director, QA Apprenticeships]. It’s a pleasure to be back and to see this year’s event – and National Apprenticeships Week – packing an even bigger punch than last year.

There’s a lot we can be proud of.

A record 868,700 people in apprenticeships.

The number of apprenticeships up over 30% over the same period.

And applications are up – by a massive 48% – with a big increase in young women applying. And under the statistics, each are giving extra opportunity.

I’ve been boosting those figures by taking on my very own apprentice.

My first apprentice, Andrew Hill, completed his placement in December. I was sorry to say goodbye but proud to see how far he’d come.

Blossoming from a shy teenager to a confident young professional who said exactly the right thing when the Prime Minister asked what I’m like as a boss.

Thanks Andrew – a job well done.

This year, the applications to be my apprentice were so good I took on 2. Beth and Michelle are doing a terrific job supporting me in my role as local MP.

At BIS my officials are road-testing the very reforms they’ve been working on. We’ve got an apprentice working alongside us and are about to take on a trainee.

The Civil Service now has an apprentice fast stream alongside the traditional graduate fast stream.

So the young people at the heart of these reforms are now at the heart of government.

Keeping us focused and fired up. Reminding us of the hopes and dreams at stake behind those figures.

But while politicians like me get to claim the credit, the progress we’ve made is down to you.

It’s your ambition and tenacity that mean we’re seeing ever more employers and young people reap the rewards of apprenticeships.

So on behalf of this government: a huge and heartfelt thanks for all your efforts.

But now is not the time to take our foot off the gas.

We need to make sure the supply of places keeps up with demand. Step up the drive for quality as well as quantity.

And we need apprenticeships doing more than ever to give more young people the chance to realise their ambitions in a fast-changing global economy.

That’s why need we more businesses to champion brilliant apprenticeships that become as fiercely coveted as a place at one of our top universities.

Today I want to tell you that this government is backing you all the way to make that happen.

How we’re putting you – employers – in the driving seat to lift standards and transform apprenticeships so they become truly world class.

How, for the first time, we’re putting you in charge of funding. And supporting you to make the changes you tell us are needed to help your businesses grow.

The challenge

The challenges we face are well-known.

We’re competing in a global race where the link between education and economic success has never been more important.

Yet as we know, too many of our young people are leaving education ill-prepared for the world of work.

Lacking the right skills, especially decent maths and English…

Or the right attributes – good communication, self-motivation, confidence and character.

Vocational education, more than any other, is meant to bridge this gap between schools and business.

But too many of our young people were left without the skills to realise their potential.

This has been confirmed by one international comparison after another.

Take the recently published PISA tests…

Or the OECD’s adult skills survey – which found the UK is unique in failing to equip today’s school leavers with better maths and English skills than their grandparents.

Or recent OECD findings that even our richest pupils are being beaten in maths by poorer children in Shanghai and Singapore.

None of which will come as much surprise to employers struggling with recruitment.

A recent study by McKinsey found that around a quarter of employers had left entry-level vacancies unfilled and that a third had lost out on business opportunities because they couldn’t find recruits with the right skills.

This is at a time when youth unemployment, though thankfully falling, remains far too high.

So all the figures, all the feedback – whether from international comparisons or the testimony of employers and young people themselves – they all say the same thing: our education system isn’t delivering and needs reform.

It’s failing to equip young people with the skills employers want. This hits employers’ bottom line, harms our country’s ability to pay its way in the world, and worst of all hits the prospects of millions.

The opportunity

But it doesn’t have to be like this.

We can and must do much better, raising aspirations across the board, so that every child is stretched and inspired to achieve, regardless of background. So all can reach their potential.

How? By increasing the rigour and responsiveness of the skills system.

We’re taking this approach with academic and vocational education, so they’re united by excellence and prestige rather than divided by them.

So that education and employers come together and get young people ready for the world of work.

Vocational education has an especially vital role to play in this respect.

For too long, weak qualifications mushroomed under a political culture that wasn’t honest about what they were worth.

Letting down both the students taking them and the employers who were left to pick up the pieces.

So in reforming vocational education, we’re zeroing in on rigour and responsiveness as never before.

Rigour

Rigour means expecting high standards across the board.

We’re transforming qualifications, removing the poorest from league tables. And working with employers and others to develop top calibre qualifications like the new Tech Levels, a high quality alternative to A Levels; first announced in December.

These, together with a core maths qualification and an extended project, will count towards the new TechBacc measure – an ambitious benchmark for the brightest students.

We’re also making sure that young people who don’t get at least a grade C or above in GCSE English and maths – the bare minimum employers expect – will have to continue studying these subjects to 18. Failure is no longer good enough.

And we’ve introduced traineeships for young people who need extra support to prepare for work.

These combine high quality work experience, training in the attitude and skills employers value and the core disciplines of English and maths.

They’re already filling a vital gap.

Helping young people move from education into employment and, indeed, on to apprenticeships where they can learn and develop. We expect many trainees to follow this route.

They can be confident they’ve made a good choice.

With our reforms to drive up quality, apprenticeships are truly taking off – through tougher standards, especially in English and maths, grading throughout, more assessments at the end, and a requirement for apprenticeships to last a minimum of 12-months.

With household names and new industries alike embracing them – and, increasingly, taking the lead to reinvent this historic tradition for the 21st century.

Trailblazers

As you know, some of our biggest businesses and trade bodies – and crucially, many of the smaller firms that supply them – have been at the forefront of these reforms to apprenticeships.

Trailblazers across 8 sectors – that include BAE, the National Grid, Cisco, Jaguar Land Rover, the Institute of Mechanical Engineers, Nestle, the Royal Society of Chemistry and Santander – are quite literally rewriting the rulebook.

Condensing hundreds of pages of complex, messy frameworks to a 2-side description of the skills, knowledge and attitude employees need to demonstrate in a particular industry. And how they should be assessed, whether through written tests, practical observations or interviews.

Shorter, clearer, better standards written by employers for employers against which they can easily measure themselves.

Expressed in language they can understand, drawing on international expertise to match the world’s best.

We’re publishing standards for these first 8 trailblazers today alongside details of the next wave of trailblazers who will follow in their footsteps.

Delivered in just 4 months, they’ve been conceived entirely by employers: employers who are telling us what apprenticeships should do and how they should do it.

This seems blindingly obvious now, but in the past, unbelievably, it was done the other way round.

So we are ending the maze-like systems that were often a mystery to the customers: the very businesses whose buy-in was so critical to their success.

Of course, there’s much more to still do.

The next challenge will be for the first trailblazers to make these reforms a reality on the ground, but seeing the pivotal role that employers are taking gives me great hope.

They’ve certainly set a blistering pace for the next 29 trailblazers announced today by the Prime Minister.

Spanning sectors from accountancy to aviation, nursing to retail, these too include small businesses and sector specialists as well as some big names – Tata Steel, John Lewis, British Airways, BMW.

I can’t wait to see what they achieve.

But while it’s great to see businesses raising standards in this way, this work can only have a real impact if the funding follows the best training.

There can surely be no better way of ensuring education is responsive than putting money into the hands of employers.

They can then decide which training best meets their needs and buy it – providing a boost for the best and encouraging others to raise their game.

These changes and our decision to route apprenticeship funding through an HMRC system were announced in the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement.

We’ll be launching a consultation shortly on the details.

Whatever we decide on needs to be straightforward and accessible to businesses of all sizes.

So I want to hear from you.

Conclusion

Because opportunities like this – to reboot apprenticeships and transform vocational education don’t come along often.

There are more apprentices today, working for more employers and in more sectors, than ever before.

And with businesses moving centre-stage as never before, apprenticeships are better than ever.

More rigorous, more responsive, more ambitious.

Helping nail, once and for all, the mismatch between the skills employers want and those young people have to offer.

Taking vocational education to a new level where it becomes a badge of pride rather than a mumbled apology.

And helping employers tap into the vast reservoir of talent we have in this country.

To build a high-quality workforce and maximise their productivity, now and for the future.

And to make the changes that are needed to put us in pole position as a country to compete and take full advantage of the growing recovery.

So I urge businesses to get involved wherever possible.

The National Apprenticeship Service is on hand to help and advise.

And there’s government help for those who want to develop and run their training in-house – as around 100 employers have already done.

You won’t regret it. The approval ratings for apprenticeships, from both an employer and apprentice perspective – are off the scale.

And if you still have any doubts, ask yourself if you’d like to have a say in the way we train future generations of inventors, engineers and entrepreneurs – or whether you’d rather leave skills policy in the hands of central government, with its track record of success.

But above all, ask yourself what your most precious resource is – for most of us, it always come back to our people.

Thank you.

Below is the text of the speech made by Matthew Hancock, the Skills Minister, in London on 28th January 2014.

Introduction

Thank you, it’s a pleasure to be here.

It’s a good week for a skills conference.

Because exactly 70 years ago, in January 1944, Parliament was discussing the big wartime issues.

Questions on the availability of wallpaper.

A statement lifting restrictions on men’s suits – letting tailors add pockets.

And a short debate on whether the home guard should be allowed to wear kilts.

To which the government’s answer was – no.

But they were also looking forward to life after war.

Almost on this very day, Parliament passed the Butler Education Act.

The Act is famous for establishing grammars and secondary moderns. But it also aimed to create vocational schools – so that there were good technical options, too.

Now a lot’s changed since 1944.

Wallpaper is abundant. My suit has several pockets. I’m reliably informed the TA have kilts – if they want to.

But that idea – of equal prestige for vocational and academic routes – it still burns strong.

And that promise – of good education for all our young people – is every bit as important.

On the anniversary of this landmark legislation, I want to talk about how we see vocational education. About what happened after Butler, and where we are now.

And about a new generation of elite vocational education institutions – that might finally win vocational education the status it deserves.

What happened after Butler

Of course, there were attempts to improve vocational education before Butler.

Like the leading figure who felt Britain didn’t celebrate manufacturing enough – that there was a gulf between traditional and technical education – and who worked hard to raise the status of mechanical craft and industrial design. That’s Prince Albert – who helped set up the 1851 Great Exhibition to tackle the problem.

The Butler Act, 90 years later, aimed for the same thing. It raised the leaving age – and introduced the idea of secondary technical schools.

But while grammars and comprehensives spread across the country, just a handful of secondary technical schools were built.

We struggled with that legacy for decades after.

In the 60s, we had some important developments – a new Open University –the Robbins Committee turning colleges into universities.

In the 80s, we had the energy of Kenneth Baker – the champion of NCVQ, City Technology Colleges – the man who freed colleges from local authority control.

This was a principled response to the failings of the forties.

But then came the frothy years of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

There were many warm words about vocational education – while at the same time, colleges came under ever-growing central control.

And governments were so obsessed with the idea that half our young people should go to university – dazzled by an arbitrary number – that they quietly forgot about the rest.

Pattern the same – until now

Well not now. Not on my watch.

Some things might seem similar to 1944.

There’s a coalition government.

We’re in a tough spending environment.

But this time – we are determined to break the cycle.

To persevere despite the challenges –to focus, not to falter – until every young person has the chance to thrive – to do all we can to create a world-class vocational system.

How are we doing that?

So what are we doing to achieve that?

We are increasing the rigour and responsiveness of the system.

Because vocational and academic education will only be valued equally when they are equally valuable.

Take apprenticeships.

Instead of being designed by committee, using complex, messy frameworks – we want clearer, better standards, written by employers.

Our 8 trailblazers are already helping us prepare reformed apprenticeships.

They’re in sectors from finance to food, aerospace to auto engineering – and are all committed to developing apprenticeships that are more responsive to employers’ needs.

That’s combined with higher standards. Proper graded assessments, especially at the end, higher requirements for maths and English – and a minimum of 12 months in an apprenticeship. These things make for more meaningful training.

And we want more apprenticeships, too.

We had a record 868,700 people participating in apprenticeships in 2012 to 2013 – a 7.7% increase on the previous year. Over 1.5 million applications for vacancies over the 12 months to October 2013. An average of 11 applications for every apprenticeship. We recently announced £40 million more funding for higher apprenticeships by 2015 – and the number of higher apprentices has more than doubled between 2011 and 2012.

We want the norm for young people to be choosing between university, or a high-quality apprenticeship.

And these numbers are encouraging.

We’ve also introduced new study programmes – getting 16-18 year olds to do qualifications that lead to a job, rather than ones they could simply complete.

We’ve introduced traineeships, for those who are not quite ready for work – extended work experience to give a better immersion in real workplaces – and want everyone to carry on learning maths and English to age 18 if they haven’t achieved a GCSEs by age 16.

We’re reforming qualifications to meet the needs of employers, and in December we confirmed the first tech levels – advanced qualifications marking out the skills that an 18 year-old needs to enter work in any given subject area.

While accountability will be more consistent across different types of institution.

And on the participation age – where Butler aimed, we are delivering. From 2015, every child will be in education or training – whether in school, an apprenticeship, or work – right up to 18. We’ve committed funding to make that happen – spending over £7 billion on 16-17 year olds alone this year.

Now, there are some who say that children are either academic, or not – you’re either for academic education, or you’re against. And so restoring rigour lets them down.

This is patronising, and wrong.

Because only by demanding rigour in vocational education do we offer truly equal choices to young people.

Only by demanding rigour can they gain meaningful, valuable skills.

Only by demanding responsiveness can we offer employers the workforce they need.

Rigour and responsiveness: only by insisting on it, can we can ever live up to the promise made, 70 years ago this week.

And think about institutions

But we need to think about institutions, too.

And in particular, colleges.

For too long, they were seen as delivery arms of the state.

The vast majority of colleges receive a large proportion of their funding from the taxpayer.

But the vast majority of adult training spending is by the private sector.

That’s enough to tell us too many have a nineties mindset as outdated as Britpop and the millennium bug – of passive deference towards the centre.

Employers will only value training when the training is valuable.

So colleges – and vocational education – will only be high-status when they look outwards.

I’ve met many great colleges. That look outwards to their students and business community – not upwards to central government. That see themselves as leaders – rather than waiting for central diktat to organise them.

That see themselves as social enterprises.

That’s what we want to see.

So get out there and sell your talents.

Not to ministers – but to students, parents, and businesses – and more than anyone, to employers.

A new generation of elite institutions

And I am delighted to announce that from this year, we will plan a new generation of elite vocational institutions.

Like the Manufacturing Training Centre, in Coventry.

We are investing £18 million on a new facility, developing the most cutting-edge skills for advanced engineering.

It will provide advanced, 4-year apprenticeships in areas like automation, additive layering, laser machining. It will offer international placements with the best engineering firms – and support graduates to become chartered engineers, and ultimately go on to develop their own products and companies.

Or the HS2 college, announced just the other week.

HS2 should create some 2,000 apprenticeships. That’s a huge opportunity for our young people – and for Britain to become a world leader in infrastructure. So the college will provide the very best training in rail engineering, environmental science and construction – to take advantage.

Or a new nuclear college.

In the next 20 years, some £930 billion will be spent across the world on new reactors – and £250 billion on decommissioning old ones. In Britain alone, 40,000 jobs could be created.

So the new college will build on the industry’s work – and provide the specialist, advanced skills to meet that demand – and then sell that expertise to the world.

Which share same commitment to excellence

These are new institutions, sharing some guiding principles.

They’re industry-led. Their training is directly tied to the needs of employers in strategic, high-value industries. And they’re financed by government and employers working in partnership.

They’re independent. They are autonomous, ambitious organisations – that take responsibility for their own future, and for their students’.

But most important of all – they’re excellent.

Just like the best existing colleges – they aim to be the top. Not just in the country – but in the world. To become renowned and recognised for an exceptional, elite education.

That’s obviously good for the individuals who attend.

But it also helps the wider reputation of vocational education.

By growing and nurturing these elite centres – adding them to the hard work and quality that already exists – we can win over hearts and minds for the whole system.

Think about the academic elite. Universities like Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial – their success is good for the entire HE sector. It drives up standards. It draws researchers and students to the UK. It prompts other institutions to refine their offer to students. It commands prestige and cachet for all universities.

And they’re valued by employers – because the education they give is valuable.

Now remember the Alan Bennett play and film, ‘The History Boys’.

It follows a group of pupils, working and joking their way into Oxford to study history.

Last year, this play about this one university – this one elite institution – was voted the nation’s favourite.

Doesn’t that say so much about our culture?

Getting an apprenticeship with Rolls Royce is already as competitive as getting into Oxbridge.

So imagine if our best vocational institutions – existing and new – won the same treatment as Oxford gets in ‘The History Boys’.

If that image of teenagers running downstairs to rip open offer letters – teachers crying with pride at their achievements – parents happy but sad to drive them across the country for that first exciting day – just imagine if all that applied to vocational education.

That would be a huge change.

And that’s what elite colleges aim to lead.

Just as important, they will also start to break down the barriers between higher and further education.

They blur the lines. They take on students from a relatively young age, but go right up to post-graduate level.

And that makes perfect sense, in their industries.

In engineering, taking students up from basic principles to high-end machine work – where does academic start, and technical end?

In nuclear work, beginning with basic physics – and going up to complex, enormous projects – where does academic start, and technical end?

It’s easy to talk about parity of esteem.

These institutions will, in time, make it more than a nice phrase.

They will make it a living reality – a fact of life in the aspirations and hopes of our young people.

Conclusion

With our reforms, and the energy and commitment of all those in further education, we can see a new, emerging landscape.

Our reforms are already increasing respect for vocational education. Trust in qualifications is already rising. There are many great colleges and courses and companies out there.

There’s a long way to go yet.

But things are moving in the right direction.

This month, 70 years ago, Parliament passed a famous bill.

It aimed for equality between vocational and academic education.

We might be living once more in a time of change – of coalition – of tight budgets.

But with rigour and responsiveness – and led by our best institutions – with a new generation of elite colleges – I hope that in 70 years, people say vocational education got the future it deserves.