A Pause for Thought or a Rewind?
The Pause in the Procurement of Apprenticeship Provision for Non-Levy Paying Employers and Allocation of Funding to Providers for the Delivery of Apprenticeship Provision – 1 May to 31 December 2017
In April, the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) announced that it was ‘pausing’ the procurement of Apprenticeship for non-levy paying employers; an exercise that started in autumn 2016 with an invitation to tender for a 15-month contract for services (if successful) running from 1 May 2017 to 31 July 2018. We have, below, summarised the action UVAC has undertaken to outline the impact of this decision and the options for moving forward to ensure Degree Apprenticeship is available for use by non-levy paying employers.
The current position:
The newly formed ESFA focus on existing providers and historic patterns of provision favours private training providers and is heavily skewed towards the lower level Apprenticeship provision that has dominated Apprenticeship. The ESFA procurement approach runs counter to the Apprenticeship reforms. Apprenticeship should be led by employers; and the procurement of Apprenticeship provision should be based on the future demand for Apprenticeship not on historic patterns of provision for Apprenticeship frameworks which are being phased out and replaced by employer developed Apprenticeship standards. Non-levy paying employers should be able to use the providers on RoATP most able to respond to their needs and develop the skills of their workforce. Apprenticeship provision should not be restricted to providers who were awarded delivery contracts (as far back as a decade ago in some cases) by the ESFA’s predecessor organisations.
The ESFA’s procurement approach severely disadvantages not just HEIs, but SMEs that wanted to use Apprenticeship to increase the higher-level skills of their workforce and increase their productivity. In effect, as a ‘skills’ body, ESFA through its approach to procurement and focus on existing providers is prioritising delivery of level 2 Apprenticeships in areas such as business administration and customer service over Degree Apprenticeship in STEM areas and in the professions and not in the training and development required by the Government’s Industrial Strategy and essential to deliver LEP skills priorities.
In response to ESFA’s procurement approach UVAC has:
UVAC will also shortly be providing HEIs with practical advice on the possibilities of applying for growth as part of the established ESFA system.
The implications – In our correspondence UVAC has requested that the ESFA consider the following issues:
In moving forward there is a need to re-establish trust and the ESFA must demonstrate its commitment to the higher-level skills agenda in general and Higher and Degree Apprenticeship in particular. ESFA must prove that it is an education and ‘skills’ funding agency and not an agency only focused on schools and lower level skills delivery.
3 days ago, Samuel Taylor
10 days ago, Samuel Taylor
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