Apprenticeship Levy could hurt standards warns Union

The introduction of new the apprenticeship levy runs the risk of employers using apprentices as cheap labour and could lead to a sharp rise in sub-standard apprenticeships, the UK’s largest union, Unite has warned.

From the 6 April 2017, all businesses with a wage bill over £3M per year are required to pay the 0.5% levy, which the government say will help them meet their target of creating 3 million apprenticeships.

Unite said they welcomed the new apprenticeship standards that ensure apprenticeships are of sufficient quality but claimed the existing framework system, which will remain in place until 2020, had led to an increase of qualifications and courses in many low and semi-skilled professions that fell short of an “apprenticeship”.

The union’s warning comes after the MPs sub-committee on education, skills and economy issued a report that raised concerns that the apprenticeship levy and the government’s ambitious target of seeing three million apprenticeship starts by the end of this Parliament could fail to address its real aim  –  the end of the skills shortage.

The report said the government’s measures are ‘blunt instruments that risk being unduly focused on simply raising participation levels’ and that the skills shortage will not be remedied unless the Government focused on sectors and regions where training is most needed.

Acting General Secretary, Gail Cartmail, said: “The government is serving up a ‘curate’s egg’. On the one hand they will be pointing to the improved quality of apprentices by highlighting the new standards regime. On the other they will be trying to meet their 3 million target relying on apprentices following the discredited framework system.

“We have consistently argued against scores on doors and believe the government should be primarily concerned with quality and meeting the actual needs of different industrial sectors.

“If unscrupulous employers are subverting the apprenticeship system in any way they need to be named and shamed. Apprenticeships need to be a gold standard providing skills for life and not degraded and used as a way of acquiring cheap labour.”

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