Education and Skills Bill

Part of the debate – in a Public Bill Committee at 12:00 pm on 22 January 2008.

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Graham Hoyle: Your question sets out the classic threat-opportunity. The danger is, if we get it wrong, that employers will turn their backs on 16, 17 and 18-year-olds. That is a real threat and we must make sure that does not happen. We talked about brokerage. Having re-established the apprenticeship brand over the last 10, 12 or 15 years, it is now a real quality offering. We know that from the performance. If we come back to apprenticeships, certainly level 2 apprenticeships, the time is ripe to flex up the framework for apprenticeships, certainly on a sector-by-sector basis, and to start to recognise the high-quality, on-the job, work-based informal training that is going on and that that is at the core—and always has been—of apprenticeships, however they have been positioned. We should look for ways of recognising that and pulling it into the framework so that we are going to employers, large and small, and saying that the formal framework is not a million miles from what you are doing anyway. Yes, we need a little more discipline and a little more formality. It is not going to be impossible. The gap between what you do and what is recognised is much smaller than you think. That is how we have to do that and we have to do it with a bit more flexibility without jeopardising the standard and quality. If we can crack that, we can avoid the problem of employers turning their backs on 16 to 17-year-olds and having all that they are doing now disregarded.