In her second blog about Supporting Education Group’s submission to the Commons Select Committee’s inquiry on further education and skills, Tracy Clement sets out the solutions to the great skills challenge...
Skills are in a challenging place right now, as I outlined in my last blog, drawing on the evidence submitted by Supporting Education Group to the Commons Education Committee’s inquiry.
The reasons are many and include structural barriers in workforce training, underuse of apprenticeships, low pay and poor retention in the early years workforce and schools struggling to use the Apprenticeship Levy effectively.
We explored those factors in detail in our comprehensive submission to the inquiry and set out 14 employer-led ways of tackling the education and early years workforce crisis.
Supporting Education Group has plenty of insight into this area: at any one time our businesses are training more than 6,500 apprentices, most of them early years apprentices as well as teaching assistants, school leaders and initial teacher training apprentices.
So, what are the solutions we’ve recommended in our submission to the inquiry?
1. Introduce targeted funding incentives for early years apprentices, ensuring employers receive wage support to take on apprentices.
2. Expand government-backed career pathways from Level 2 to Level 6 apprenticeships, creating clear progression routes for early years and teaching.
3. Ensure teacher degree apprenticeships are fully funded and unblocked by the Office for Students (OfS), removing unnecessary barriers to workforce development.
4. Create a national apprenticeship approval framework to streamline local authority processes and eliminate unnecessary delays.
5. Increase employer engagement in regional skills planning, ensuring that small schools and nurseries are represented in funding and workforce decisions.
6. Shift funding priorities from FE colleges to employer-led training, recognising the critical role of work-based learning in solving workforce shortages.
7. Establish a dedicated advisory panel for education and early years apprenticeships, ensuring providers like Supporting Education Group are involved in policy discussions.
8. Maintain direct engagement with apprenticeship providers, preventing Skills England from becoming overly centralised and detached from sector needs.
9. Implement employer-led funding mechanisms, allowing apprenticeship providers to shape policy decisions based on real workforce demand.
10. Reform the Apprenticeship Levy to improve access for non-levy-paying schools and early years providers, including a simplified levy transfer process.
11. Expand financial incentives for education and early years apprenticeships, ensuring apprentice wages remain sustainable and employers receive adequate funding to take on apprentices.
12. Introduce apprenticeship-linked National Professional Qualifications to build structured leadership pathways in schools.
13. Unblock the approval process for new degree awarding powers, allowing Supporting Education Group and other high-quality providers to expand alternative pathways into teaching through degree apprenticeships.
14. Clarify English and Maths requirements for apprenticeships, ensuring Functional Skills expectations align with employer and regulatory needs.
We’ll wait to see what emerges from the Education Committee inquiry – we’re expecting to hear the first oral evidence after the Easter break.
We believe that if these recommendations are put into practice that the largely untapped potential of apprenticeships will finally be unleashed, giving schools and the early years sector the skilled people they need.