HM Government

Raising skills

To raise skills, we have acted to increase participation in learning and improve the options available to young people, with major changes for both under-18s and over-18s.

The overall impact has been clear, as both participation in learning and overall skill levels have increased:

• The proportion of young people aged 16 to 18 taking part in education or training rose from 76.8% in 1997 to 78.7% in 2007, the highest rate of participation ever;⁴
• In 2008, over 94% of 16-year-olds said that they wanted to remain in learning and received an offer under the September Guarantee, up from 91% in 2007;⁵

• In 2007, 73.9% of 19-year-olds had achieved Level 2 qualifications and 48% had achieved Level 3, higher than ever - up from 66.4% and 42% in 2004 for Levels 2 and 3 respectively.

• Apprenticeship completion rates have also reached an all-time high of 63%.⁶

Raising participation and improving choices for under-18s

In recognition of the importance that every young person has skills for adult life and further study as underlined in the Childrens Plan, we have taken the historic step of raising the age for leaving full-time education for the first time since 1972 when it was lifted to 16. From 2013 all young people under the age of 17 will be required to participate in education and training, and this will be extended to 18 from 2015.

In 2007 we put in place, a new September Guarantee to make sure that young people have access to the right type of provision to meet their needs. It offers every young person leaving compulsory education a suitable learning place to continue in education or training that reflects their aspirations and attainment. The September Guarantee helps make sure that every young person’s learning needs are taken into account and that the right provision is available in every area to meet demand. We extended the September Guarantee in 2008 to 17-year-olds to give additional support to those who have already left learning but now want to continue their education. We have also:

• set an ambition that, by the end of the next decade, one in five young people will be able to take up an Apprenticeship place;
• raised the minimum rate of pay for apprentices from £80 to £95 a week, effective from September 2009; and
• introduced the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) for 16 to 19-year-olds, to provide financial incentives to participate in education or training. This has shown positive impacts on both participation and attainment, particularly among young people from low-income backgrounds.

Young people now also have higher- quality and more varied options for what and how they study, moving beyond the old assumptions that learning must take place in the classroom and that only some qualifications really count. We are developing new qualifications while retaining and simplifying the best existing ones. The result will be that young people can choose between four different national qualification routes:

• General Qualifications, e.g. GCSEs and A-levels;
• Apprenticeships - which have been radically improved and expanded;
• Diplomas - a new qualification based on a mixture of theoretical and applied learning focused on a broad industrial sector. The first Diplomas are being taught this year. By 2011 there will be 17 lines, in subjects such as engineering, retail, business, science or languages, and from 2013 each young person will have access to all of them as an entitlement;
• Foundation Learning Tier (FLT) progression pathways - designed to provide clear routes and progression pathways at Entry Level and Level 1. Pilots are taking place this year and we will roll out the FLT nationally from 2010.

Having rescued Apprenticeships and got them well on the way to their rightful place as a mainstream option for young people, it is now our intention to go further. We are creating an extra 35,000 Apprenticeship places across the public and private sector over the coming year to help individuals and businesses through the downturn. We are expanding Apprenticeship places and are legislating so that all suitably qualified young people will have a right to an apprenticeship by 2013. By this stage, there will also be an equivalent commitment to a Diploma place for all learners that want one.

We also want to ensure that there are clear progression routes, for those who want them, from the FLT, Young Apprenticeships (for 14 to 16-year-olds at school) and Diplomas into Apprenticeships, and then from Apprenticeships into further and higher education. We will work with the UCAS to implement our commitment to incorporate Apprenticeship frameworks into the UCAS points system by 2010, and review how we can expand and promote such pathways to higher education.

Raising participation and improving choices for 19 to 25-year-olds

We have taken a similar approach to boosting skills for over-18s - increasing participation and improving the available options. To increase participation by young people aged 19 to 25, we have:

• increased the number of higher education students by 287,000 since 1997;
• through our new “university challenge,” we are committing or opening new university centres or campuses in 20 towns across the country in the next six years;
• invested in aim higher and other schemes to raise aspirations and now over 50% of young people from all social classes say they aspire to go to university;

• invested in expanding participation in higher education, by introducing a generous system of maintenance grants so that two-thirds of all students get a full or partial grant;
• increased spending on further education by more than 50% over the last 10 years, from £3.1 billion in 1997/98 to £6.1 billion in 2007/08; and
• introduced the Adult Learning Grant to support those aged 19 and over who want to study. This has helped over 60,000 young people.

We have also improved the quality of the learning routes available to over-18s. We have announced plans to spend £1 billion a year by 2011, up from planned investment of £925 million in 2009/10 on on- the-job training through Train to Gain. And in Wales, we have started to trial approaches to create more opportunities in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) through shared Apprenticeship schemes.

We will extend the successful group training approach of employer-led training associations, in particular to those sectors of the economy that tend not to take Apprentices, such as those that have previously largely recruited graduates or that have a very high proportion of SMEs.

Alongside this, we will create up to 10 new Apprenticeship training associations across the country by the end of 2009, with the potential to deliver up to 15,000 Apprenticeship places by 2014/15. This will develop new and innovative approaches drawing on the Australian model, where apprentices are employed by a recruitment agency and hired out to host businesses.

We will also increase the number of Apprenticeships on offer in the public sector so they offer equivalent opportunities to those already on offer in the private sector. Government’s substantial public procurement programme puts us in a unique position to promote employer investment in skills training and Apprenticeships. We are ensuring that government considers skills issues and promotes skills training opportunities for people working on government contracts through public procurement. The PBR announced that for construction projects, government departments and their agencies will now consider, case-by-case, making it a requirement that successful contractors have Apprentices as an identified proportion of their workforce.

Reviewing barriers to young peoples participation

The historic step we have taken in raising the participation age to 18 by 2015 means that more young people than ever before will be participating in education and training. We need to ensure that the system of financial support for 16-18 year olds will continue to deliver our objectives of supporting fair access to learning, build on the success of EMA and helping all young people progress. A well designed system will deliver these objectives while ensuring simplicity, transparency and value for money.

We will work across government departments to carry out a review of the way in which financial support for 16 to 18 year olds is made available. This will build on analysis of the value for money and effectiveness of our current learner support schemes. We will also consider how benefits for 16 to 18 year olds can best enable young people to participate in education and jobs with training.

To help us to design the best system, we will commission research to look at barriers to young people’s participation. The research will be published by the end of 2009 and the results of the review of financial support will be published in 2010, with an interim report in summer 2009. The results of the review will inform our approach for future spending reviews.

Support for education and training is not just about financial help. Young people with learning disabilities can face a particularly difficult transition from education to work. To better support students with learning disabilities, we will:

• explicitly encourage supported employment and work experience within the new FLT, including the role of job coaches; and
• extend the Getting a Life programme to all nine regions by adding two more sites, which will support more young people into work.

Ensuring fair access

Whatever their talents, young people need to have the support and advice to ensure that they can make the most of the opportunities available to them. To ensure that all young people have fair access to the available pathways, we have:

• introduced quality standards for information, advice and guidance for young people up to the age of 19, and legislated to ensure that schools provide impartial careers advice;
• set out plans for a new adult advancement and careers service for those aged 19 and over, which will provide an all-embracing source of information and advice about skills and careers;
• through the Aimhigher programme, encouraged more young people from low-income backgrounds with the potential to benefit from higher education to do so, and targeted socially excluded learners in Wales through the higher education Reaching Higher strategy; and
• encouraged universities to establish long-term structural links with schools in order to raise standards across the board, raise aspirations of pupils, parents and teachers, and help pupils apply to university.

These changes have had a substantial impact. More young people from lower-income backgrounds are entering higher education. Among 18-20 year-olds the gap in higher education participation rates between those from higher and lower socio- economic classes reduced by 6 percentage points between 2002/03 and 2006/07.

Widening participation and fair access

Talent and hard work should determine your success in life. Despite the proportion of young entrants to higher education from lower-income backgrounds increasing steadily, these young people still face additional barriers to going into higher education. For example, of those who come in the top 20% of test results at age 11, young people from low-income backgrounds are around half as likely to attend university as those who have not.

Young people whose families have experience of higher education often receive informal support and guidance to encourage them to aspire to higher education and to apply. For young people who do not have this advantage, they rely on support from their school and from targetted programmes such as Aimhigher.

We will identify young people with the potential to achieve at university from low-income backgrounds early, and ensure they receive a package of structured assistance across their time at secondary school. This will be as comprehensive as that often received by young people attending the best schools and colleges with high rates of progression to higher education and will include support to attend the most selective institutions. Our ambition is that every such child should:

• have an early experience of what higher education is like, and later a more sustained one;
• benefit from regular mentoring;
• go to a school with structural links to a university, where teachers are equipped to properly identify and nurture their talent, including the offer of appropriate GCSEs, A-levels and Diplomas;
• get high-quality information, advice and guidance on their choice of subject and university; and
• for those with the most potential, be sought out and invited to a summer school or similar experience of higher education.

We are working systematically to make this ambition a reality by 2012, using a combination of new and existing policies. This will require action throughout the school system and in higher education, in line with the report from the National Council for Educational Excellence (NCEE),⁷ whose recommendations the Government has accepted and is committed to implementing.

We will work with schools and teachers, who are key to delivering this commitment on the ground, to make sure that no child falls through the gaps. Widening participation activities of the type described above are currently funded from a wide variety of sources, including Aimhigher, the HEFCE widening participation allocation, universities own resources, as well as resources that flow through local authorities, schools and colleges. In implementing the guarantee we will ensure partners work together to look at the most effective use of those existing funds. And we will continue to target existing resources within Aimhigher, Aimhigher Associates and other funds so that more pupils from low-income backgrounds receive the level of support set out above. And to make sure that this targeting is successful, we will guarantee it ensures that those pupils from low-income backgrounds who are roughly in the top 50% of performers, wherever they are located, have access to a comprehensive package of assistance to attend university.

We will also increase outreach work to identify the most academically gifted young people from low-income backgrounds. We are currently working with a group of 11 research- intensive universities who will pilot ways to identify talented students from groups currently under- represented in higher education. Other universities are in discussion to join this group and we expect all participating universities to be running pilots from this year, with a new scheme beginning in 2012. When this scheme is up and running, we expect around 10,000 pupils a year to benefit from opportunities offered by 15-20 research-intensive universities. Participating universities will also recognise each other’s compact schemes, which will broaden the options for these young people. The Director of Office for Fair Access (OFFA) has stated that OFFA will look positively on universities that decide to invest more of their access and outreach funding, including any bursary underspend, to reach out further into schools and communities, and raise pupils’ aspirations.

By accepting recommendations from the NCEE we will ensure that the information, advice and guidance about higher education provided to pupils by schools is significantly improved. Over the next year, we will work with schools and local authorities to put in place guidelines that will support the delivery of their respective statutory duties for information, advice and guidance.

For their part, from this year all higher education institutions will be asked to produce widening participation strategic assessments, which they will submit to the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). These assessments will set out the broad level of resources that institutions will commit to widening participation, including their outreach work with schools. Presentation of the strategic assessment will be a condition of the continued receipt of the HEFCE widening participation allocation.

In addition to this, we will provide £1 million for some National Challenge schools to fund a higher education experience at Key Stage 3 to raise young people’s aspirations to attend higher education. This experience could include visits to higher education institutions, meeting lecturers and students, and inviting former pupil graduates to mentor current pupils. National Challenge advisers will judge which schools would particularly benefit from this and will determine what will work best in each case. We will also evaluate the impact of this experience and, based on this, consider whether to build on it further.

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Notes

4. Statistical First Release 13/2008, published 19 June 2008
5. DCSF, Connexions data analysis, November 2008 www.dcsf.gov.uk/pns/DisplayPN.cgi?pn_id=2008_0275
6. Statistical First Release 04/2008, published 26 February 2008
7. National Council for Educational Excellence: Recommends, http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/ncee/docs/7898-DCSF-NatCouncilEd.pdf

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