I’m very pleased that unionlearn has refreshed our apprenticeships toolkit, Supporting Apprentices in the Workplace: A guide for union learning reps [https://www.unionlearn.org.uk/publications/apprenticeships-toolkit].

We need to do all we can to help all apprentices develop themselves at work, especially young people, and ensure that the right mechanisms are in place to enable employers to invest in skills across the economy.

When the government introduced the levy on the largest employers in 2016, ministers insisted it would help them create 3 million new apprenticeships over the next five years. In fact, the new system reversed more than 15 years of growth, and the government ended up missing its mark by 1 million new starts. That failure has been exacerbated by the huge numbers of apprentices who’ve been walking away before they finish, with the drop-out rate remaining around 50 per cent since 2019/20.

And there have been significant unintended consequences of the current levy system. We’ve seen an increase in the number of adult apprenticeships and a big shift away from entry-level apprenticeships to higher-level apprenticeships, as more employers have used the levy to upskill existing employees. You could describe this as employers gaming the system or you could – more objectively – see it as employers doing what they can to get their money back from a system they didn’t want in the first place.

But either way, the policy isn’t delivering what it was designed to do. And the only people who are smiling are at the Treasury, which has collected more than £3.3bn from unspent Levy funds over the last three years, according to research by the London Progression Collaboration (LPC) last July.

All of this has affected young people’s employment opportunities especially badly. Young workers in particular are facing bigger barriers to entering the employment market than they were before the pandemic. In fact, we’ve seen the Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEET) numbers fall back to where they were 10 years ago.

So the case for reform is overwhelming. That is the consensus across the board, even including right-wing think tanks like Onward (Course Correction: Why apprenticeship reform is needed to level up opportunity, April 2022) and Policy Exchange (Reforming the Apprenticeship Levy, May 2023).

But it’s the Labour Party’s proposals for overhauling our entire learning and skills system, including apprenticeship funding, that will most interest trade unionists. Two years ago, Labour leader Keir Starmer asked David Blunkett (who was Labour Education Secretary from 1997 to 2001) to convene a Council of Skills Advisers that could draw up an ambitious but practical set of proposals for reforming the country’s entire learning and skills system.

As the TUC’s Head of Organisation, Services and Skills, I was one of those skills advisers, alongside entrepreneur Praful Nargund and Warwick University Registrar Rachel Sandby-Thomas. All the feedback since we published our report in 2022 (Learning and Skills for Economic Recovery, Social Cohesion and a More Equal Britain, October 2022) has been that the recommendations are smart, sensible, intelligent proposals.

I remember how, from day one of the current levy, employers have been saying that the system was too inflexible, too bureaucratic and wouldn’t deliver the outcomes the government wanted. But the government didn’t listen. So as part of the process of writing the report, made sure we listened when we met employers from across the economy, as well as apprentices and trade unions and many other stakeholders in learning and skills.

Specifically on apprenticeships, we proposed replacing the current levy with an Apprenticeship and Learning Levy – and Labour has since committed to introducing a Growth and Skills Levy. We also recommended an incoming Labour government find the most effective way of ensuring that more of the new Levy is used for entry-level apprenticeships.

We set out the case for reintroducing the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) for 16 to 19-year-olds, including those undertaking apprenticeships in that age group. And we proposed the new expanded levy should be much less bureaucratic and inflexible than the current system.

We need that flexibility to support the government and employers and trade unions working together to create a lifelong learning culture in the workplace, of which apprenticeships will be a key part – although they’re not the only entry point into the labour market or progression route through it. Labour’s new Skills and Growth Levy will cover more than just apprenticeships. 80 per cent of the 2040 workforce are already in work, so there’s got to be opportunities for them to upskill as well – and apprenticeships might not always be the best route for them. 

Since we published the report, David, Praful, Rachel and myself have been to a number of events around the country trying our best to keep this in people’s minds. And the reception we’re getting is very positive. Whether you ask people in apprenticeships, people not getting apprenticeships, large and small employers, public and private providers, people who’ve been ministers or shadow ministers in this area – everyone says there’s a case for reforming our skills funding system as a whole, not just the apprenticeship levy. 

So we know these kind of reforms would be popular. That should put wind in the sails of an incoming Labour government, so they should have the confidence to be bold and to be brave about learning and skills reform. We’ve got huge challenges in learning and skills. We’ve got the lowest levels of participation and the lowest levels of investment in skills since records began. It’s a systemic failure beyond imagination. And should Labour win the next election – which we hope they will – they will have many competing high priorities.

But Keir announced earlier in 2022 that the party will continue to be guided by the principles that have been agreed in the report. The recommendations are the right ones and the party is absolutely committed to them should they form the next government. So I’m realistic about the scale of all the challenges a Labour government will face but I’m also optimistic that this will remain a high priority for them to act on quickly.