17
T-Levels are the government’s latest attempt to
rejuvenate skills-based learning. Will they succeed
where others have failed, or are they just the latest
fl avour of the month?
BY CHRIS BECK
T TIME
OCTOBER 2019 COVER STORY
www.manufacturingmanagement.co.uk
Manufacturing is in crisis. The industry
has an annual shortfall of over a
quarter of a million skilled workers,
and nobody to fi ll the missing roles.
The skills gap is one of the industry’s
most pressing concerns, and one that
has been troubling politicians and industrialists
for decades.
The scale of the problem is signifi cant: a new
report from the Royal Academy of Engineers has
found that over three quarters (76%) of young
people aged 11-19 don’t know what an engineer
does, despite almost half wanting to pursue a
career that makes a positive impact on the world.
Over half (52%) said that they ‘defi nitely’ or
‘probably’ wouldn’t want to become an engineer
in their adult life.
These are damning statistics, and unless
something is done to fi x things, the situation
will only get worse. In recent years, a number of
schemes have been launched to try and encourage
employers to bridge this shortfall, to varying
levels of success.
The Apprenticeship Levy:
a glorious failure
When it was launched in April 2017, the
Apprenticeship Levy was lauded as the way to get
businesses investing in skills. It sounded simple
– at least on paper. Any employer with a wage bill
of over £3 million would be required by law to
apportion 0.5% to a digital fund, minus an annual
allowance of £15,000. This fund is then used to
pay for apprenticeship training. From April this
year, a quarter of the Levy pot can be shared with
a company’s supply chain, up from an initial 10%.
However, pretty much from the start, the Levy
was met with heavy criticism, with particular
ire reserved for its infl exible, bureaucratic
framework. Many also said the Levy was launched
without being completely ready, meaning it
would actually lead to fewer apprenticeship
starts. Indeed, the stats back this up: between
2015/16 and 2017/18 total
apprenticeship starts in the
engineering and manufacturing
sector fell by 26%.
There have also been
criticisms of the quality of
the apprenticeships provided
by the Levy. Speaking to MM
in May 2018, Tom Richmond,
senior research fellow at
Reform, and author of a report
entitled The Great Training
Robbery said, “We estimate that
around 40% of apprenticeship
schemes designed as part of
the Levy wouldn’t stand up
to scrutiny abroad. They just
don’t have the breadth, depth
or rigour to be considered as an
apprenticeship.”
More recently, a Make UK
report, An Unlevy Playing Field
for Manufacturers (https://
bit.ly/2ORTpKK), launched a
scathing attack on the Levy. The
report’s author, Tim Thomas,
Make UK’s director of labour
market and skills policy, says:
“The Apprenticeship Levy was
rushed in development, hurried
in implementation and has been
caught ever since in systemic
chop and change.”
The report found that
95% (that isn’t a typo…) of
manufacturers want to see
changes to the Apprenticeship
Levy, with many wanting it
to move towards more of a
skills levy. It called on the
government to work with
industry to make wholesale
change. “It’s little wonder that
/www.manufacturingmanagement.co.uk