The UK has a truly dismal record on apprenticeships and training

Apprenticeships matter. Or at least they ought to.

They certainly matter to the government. There are few positives for it to point to amid its self-generated chaos, the wreckage it has left of the economy, the launch of what amounts to Austerity 2.0. But apprenticeships, skills, and training? They are things ministers and Tory MPs cling to like the survivors of a maritime disaster clutching at driftwood.

However, a report by education think tank EDSK shows they really shouldn’t consider them as any kind of lifesaver. Not when nearly half (47 per cent) of all apprentices are now dropping out before completing their courses. Not when a staggering 70 per cent of those that do report concerns about the quality of the “training” they are supposed to have received.

Ten years after the Richard Review of Apprenticeships was commissioned by David Cameron’s coalition government with the aim of ensuring that apprenticeships in England were “consistently delivering high-quality training,” it is very clear that they aren’t in far too many cases.

The authors of the No Train, No Gain report instead found a system “littered with low-skill roles” masquerading as apprenticeships that clearly don’t require anything like the “substantial training” mandated by government.

It lambasts “food and drink” apprenticeships in the hospitality sector that involve little more than heating and serving precooked meals and pushing around snack trollies. Meanwhile, some apprentices in offices end up doing little more than answering phones and taking messages for colleagues. Leisure venues are taking them on as greeters.

The minimum wage for an apprentice is a miserable £4.81 an hour, less than half what the Living Wage Foundation considers acceptable. For accepting such poverty rates, there is supposed to be a payoff: training leading to better prospects and much higher wages in future. But how much instruction do you need to push around a drinks trolley?

Apprentices are, in theory, entitled to off-the-job training for 20 per cent of their working hours, equivalent to one day a week. But the report found less than half (46 per cent) are actually getting this. One in five are not even informed about the entitlement. Nearly one in three (30 per cent) receive no training at all.

Now, this is not all the fault of government. Employers are also deserving of criticism.

Trouble is, the larger ones are incentivised to behave in this manner through the way the funding works. Employers with payrolls in excess of £3m pay the apprenticeship levy, which works as a 0.5 per cent tax on payroll. This can be redeemed against the cost of providing apprenticeships. But it’s use it or lose it. If the money isn’t used after two years, it goes towards funding smaller employers’ apprenticeship schemes.

No other country does it like this and it isn’t hard to see why. It creates an obvious incentive for the rebranding of existing training schemes as apprenticeships and for the creation of shoddy schemes for roles that don’t require much training at all.

Business lobby groups have long moaned that the levy system is inflexible, bureaucratic and difficult for them to use. The report suggests they are perhaps protesting a little too much.

However, as much as the cynicism of employers and the miserable way too many exploit and mistreat the mostly young people who embark on these schemes deserves calling out, it is the government that has created the conditions for this to happen. It is the government that likes to tout its “record” on the subject while ignoring the fact that it is built on the flimsiest of foundations. It is the current Tory government that appears uninterested in embarking on the hard graft required to improve things for apprentices who toil away for pitiful returns both in terms of wages and training. Infighting is far more fun, hey?

Much has been recently made of allegedly poor quality higher education in Britain. “Meaningless” degrees are lampooned. Apprenticeships are often compared favourably to them, especially for working-class kids because they can earn through doing them and theoretically get a leg up on their peers.

If you set aside the subtle snobbery at play – many of the commentators responsible for this sort of argument wouldn’t dream of having their children on apprenticeships – it is true that if you can get on a scheme with a Rolls-Royce or a GlaxoSmithKline you may end up doing very well.

Trouble is, there aren’t enough of those to go around and too many kids – sometimes older workers looking to retrain too – end up wasting their time on wheezes designed to claim back levy payments.

Would a degree in surf science and technology do much more for you? Other than getting you a job in a surfwear shop? Is studying philosophy going to do any more than give you lots of time to think deeply about stuff between trips to the local Jobcentre Plus? Who knows? But if those subjects are your thing, you’ll probably get more enjoyment out of the ride than you will out of distributing the mail and having sessions on “how to use the office coffee maker” dressed up as on-the-job training.

Data from the Department for Education shows that graduates earn roughly £10,000 more annually over the course of a career than non-graduates. They also boast higher employment rates.

EDSK says the government should set a much higher bar for what constitutes “quality” as well as consistently enforce rules and procedures intended to protect apprentices from malpractice and exploitation. “Our apprenticeship system should be reconfigured so that it puts the needs of apprentices alongside the needs of employers,” it says.

An apprenticeship ought to be something worthwhile. Too often, it is not. The report’s recommendations merit careful consideration but it’s probably going to take a change in government to get that.