Our CEO, Dr Diana Beech, writes for the London Higher blog about her experiences at the end of her first year as a degree apprentice. This is the second blog in the series. The first installment is available to read here.
It is hard to believe that over seven months have passed since I penned my first blog reflecting on my experiences as a Level 7 Degree Apprentice at Bayes Business School, City, University of London. Since then, I have not only completed the first full year of my degree apprenticeship course – complete with seven assignments and one invigilated exam! – but I have also steered my company, London Higher, into a brand-new political environment.
During this time, we have seen a double-whammy of change. In May, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan won an historic third term in office in City Hall, and earlier in July Sir Keir Starmer led the Labour party to a landslide victory in the 2024 UK General Election. While it certainly hasn’t been easy juggling manifesto-writing, lobbying and political commentating with carving out dedicated study time during this eventful period, I am now out the other side and focusing on embedding the business and, of course, my learnings into new external operating conditions.
At the time of writing, the higher education sector in England is still getting used to the change in tone from its new political masters. In London, the mayoral team is keen to involve the capital’s universities and colleges in the development of its London growth plan, and in Westminster, new Cabinet Ministers are publicly lauding universities for their contributions to local communities, not to mention actively welcoming international students to our shores. Yet, when it comes to the new policymakers’ views on the delivery of apprenticeships, it appears skepticism remains high over the utility and supply of current training provision.
As part of plans for a Skills England Bill announced during the 2024 King’s Speech, the Labour government seeks to establish a Skills England body, which will have partnerships with employers and unions at its heart. It also intends to reform the apprenticeship levy, although it has not yet provided any detail on how it will do this other than by setting out the intention to transfer functions from the Institute of Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) to Skills England, once established. Pre-election proposals suggest this will be part of a move towards a replacement ‘Growth and Skills Levy’, giving employers in England the flexibility to use up to half of their levy contributions for specified forms of non-apprenticeship training.
Taken together with the English Devolution Bill, it looks likely that the new levy system being created to provide access to training across England will be closely aligned to place-based skills needs, giving employers greater choice over the training they find valuable. While this employer-centred approach is clearly advantageous for businesses, ensuring they get access to the exact skills they need, there is a risk that the new system becomes transactional and ‘short-termist’ – targeting skills provision for the ‘here and now’ in the interests of employers, rather than futureproofing our nation’s skills base in the best interests of individuals and their futures.
The attitude that ‘employers know best’, regional or otherwise, can only take the new levy structure so far. While the freedom to spend levy contributions on other training courses is arguably better than letting the money go to waste, the danger remains that the training options employers deem valuable are not necessarily going to be ones that provide learners with transferable skills that will hold their value over a lifetime of job-switches and career changes. Price-sensitivity, too, could play a big role in employers’ training choices, driving demand toward qualifications of lower levels and lesser quality in the interests of getting more for their organisations for less, as opposed to thinking what is best for the UK workforce as a whole.
Given the extent to which my own degree apprenticeship has already made a difference to the way I think about my business and my approach to leadership, a more sensible way to reform the apprenticeship levy is to drive more employers to invest in higher education provision for their staff which retains and adds value to both employers and employees over time. In the first year of my course, as well as working on projects about my own business, I have worked on group projects analysing companies in both the global recruitment industry and urban air mobility. While these large profit-making and research-intensive industries are a far cry from my own leadership of a regional higher education membership body, the transferability of the knowledge acquired will apply wherever my career takes me. Unlike other ‘on the job’ training, a degree apprenticeship is not just for the job of today, but for careers of tomorrow.
As I get ready to take a break for the summer before embarking on my second – and final – year of my course, I do so in the knowledge that the case needs to be made louder than ever that higher education must play a major role in the delivery of the future skills our nation and our economy need. A successful lifelong learning and tertiary education system can only develop if our world-class universities sit firmly at its heart.
