As the new term comes to an end, our CEO, Dr Diana Beech, continues her ‘Diary of a Degree Apprentice’ on the London Higher blog. She reflects both on how her own Level 7 degree apprenticeship is going and where the new Labour government could be heading with the future of this important training route.
This is the third blog in the series. Part 1 and Part 2 can be read via the hyperlinks.
“I am prepared to make an unpopular argument with the public about the value of good leaders.” Those aren’t my words, but those of the new Health and Social Care Secretary, Wes Streeting, as part of a speech given to the NHS Providers annual conference on 13 November.
Introducing measures to address years of leadership failings, the Health Secretary stressed that “making [the NHS] fit for the future will require first class leadership at every level of the system” and pledged to help “develop essential leadership capabilities” right across England’s public health service.
Having been a Level 7 degree apprentice myself for the past 15 months, alongside other senior leaders from the NHS, the charity sector, and UK businesses of all shapes and sizes, I would assume that these courses are firmly part of the Health Secretary’s plan. This is especially true for those targeted specifically at medical practitioners, such as City St George’s Executive Master’s in Medical Leadership or part one of UCL’s Senior Leader (Health) Apprenticeship.
If they’re not, the Health Secretary could well find himself needlessly reinventing the wheel when it comes to training public sector leaders to manage people, innovation, and change effectively. Yet, if Level 7 apprenticeships like these are, indeed, already part of his thinking, then he needs to ensure that Education ministers get the memo quickly, as budgets and priorities are already being drawn up for Skills England – the new body set to take on strategy and planning around future skills and apprenticeships.
In September, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced that his government intends to shift funding away from some Level 7 apprenticeships to support lower-level apprenticeships targeted at young people. While we are still waiting to hear if this means that all Level 7 apprenticeship funding will be cut, Skills Minister Jacqui Smith told audiences in November that we could be looking at “more than some people hope” and quashed expectations that “there will be a lot of flexibility” around that decision.
If Level 7 leadership and management apprenticeships are to continue with full levy support, then it appears the Health Secretary will have his work cut out making his unpopular argument about the value of good leaders with his colleagues in the Department for Education (DfE) first.
While ministry of government decisions are never perfect and inevitably involve administrative trade-offs, the current Whitehall alignment puts responsibility for Level 7 apprenticeships firmly under the auspices of the DfE. This presents multiple risks for joined-up policymaking in this area, particularly if the DfE’s internal teams are not talking to each other efficiently and if the Department is also talking at loggerheads with its counterparts elsewhere in Whitehall – not least those departments responsible for health and for business.
Additionally, despite all the advantages that Level 7 leadership apprenticeships bring to the healthcare profession, to business, to the creative industries and more, these are difficult arguments to make to a Department that clearly sees its priority as young people. This is especially true for a Department that is also trying to rid itself of the deadweight costs of paying for training it believes employers would and should fund anyway. This is notwithstanding arguments from the cash-strapped NHS, alongside schools, councils, police forces, charities and other small businesses, that they have no means to do so should the apprenticeship levy route be closed to them.
Since I’ve been a Level 7 degree apprentice, I’ve seen my own leadership style transform dramatically and I have been continually applying new learnings to my approach to management. This has benefitted, among others, how we market the company, how we manage talent, and what we concentrate on next as a business. Keeping the organisation profitable, helping people to develop and plan for the future are all tasks that are contributing to the new government’s missions to boost growth and opportunity, however small my business footprint may be.
Yet, if this mission-driven mode of governing is going to work, Whitehall departments must break out of delivering solely for their core areas and start thinking about how any decisions they make fit into achieving the government’s overarching objectives. Put this way, the quicker the DfE recognises that the future of the NHS and other public and private sector services lies as much in its hands as they do the Health Secretary’s and other cabinet ministers, the quicker we will start to see policy decisions that work for the whole country.
