Organizational Development – Page 15 – Whose Education Is It Anyway?

Apprenticeship changes: reflections thus far

I’ve drafted a few brief reflective pieces for the site of late – only for referendums, snippets of policy and other articles to make me pause and reflect again. This is an attempt to capture some of the excellence points being made about apprenticeships as the future for UK (well English) skills development (as well as linking back to old articles on the topics). I’m well aware that elements will be made out-of-date between typing and publication!

In summary, it is hard not to feel we are in the middle of a seismic shift, akin to the Blair years’ promise of 50% Higher Ed attendance and the earlier end of polytechnics.

Whilst partly being driven by (and carried along in the tsunami of) Brexit news – the potential implications and the importance of the changes to Apprenticeships are also being drowned out by the huge stories in Europe, Syria, America and elsewhere. This is a shame as whilst the potential for new Grammar Schools has managed to grab headlines, the apprentice changes have struggled to. This is particularly striking considering the levy policy largely amounts to Government intervention in workplace people development and, therefore, a potentially more important change. This is especially so for a Conservative government that continues to talk of free trade opportunities whilst having changed minimum wages, pension laws and other cost of business regulations.

Reflections on the emergent policy

The Apprenticeship Levy and related policies (or at least information on them) have been delayed at virtually every stage. This is not helped, as anyone who has tried to work through the process will find out, that the related gov.uk pages have no real help, support contacts or feedback (beyond formal consultations). I know it is better than it used to be, as they aim to move to the one site, but there are still plenty of errors on existing sites (see image from an example link on the Skills Funding Agency registration process).

Ultimately, there seems to be a shift from the government or individuals deciding ‘whose education is it anyway?’ to what business and employers determine is appropriate. However this is within a government structure of shifting the financial cost to business in return. Yet discussion continues over if some form of central linking of growth strategy and apprenticeships is needed, independent of the market forces of employer led levy policy.

screen-shot-2016-10-13-at-21-04-12 — Dead-links from the Skills Funding Agency website

Reflections on the impact on Higher Ed

As this opinion piece from the OU on CIPD.co.uk and a previous post from me suggested, the levy offers L&D departments a huge opportunity.

The challenge may be more for universities. With a clear challenge on how to keep relevant when charging huge fees. To massively simplify – why would anyone want to study for 3 years for £40,000+ of debt when you could get an equivalent qualification whilst working? Whilst the American Dream has been challenged as unattainable (as you can no longer work your way through college – but the universities and other interested parties dont want you to know that), apprenticeships are effectively challenging the ‘traditional’ UK model that started to take shape pre-Blair and was accelerated by his administrations. Universities are going to have to become more responsive and imaginative in the design of degree-level apprenticeships.

If we accept there will be a (re)balance in the future between apprenticeships and degrees, then we also have to consider the nature of the labour market. HE fees have discouraged mobility (encouraging people to stay and study at home) and social mobility in applications to ‘top end’ unis from lower income families. Yet similar mobility challenges are being raised with apprenticeship changes.

Whilst a university education allows mobility, albeit I am an example of someone who chose a location for my undergraduate university (in part) as it was relatively close to home and cheap, there is the question of social value versus gaining efficiency through competition. Of course, UK HE has some approaches that make entry to the market difficult (and better use of economies of scale, perhaps through mergers, could be made). JISC could, for example, support degree apprenticeships through technology in a way that would be difficult for employer providers.

Fundamentally, there is also the question over why universities have failed to adopt wider competency models. The US focus on competency based education in HE has shifted the model somewhat towards a more broken down skill profile assessment, akin in some ways to our apprenticeships. Inevitably UK HE will have to move away from the vagueness of 1st, 2nd and 3rd class degrees. Of course a lot of this is not new, I even presented on related issues at a conference in 2010. There were also sessions on competency based learning beyond the standard curriculum at the same conference. You have to presume that changes to traditional degree models will be accelerated by the ‘competition’ with new apprenticeships.

And to the future…

The arguments over graduate skills (or lack there of) will continue. The shift to the Levy means employers paying to the levy have three real options it seems to me:

do nothing – accept the loss as a tax
work with vendors – accept apprenticeships as your career development pathways but also accept the “loss” of the levy money
employer provider route – try and claim back the money whilst doing apprenticeship programmes yourself. Comes with the highest risk (including dealing with Ofsted) but potentially highest rewards. Risk is also associated with continuing lack of clarity, not least over assessment standards.

Another area where questions remain is if the target of three million apprenticeships will bring down quality.

Option 3: Employer providers

A key feature to the planned changes with the apprenticeship policy, throughout the planning, has been the promise of a shift to them becoming (more) ’employer led’. There will be less of an education-sector focus in their organisation, especially in the change to allow people to be an apprentice at a lower or equal level to past qualifications (a big change).

The summer’s raft of announcements, typically made when I was on holiday, seemed to suggest (yet further) that becoming an ’employer-provider’ is a Good Thing for employers. Questions remain though and I was personally turned down for the pilot of the apprenticeship funding website – again you could probably argue that giving some companies the early access and others not is, again, interventionist and potentially a help to some companies over others in competitive environments. Yet confidence with the levy seems to only be possible if you think the current government will be in power for a while at least, opposition being in place from across the benches of the commons albeit sometimes ignoring the levy altogether. Yet the government has continued to tinker with the planned new structures in the face of some of this opposition.

The presumption seems to be that larger employers, who already have L&D resources, can consider the provider route. This makes sense, not least as apprenticeships focus on learning across the 70/20/10 spectrum. However, the enforcement of L&D teams working within rules they might not have worked on themselves (depending on if they worked on the standard or not) will be a challenge to many – not least when there has been such a focus on informal elements and recognising the value of learning achieved away from credentialing (this also being part of the challenge for HE). There have also been lots of questions over supporting smaller companies in supply chains (aka ‘extended enterprise’) and the need to apply as a full provider to train other companies’ staff may be too much of a logistical burden for many organisations. However, again, there is potential here for L&D departments to really transform their position within their organisations and their relation to partner companies.

Indeed the options for what levy money can be used for, by employer providers, are quite comprehensive:

“Employer-providers will be able to use funds in their digital account to pay for the following: • training to achieve the apprenticeship, which could include qualifications, elearning (as part of a broader training package), vendor qualifications • registration, assessment, materials and examination • administration related to the delivery of the apprenticeships. • accommodation for residential trips if necessary for all apprentices to achieve • costs for use of premises where these are used for the apprenticeship • wages and associated costs (such as pension and National Insurance contributions) for employees directly involved in the delivery of the apprenticeship.”

and it is difficult to see quite how the government will regulate and audit against ‘misuse’, even if their attempts are mostly logical:

“To claim eligible costs, employer-providers are required to input the price of these costs on the digital apprenticeship service and through the Individualised Learner Record. As detailed below, employers must retain evidence of these costs. This evidence may be requested as part of the SFA’s audit and assurance checks.

They won’t be able to use it for: • costs that are the employer’s responsibility, for example health and safety requirements, wages, travel, commercial choices (e.g. CSCS cards) • wages for line managers or other colleagues supporting the apprentice 16 • wages of the apprentice • profit or employee bonuses • capital purchases • more than one apprenticeship at a time for an individual apprentice • re-taking qualifications or assessment where no additional learning takes place • apprentice recruitment • anything that has received other government funding (for example European Social Fund)”.

The 20% rule

Historically the opposition to apprenticeships has often focused on the 20% rule:

“All apprenticeships must include 20% off the job training. It is up to you to decide at what point during the apprenticeship the training is best delivered (for example, one day a week throughout, 1 week out of every 5, a proportion at the beginning, middle and end). This will depend on what is best for your organisation and the apprentice. You need to ensure that all apprentices receive all of the training.”

To myself, as an L&D person, this sounds awful and in opposition to the wider potential of workplace learning and on-the-job ‘training’. Indeed I chose to focus on this point when commenting on the Learning and Skills Group Forum a while back. The noise seems to be that this can be more flexible than it has perhaps been in the past.

Overall, there remain many grey areas over how the FY17 model will work but the support being given to apprenticeships does seem to be hugely important and something for all L&D departments to consider in their strategies – even if to say t he ‘brand’ of apprenticeships (one of the outstanding issues according to the CIPD) still isn’t strong enough to work for them. Many useful links still haven’t made it into this reflective piece so I may well add to the comments.

My vote for the Top Tools for Learning 2016

Here’s what I submitted to the annual poll (http://c4lpt.co.uk/top100tools/voting/).

Tool 1: Name and (optionally) reason for choice: Old Reader – personal RSS reader of choice for news, sharing and current awareness.
Tool 1: How do you use it?: Workplace Learning, Personal & Professional Learning

Tool 2: Name and (optionally) reason for choice: Xmarks – bookmarking for personal knowledge library and sharing of folders/topics with contacts and colleagues
Tool 2: How do you use it?: Workplace Learning , Personal & Professional Learning

Tool 3: Name and (optionally) reason for choice: YouTube – still most used video platform in terms of access to recorded webinars, tutorials, etc.
Tool 3: How do you use it?: Workplace Learning , Personal & Professional Learning

Tool 4: Name and (optionally) reason for choice: Articulate Storyline 2 – authoring tool of choice for content distribution and for developing support tools.
Tool 4: How do you use it?: Workplace Learning

Tool 5: Name and (optionally) reason for choice: Totara – simplifies our L&D management requirements for regulators, government, etc allowing more of our time on performance support and career development.
Tool 5: How do you use it?: Workplace Learning, Personal & Professional Learning

Tool 6: Name and (optionally) reason for choice: LinkedIn – learning via groups and 1-2-1 communication. A source for news and useful links (but less so than Old Reader or YouTube).
Tool 6: How do you use it?: Workplace Learning , Personal & Professional Learning

Tool 7: Name and (optionally) reason for choice: WordPress – for reflection and sharing my learning.
Tool 7: How do you use it?: Workplace Learning , Personal & Professional Learning

Tool 8: Name and (optionally) reason for choice: Prezi – started using it again this year to share messaging where the templates/zooming helps.
Tool 8: How do you use it?: Workplace Learning , Personal & Professional Learning

Tool 9: Name and (optionally) reason for choice: Firefox – as the entry point to other tools remains essential. Used over other tools for speed, plugins, etc.
Tool 9: How do you use it?: Workplace Learning, Personal & Professional Learning

Tool 10: Name and (optionally) reason for choice: Grover Pro – Podcast app of choice for learning on the go.
Tool 10: How do you use it?: Workplace Learning, Personal & Professional Learning

learndirect Policy Exchange Session – July 2016

Last week around 50 learning professionals braved the hotest day of the year and a room with no air con to listen to an update on apprenticeships, mostly from Sue Husband from the Department of Education (recently moved over from BIS).

The overwhelming message was really “we’re not quite there yet, there will be more soon” – the latest raft of levy information unsurprisingly being held up by the changes resulting from the referendum result. Therefore, I wont include everything from the day here as a lot was what we already knew.

There were positives though – rough notes below [with some of my comments included]:

There is clearly a belief that it will work (although the CBI is still pushing for a delay/rethink). [Hence the apparent lack of contingency planning.]
Focus is on apprenticeship quality [although you suspect that will be under challenge from the ‘claim back’ employers – no doubt a test for the new Institute for Apprenticeships].
NI contributions abolished for under 25 apprentices.
2.3% of workforce target now in place for government to encourage them to support the policy. Recommended that people look up the 5% Club.
Post code of person will be determining factor on which pot money goes to – so good for English people working in Scotland/Wales, not so much the other way around [so employers may be forced into decisions that go against equal opportunities].
Funds will expire after 18 months – system is clever enough to know how ‘old’ a pound is and move into general pot at correct time.
Levy online tool is available for people to pilot [still awaiting my access after requesting last week following the event]. April 2017 will only be available to levy payers – smaller orgs later [makes sense and should help with stability].
Pooling funds and granting to supply chain are on road-map [potentially] but issues with potential for misuse of funds [payments for favours, etc].
They expect employers running own apprenticeships to grow [good that not just about supporting a market for the FE and skills sector].
The current advertising [which is all over my train route in South London at least] is young person orientated – the next raft will highlight that it is about all ages and current employees too.
Graduations now underway for people coming through apprenticeships designed to new standards [presumably a good thing but no doubt some questions over quality versus the old frameworks in some areas].
Acknowledged higher qualification [degree] cap does not make sense, as funding going from government to employers now looking at it from different perspective. More in next publications. [Might be a real game changer if this removes the blocker on graduates training into a career via an apprenticeship].
About half of all standards in development are at degree level [watch out HE!].
‘Use levy wisely’ was the response to the question from the room about why the levy is being forced on those who already do good people development. [Guess the challenge might be that the room was clearly people engaged with the agenda – no doubt the % of employers who currently under invest in L&D will be the more vocal in complaining about the levy]. 20,ooo firms will be paying in; 5,000 of those will be new to apprenticeships.
Definitely don’t have to have ‘apprentice’ or similar in your job title [but good for your apprenticeship brand if people realise that is what they are doing – plus they do have to know they are an apprentice as part of the rules].
20% off work can be blended, do not think about as 20% in classroom. They recognise that continuous learning makes the best programmes [yay!].
Will be information coming for employers looking to do some of the training and back charging to provider.
Brexit may be good for apprenticeships [if cuts on immigration].
May encourage permanent employment [this is me extrapolating from the amount of people in the room unhappy that their temporary staff will be included in the levy tax but not in those who can be apprentices – presumably also the likes of SportDirect wont be happy with that one].
Digital Apprenticeship Service screenshots [It’s Alive!! Will comment more on this when I get access].

Apprenticeships, the real future for L&D?

Somewhat under the radar in the UK, well in England at least, we seem to be facing a fundamental decision point for what workplace learning means.

The government’s apprenticeship levy is threatening to create, from my current perspective at least, what looks like a three-tier system:

small organisations who will take on apprentices over other training as they dont have to pay into the levy so its ‘free money’ reducing the need for their own L&D
medium to large employers who see the levy as a substantial cost and feel they need to ‘claim back’ as much of the money as possible via shifting their learning focus to apprenticeships.
large employers who can live with the cost of the levy and will continue as they were.

Overall though it seems the main feeling is one of confusion. The slow feed of clarification from the government means that forward planning is tricky and at the recent 70/20/10 event I spoke to a number of people who felt apprenticeships were fast becoming their number one issue, without any real discussion in the L&D press. The issue perhaps being that if an organisation shifts to the ‘claim back’ or ‘free money’ mentality they will be impacting on a number of traditional disciplines including finance, L&D, recruitment and more. Perhaps the problem is that, as no single discipline ‘owns’ this issue, apprenticeships remain somewhat out-of-scope for many (at least in their own perceptions of their role).

There is, of course, a very recent precedent for government policy increasing the so called ‘cost of business’. That so many organisations are being accused of cut backs to benefits to pay for the living wage, raises the suspicion that L&D budgets face a similar cull in the face of such a training related ‘tax’. The CBI have already warned that successful learning initiatives will suffer in the face of the levy.

With a target of 3 million apprenticeships over the next few years we are talking about comparable numbers to higher education entry. Meanwhile, 2014-2024 figures suggest just 1.8 million new jobs – with degree apprenticeships one solution – implying that apprenticeships will need to be used for promotion.

There are some fundamental issues for workplace learning is how apprenticeships can align with wider trends. Modern apprenticeships will need to focus on bringing in certifying skills from a range of experience, exposure and education. This will almost certainly have to include some formalisation of the informal, blurring the lines therein (such as staff using tools such as Lynda’s learning paths).

Event notes – 70:20:10 The Evidence Behind the Numbers

I recently attended this half day event, organised by the Corporate eLearning Consortium, based around a few sessions with Charles Jennings and Laura Overton.

The day combined research findings, case studies and other material from Toward Maturity’s research related to 70:20:10 and Charles Jennings’ new 100% performance book (including his new roles for learning/performance professionals).

For anyone familiar with the 70:20:10 concept (if you’re not you obviously can just Google that or go here) there was probably not too much new in the day. However, there were a few nice takeaways for those who feel they still need to progress the recognition of informal learning (the ‘70’ and ‘20’) in their organizations. I have listed some of these below (numbered) with my reflections indendented:

The latest research provides data to bust a number of the remaining ‘myths’ related to L&D.
- As most people who understand the framework already know, the focus has got to be on getting the correct balance of formal and informal learning to drive performance in your organisation. It is not that everyone should be aiming for 90% informal.
Formal learning needs to be reborn.
- Coming to L&D from HE I often have a bit of trouble with the view of ‘formal’ learning in workplace environments. To me it is about combining different elements in an online environment; the event and other conferences/webinars tend to presume that the ’10’ is a face-to-face course or virtual classroom. As Charles Jennings pointed out, the key thing really is ensuring the formal relates to, and is embedded, with workplace practice.
The actual 70/20/10 numbers were originally from managers’ development research.
- I think this is a point that often does not come through – these numbers will make more sense for an audience like managers. In other environments the ratios vary.
Branding can be important. Put things across in a manageable way to change cultures.
- Examples mentioned included Citi’s move from ‘courses’ to ‘campaigns’. Danone’s ‘1 learning a day’ and EoN’s ‘learning anywhere anytime’. One named blocker for evolution was L&D teams who see their job as ‘courses’. Personally I have, again, never really understood that – perhaps it is a historic thing that a ‘topic’ needed to be covered in an event. However, we surely now recognised that learning about a topic and/or driving behavioural change will happen over time and an on-going internet resource to support that makes sense. It was mentioned that an LMS can be seen as a ‘course vending machine’ in too many organisations – again I would argue that might make sense within your organization’s information architecture.
Don’t be satisfied with the old mindset – focus instead on performance and your impact.
- Evaluation is always such a challenge for support staff who, realistically, work in a machine of many parts. L&D are no different but I liked the concepts outlined around mindset.
Get your principles in place – what you will do as ‘learning’ team, what people can expect from you and what staff can expect of the organization.
- This is a fair point in my opinion. A challenge with the merging of supporting roles and shifting professional boundaries undoubtedly makes things less clear – L&D professionals are no longer attached to a classroom (if they ever were), information professionals no longer locked in a library (again often that’s a misnomer but its one that has become pervasive), business development professionals work beyond the tradeshow/cold call, recruitment no longer just do the milk-round circuits, etc. There is a need to be clear on responsibilities and transparent on skillsets that can be leveraged for organizational objectives.
- I really like the metaphor of becoming the “oil in the engine, not a spanner in the works” – probably something to throw at anyone who is seen as a blocker (not just L&D) through a lack of innovation around policy, procedure, etc.
Continue to challenge ourselves about how we can support people day-to-day in the flow of work.
- There was a lot of discussion around making people more self-conscious and reflective. Ask questions of your star staff such as “if you have a problem how do you solve it” to avoid the challenge of reverting to learning/courses. Again, I would say instructional design has evolved to think about the topics and behaviours needed, the end state desired and then how to get there. A lot of these arguments really come back to getting proper performance consulting in place.