Now that the new Prime Minister is in post, this summer offers a real opportunity to place technical education higher up the national agenda. For six years, I ran West of England Institute of Technology (WEIoT), one of twenty partnerships between universities, colleges and employers set up across England in 2018 to grow the number of people taking Level 4/5 qualifications. Institutes of Technology (IoT) exist to support the “missing middle” between A-levels and a full degree – a group England has long underserved compared to our international competitors. When I left WEIoT last summer, I moved to join one of the WEIoT anchor employers. I also serve as Vice Chair on the National Executive for the Institutes of Technology, helping steer the group nationally. All this gives me a unique perspective as someone who built and ran a regional IoT, as an employer partner, and as someone shaping where we go next.
For years, England has had a culture of degree first. Somewhere along the line, this became degree first and only. Yet research from the Centre for Social Justice suggests those with Level 4/5 qualifications go further in their careers than graduates, and that half of today’s graduates would have been better off taking the L4/5 route. This isn’t an anti-degree argument. But there is value in training employees on the ground. Level 3 learners in manufacturing, for instance, will know far better than their degree-route peers what it sounds like when a machine is failing. Vocational technicians integrate more easily into the workplace. It’s why I’m quite happy being the irritant in my own organisation, asking: “Do we really need a graduate for this role, or someone with a couple of years’ experience?” It doesn't always make me popular, but it needs saying. This vocational ethos has driven much of my work. My proudest achievement at WEIoT was an apprenticeship brokerage scheme between major aerospace employers, including Rolls-Royce and Airbus. Aerospace apprenticeships often attract hundreds of applications for 20 or so places.
Rather than turning everyone away, we ran what we wryly called "speed dating" – bringing in 20 or 30 SMEs from the wider supply chain to place candidates elsewhere. Our job is never to hoard talent but support the sector. When someone moves on, that is not failure but an opportunity to bring in the next person. And few SMEs have the funding or capacity to take on apprentices directly. This isn’t just about salary. Apprentices often require more pastoral support, and four engineers in a workshop rarely have the kind of HR function to help with this transition, making access to training places more challenging.
None of this works without the right policy environment. As the ecosystem expands, policy must keep pace. In some areas, it is. The latest addition to this landscape are Technical Excellence Colleges. While these are still in the design phase, their aim is to support training Level 2 up, building the pipeline, with IoTs picking up from Level 4/5. Importantly, over half of the 19 TECs announced this year are led by a college within an existing IoT, which tells you where the expertise sits. This is exactly the collaboration we will keep supporting. Government has also learned from past challenges. IoTs launched with capital funding but no revenue funding for salaries or staff development, which IoTs became creative in fundraising ourselves. TECs have had both from day one. It’s great to see that lesson being learned. It shows policy can keep up when the will is there.
Another issue is that current funding structures promote company-first thinking, which erodes sector-wide collaboration. One fix could be greater incentives for overtraining, where prime employers take on more apprentices than they can keep, with the extras absorbed into the supply chain. This used to happen more often, allowing wider clusters to benefit from skills they couldn’t afford to develop. But it has largely disappeared now salaries are tied to individual employers. National Apprenticeship Hubs aim to tackle this, too. But the devil is in the detail. Any hub model needs to reflect that apprenticeships enter the workforce all year round, not just in September.
None of these examples are a criticism of what’s been achieved – simply a reminder that in fast-moving sectors, vocational policy must keep up.
Institutes of Technology are proud to be part of that: working with employers to build routes into skilled, well-paid careers, supporting new colleges as they find their feet, and making the case – loudly if necessary – that a Level 4 or 5 isn’t a consolation prize for people who ‘couldn't’ do a degree. It's often simply the better and more accessible route for that individual.
Written by
Claire Arbery, Vice Chair of the National Network of Institutes of Technology and Head of Workforce Transformation Programmes at the NCC – Innovating for Industry