It feels like much more than a year has passed since the Institute for Apprenticeships officially began its work. There has since been an onslaught of news on apprenticeship reform and the progress, or lack thereof, made in growing the number of apprenticeship starts. Much of the institute’s first 12 months, it seems, has been overshadowed by the question of whether enough has been done by the institute to tackle this issue.

Apprenticeships have dominated the wider FE agenda, too, with the government saying they will ensure young people get the skills they need to succeed. I wonder how much of it is really about that, though. I understand that the government’s original plan was for an “Institute for Employers”, rather than apprenticeships.

This, to me, is the crux of the matter. Very little of the public discourse on this actually seems to be about apprentices or young school leavers keen to pursue a vocational route. Some of this is most likely owed to the way the apprenticeship scheme is financed. The levy puts large businesses at the heart of the agenda, and it seems only right that they should be influential in how the new apprenticeship standards are set out.

It also follows that we measure the success of the programme by the number of starts. We don’t consider how many people were taken on by businesses specifically for an apprenticeship, or, further down the line, were given the opportunity to retrain. This means statistics can, and do, include those that were employed by a business before their apprenticeship started, and the focus of the news agenda is on how many employers did or did not use their levy funding.

But it just doesn’t feel right. Because it isn’t what education is about. We should make sure we don’t lose sight of those learners at the heart of what FE does.

Maybe in its second year, the institute could focus on that: making sure that we don’t forget that this isn’t just about numbers and statistics, but about offering better opportunities to those that need them.