The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) made the right call not to approve a level 2 business administration apprenticeship, a leading civil servant has insisted.

Jennifer Coupland, director of professional and technical education at the Department for Education, will take over as IfATE’s CEO next month. She told the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) autumn conference in Manchester she was unconvinced that the proposed level 2 standard would have given learners “sustained and substantial” training.

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Ms Coupland said: “One of the principals for apprenticeships is that they need to have sustained and substantial training to meet competence of at least 12 months.

“A job needs to be hard enough that you need to have been trained in sustained way over a 12-month period before you are able to perform in that role and I was unable to be convinced when I looked at the business admin standard that that was actually the case.”

The decision was confirmed in June despite a campaign from East Sussex County Council -supported by Skillsfirst and the NHS - for a business administration apprenticeship standard. IfATE refused the proposal because of concerns about the standard overlapping with the level 3 version.

‘A vital entry route’

Lucy Hunte from Health Education England was quick to disagree with Ms Coupland.

To applause from delegates, she told the conference: “For us it is a vital entry route. These people wouldn’t be able to work at level 3. The job roles are not at level 3. It’s really damaging social mobility and risks encouragement of people into the roles.”

In response, Ms Coupland said that business administration at that level didn’t need to be “badged as an apprenticeship”.

She said: “I don’t think it’s about operating at level 3, if you’re thinking about occupation, it’s about that occupation at level 2, and how long it takes to be able to do that. It may well be that you can get a job in that sector doing business admin and [if] you can become competent in six months doing business admin as a job, you don’t need to have it badged as an apprenticeship.”