I read with much disappointment the news surrounding apprenticeship providers. Many surveys point towards large numbers of providers going bust or having to reduce their offer as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. 

Apprenticeships are an important part of our vocational education system. While they are not without their faults, they do offer a rich learning environment for students. With this richness comes complexity - and it’s the vocational teachers, lecturers, tutors and trainers who guide students through this blended programme of working and studying, often without full recognition of their professionalism.

Despite current circumstances, it seems obvious to me that apprenticeships must be an important part of the government’s education strategy.  They also allow students to develop their skills in the place that they will be using them, learning and practice in situ like this is a very effective way of learning.  Learning on the job also overcomes some of the structural issues that FE colleges have when it comes to procuring up to date technology on a funding methodology that doesn’t seem to appreciate these costs.

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Apprenticeships do have their shortcomings. They do offer a potentially narrower education, preparing students for a particular career tailored to one employers’ needs, and perhaps miss wider social or personal educational opportunities. While this is probably less of an issue for higher apprentices, it does have the potential to narrow opportunities at level two or three.

Close relationships with an employer

What apprenticeships do provide is arguably the cornerstone of any excellent vocational education experience: a close relationship with an employer. This relationship can help students navigate between two sets of knowledge, that in the curriculum and that in the workplace.

These may overlap but they have different purposes; within the workplace knowledge moves fast and is shared within the organisation to make a workplace more efficient or effective. Qualifications knowledge is comparatively more static, broader in nature as it is not just about one job or one workplace and is used to indicate to future providers or employers that the individual has developed certain knowledge and skills. 

It is this difference that our students struggle with when they move between the classroom and the workspace. It is something that is considered by the best vocational teachers, trainers and tutors, who can see that the barriers between the workplace and learning space are weakened by this close relationship. Sadly, this rarely informs the way in which many FE colleges view vocational teaching who gravitate towards more schools-based models of teaching and seem unable to differentiate between these two practices.  

This lack of understanding is detrimental to vocational students: how many times have you heard these students moaning about the relevance of what is learned at college? If you have then it is likely that the students are struggling to link these the two different kinds of knowledge. This may be because the providers themselves have inadvertently put barriers in the way or there isn’t that closeness of relationship to help them.

It is the failure to recognise the complexity of this relationship and of teaching on this kind of programme that needs addressing.  While there are academics and policy bodies who argue vocational teaching is potentially more complex than academic teaching, we still see those who work on these programmes given less prestige, remuneration and training than those who teach elsewhere in the education sector.  

Development of knowledge 

If the government wants better vocational education experiences then they need to recognise that what is learned in college does not transfer to the workplace without problems and start to address the complexity.  

One way to address this is through those closer working relationships with employers, so that both ends of the learning process can work together to improve students’ opportunities to bring together workplace and qualification knowledge. For the staff teaching on these qualifications then I would ask that their employers rethink the way in which their work is oversimplified. This oversimplification prevents curriculum development that will benefit the provision, and training and development that will develop the staff. 

It is only by appreciating the work, knowledge and development that is required of employers, learners and teaching or training staff that other vocational courses will be able to achieve what an apprenticeship does: a student developing work knowledge and qualification knowledge simultaneously.

Sam Jones is a lecturer at Bedford College, founder of FE Research Meet and FE Teacher of the Year at the Tes FE Awards 2019