John Hayes MP, Minister of State for Further Education

APPRENTICESHIPS
John Hayes MP, Minister of State for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning, outlines his policy towards apprenticeships at the start of Apprenticeships Week in February 2011.

Vince Cable announced recently the excellent news that Jaguar Landrover, one of this country’s flagship manufacturing companies, are creating 1,500 new apprenticeship places.

In my turn, I am delighted to be able to add that at least nine other major companies will also be making commitments this week to recruit more apprentices this year.

They include BT, which will be offering 250 places across the group, and the Morrison’s supermarket chain, which will have no fewer than 7,000 places available in skills like butchery and bakery. I look very much forward to meeting some of these apprentices when I visit Morrison’s.

In case anyone has still to be convinced that apprenticeships can add value to white- as well as blue-collar occupations, I am pleased to report that Proctor and Gamble intend to recruit 10 apprentice accountants.

And if anyone has bought a copy of today’s Times — I just happen to have one here — they may have seen this feature congratulating the first 180 people to gain skills at higher education level by taking higher apprenticeships. At the risk of becoming repetitive, I must once again heartily applaud the fact that some of these are BT employees.

I have no doubt that these 180 higher level apprentices will be the first of many, and I add my own warm congratulations to those already set down for posterity in our national newspaper of record.

Of course, the news that some of our major employers are playing their part in extending the availability of apprenticeships is always welcome, and we celebrate every business that joins, or reinforces its commitment, to the cause.

But Apprenticeships Week and the Apprentices programme in general are about far more than giving us the opportunity to cite ever-larger numbers.

But ever mindful of Hilaire Belloc’s aphorism, that “Statistics are the triumph of the quantitative method, and the quantitative method is the victory of sterility and death.”

I know that this is about skills changing lives by changing life chances — apprenticeships give life to social mobility and breed social justice.

The chief aim of the Apprenticeships programme is not the creation of ever-bigger numbers, to quote, but of an ever-bigger society in which everyone can benefit. Apprenticeships are the Big Society.

More than perhaps any other form of learning — including, I must say, many degree courses — apprenticeships say to people, ‘Aspire, whoever you are and whatever your background. All that’s required is the strength of will to take the first step.’ The power of will is the path to success.

The apprenticeship path once turned thousands of medieval peasants into the men whose skills, combined with passion, vision and creativity, beautified this island and which still give the surviving examples of their handiwork, such as the great cathedrals, the power to take our breath away.

For these people, an apprenticeship led to a chance to touch, feel, and taste the sublime, and so it still can for the people of today who want to point their lives in a more rewarding direction.

I am determined that those who want to set their feet on the apprenticeships path should receive every assistance to do so from the government.

As some of you know, we are already working hard to develop better routes into the programme, including better access schemes to enable people with very low or no qualifications to gain the skills they need to take up a place. So I am pleased to be able to announce today that my colleague, the Employment Minister Chris Grayling, and I will be asking Jobcentre Plus and the National Apprenticeships Service to explore together how people for whom this would be a suitable option might be guided out of the dole queue and into an apprenticeship.

There is also a pressing need to ensure that no apprenticeship is an employment cul-de-sac. From the earliest times, learners could progress from apprentice to journeyman and ultimately to master craftsman. Nowadays, too, an apprenticeship must be not the end but the start of a life of learning.

That is why I am determined to develop a more navigable progression route into and through the Apprenticeships programme, which clearly leads to higher learning at university or elsewhere.

And, today, we are making a start. I can report our progress renaming of the levels of apprenticeships to make it clearer that apprentices can progress through the Apprenticeships programme.

Level 2 Apprenticeships will now be known as Intermediate Level Apprenticeships. Level 3 will become Advanced Level Apprenticeships, and Higher Apprenticeships will remain unchanged.

This reform will also help to give greater recognition and status to those who successfully complete their apprenticeships. But, as I said in a speech at the Royal Society of Arts in October 2010, we will take whatever steps are needed to drive up quality. And what a splendid example of driving up quality World Skills is.

So I can also announce that my department will be working with the National Apprenticeship Service to introduce graduation ceremonies for apprentices and their families, together with an apprentice honour roll. And, to allow those who have learned together to stay in touch and continue to learn, I want us also to facilitate the creation of the sort of alumni networks for apprentices that have worked so well in other areas.

Our ultimate goal remains to see apprentices to go beyond parity of esteem with university graduates; that an apprenticeship place is as valued as one at a university. For it is through the relationship between craft and beauty that truth will be reached.

I hope that you are all as excited as I am by the developments I have announced this morning. We should all be excited, too, by the prospect of the week that lies before us and the literally hundreds of events that will be taking place all over the country.

So let me thank again BT, both for their hospitality this morning and their championing of apprenticeships in general, and secondly thank the staff of the National Apprenticeship Service who have, I know, worked unbelievably hard to ensure that Apprenticeships Week 2011 will be one that we will remember for years to come.

Let me be clear: in the Corporate Spending Review we made £250mn available to boost adult apprenticeships by 75,000; the Department for Education (DfE) have committed sufficient funds to boost apprenticeships for 16–18 year olds by at least 30,000. We aim to build more apprenticeships in Britain than has ever been seen before.

I champion practical skills now in government as I did in opposition. Apprenticeships are now at the heart of government policy, and they are in my heart too: growing skills; growing lives; growing Britain.

Biography of John Hayes MP, Minister of State for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning
Born in Woolwich, London, in 1958, John Hayes was educated at Colfe’s Grammar School and Nottingham University, where he graduated with a BA in Politics and a PGCE in History/English.

First elected to Parliament as the Member for South Holland and The Deepings in 1997, he has been re-elected — with increased majorities — at each of the three subsequent general elections.

Before joining the Conservative frontbench, John served as a member of both the Agriculture and Education Select Committees.

He was made Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Party, with responsibility for campaigning, in 1999; became Shadow Schools Minister in 2000; and — following the 2001 Election — Assistant Opposition Chief Whip. From 2002 to 2003 he was a member of the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, having initially headed the political section of the Office of the Leader of the Opposition, for whom he was also a speechwriter. From 2003 to 2005 he was Shadow Minister for Housing and Planning and then Shadow Minister for Transport in 2005.

David Cameron made John Shadow Minister for Vocational Education in 2005 and, from 2007 to 2010, he added higher education to his portfolio, serving as Shadow Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education.

Joining the new government in May 2010, John was appointed Minister of State for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. In addition, in July 2010 he became a Minister of State in the Department for Education with particular responsibility for apprenticeships, careers guidance and vocational education.