Apprenticeships have become hugely popular in recent years, with young people quickly realising that they can be by far the best method of entering into the world of employment without spending a small fortune on university fees. In turn, this has led the government to invest in a number of initiatives designed to get young people onto apprenticeship courses in a bid to combat the rising issue of youth unemployment which remains high despite the number of employers now taking on staff.
Vince Cable, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills at an Apprenticeship Summit
Unfortunately, it appears that one of the government’s largest investments is about to go awry with the news that private training company Elmfield Training is to enter administration. The Warrington-based firm has received more than £100 million of taxpayer money to provide apprenticeship and vocational training, and is best known for its work with Morrisons supermarket.
Elmfield’s problems began earlier this year after an Ofsted routine inspection saw the company achieve only a grade 4 for the training provided for its Morrisons programme. This is the lowest grade possible, greatly shaking the supermarket’s faith in the company – especially as Elmfield has earned more than £60 million for the Morrisons contract since 2010.
The report said; “Success rates in the apprenticeship programmes experienced a considerable decline last year and a high proportion of learners within the Morrisons contract did not complete the full framework.
“Furthermore, the number of learners who completed their apprenticeship in the planned time fell to an unacceptably low level of 33 per cent.”
Elmfield presently employs 600 members of staff at its Warrington base and is currently examining options with a view to keeping redundancies down. However, no concrete decisions will be able to be made until the results of the investigation conducted by the Skills Funding Agency, which is presently underway, are released at some point in the next few months.
Morrisons already made the decision to switch from Elmfield to an alternative training company in August of this year, following the release of the Ofsted report. Yet another possible reason for the switch was the number of allegations made by Elmfield staff members claiming that the company frequently obtained funding from the taxpayer for Morrisons staff members who did not actually wish to complete the English and mathematics training required to complete an apprenticeship scheme.
One former worker for Elmfield, who wished to remain anonymous, told Newsnight; “It’s an abuse because the learners shouldn’t have been signed up at all.
“If the funding isn’t there to deliver the main qualification then it wasn’t suitable for them.”
The main worry with this story is that both employers and young people will lose faith in apprenticeship schemes at a time where they are just beginning to yield positive results. By engaging in “unacceptable behaviour”, Elmfield may have managed to set the issue of youth unemployment yet further back, causing problems for both the government and society as a whole.
Do you think public investigations of this sort will shake the beliefs of those who previously supported apprenticeship schemes, or will most employers recognise that this is an isolated issue apparent in one firm?
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