the actual purpose of apprenticeship is to develop vocational practice;
• the project-based nature of work in much of the creative and cultural sector requires a
‘project-based’ approach to education and training and that existing arrangements and
funding patterns for on-and-off-the-job training are incompatible with this type of
work;
• Key Skills and NVQs do not constitute evidence of the development of vocational
practice in the creative and cultural sector.
We suggest that these challenges could be tackled in the following ways. First, the DfES
should countenance modifications to the AAP Blueprint to allow employers to design models
of apprenticeship which actually reflect their needs. This would introduce a slightly different
twist to the notion of ‘employer leadership’ advocated by the Leitch report17. Instead of
assuming that qualification blueprints are the definitive solution to employability in the
knowledge economy and exhorting employers to train employees to higher qualification
levels, the DfES should sponsor the development of innovative models of apprenticeship
based on a clear articulation and specification of the principles of skill formation and skill
transfer.
To ensure that employers do not interpret this new freedom as a license to create a host of
new ‘restrictive’ apprenticeships, the government should pilot a national ‘kite marking’
system for alternative models of apprenticeship. This system should be based on clearly
defined criteria for skill formation, skill transfer and employability so as to both develop the
requisite form of vocational practice and to reassure policymakers that the new schemes are
educationally robust and offer value-for-money. To ensure that education and employment
issues are given parity in the design of these models of apprenticeship, it will be necessary to
rebalance the role of employers, national intermediary agencies such as LSCs and SSCs and
educational institutions in the formation and administration of E&T. The latter have been
marginalized since the 1980s, nevertheless, as Fuller and Unwin amongst others have
consistently demonstrated, the educational contribution is essential if pedagogic issues are to
be restored to the centre of apprenticeship.
Second, the Treasury should re-think the funding regime for apprenticeship. At present
despite all the references to the knowledge economy in successive Government White Papers,
policymakers continue to operate with ‘Welfarist’ notions of labour markets, (i.e. that all
17 http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/523/43/leitch_finalreport051206.pdf.
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