employers will or can be persuaded to recruit regular numbers on an annually recurring basis)
and ‘Fordist’ mechanisms to control the E&T system. The latter result in the government
funding FE Colleges and private training providers on the basis of enrolling ‘training
volumes’ and achieving ‘training completions’, rather than recognising that this
accountability and funding model is completely at odds with the growth of project-work in
the creative and cultural sector, let alone, elsewhere in the economy. A degree of relative
autonomy should be restored to all stakeholders in the national E&T system so that LSCs,
SSCs, employers and public and private sector training providers can design and pilot
bespoke apprenticeships which reflect the needs of the sector.
In conclusion, it must be acknowledged that although we have based the preceding argument
on the insights about skill formation and transfer for employability generated by the Rep’s
experience of running TA, the TA is by no stretch of the imagination the ‘finished article’.
Despite the Rep’s undoubted commitment, it is on a steep learning curve as regards the design
and implementation of its learning and teaching curriculum18. The former being much easier
to design and control than the latter which was dependent on a much wider range of bespoke
educational inputs than the Rep had originally envisioned. Regrettably, imminent changes in
ESF funding mean that the Rep may be unable to consolidate the lessons of the last two years
and to run a further scheme. From 2007 oversight of ESF funds passes to the LSCs who as
‘delivery agencies’ for government policy are unlikely to foster innovation (Keep, 2006, p.).
Nevertheless, despite this caveat, the TA it is a much-needed example of the type of fresh
thinking that is needed in order to design apprenticeships for the project-based work contexts
that are spreading throughout UK and European economies.
18 Based on interviews with HoDs (Group interview with HoDs, February 2007) and John Pitt (Interview Feb
2007) at the end of the scheme , they acknowledged that it was much more difficult to organise training than
they had originally envisaged. First, the limited information about external courses, coupled with competing
demand on John Pitt’s time, meant that the ‘dark periods’ could have been used more effectively to train the
apprentices Second, the Rep underestimated the challenge of identifying/designing bespoke forms of training.
On some occasions it was difficult to match training to apprentices’ prior experience and on other occasions it
difficult to ‘recontextualise’ disciplinary knowledge into practice fields (Barnett 2007, page ....).
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