to support progression, rather than as a strategy to develop an occupationally-specific
knowledge base (Barnett, 2006).
Learning through apprenticeship
Despite the Blueprint’s rhetoric about the educational and social value of apprenticeship, the
lack of any guidance to employers about skill formation and the reliance on qualification
outcomes as indicators of learning and employability has continually dogged apprenticeship
since the inception of the MA. There is a considerable volume of evidence that a considerable
number of firms choose to use funding for apprenticeship to perpetuate a modern version of
the low-skill equilibrium, rather than to up-skill their product and service strategies through
the introduction of innovative modes of skill formation. Fuller & Unwin (2003; 2004) have
consistently demonstrated the marked difference between those employers who provide
‘expansive’ apprenticeships, that is, rich and varied environment for apprentices to learn-on-
and-off the job so as to broaden and deepen their knowledge and skill as opposed to
‘restrictive’ apprenticeships where employers elect to engage in the most limited way possible
with the elements of the blueprint, often with the result that apprentices fail to complete
(Fuller & Unwin, 2003a; 2003b). More recently, Ryan et al (2006) have highlighted
considerable sectoral variations as regards the education and training component of
apprenticeship, in particular, the significant differences in the engineering and
telecommunications sectors to the amount of time allocated to education and training and the
greater degree of attention given to skill formation compared with the retail sector.
Nevertheless, despite many employers’ un-doubted commitment to designing and expansive
apprenticeships to enhance their product and service strategies, this model of skill formation
has primarily been developed in accordance with the existing apprenticeship frameworks
rather than on the basis of different principles. Because the funding for the Blueprint
precludes any deviation from its mandatory elements, employers who want to develop
alternative models of apprenticeship are forced to self-fund their ambitions or to seek funding
from alternative sources. We now consider such a development.
Birmingham Rep’s Technical Apprenticeship (TA)
Background to the TA
Birmingham Repertory Theatre (The Rep) was the first repertory theatre10 in England
established in 1913. Up to the mind-1980s most repertory theatres employed their own artistic
director, technical and production staff and a small company of actors. Nowadays, repertory
theatres tend to audition for each production separately and present a season with each play
10 Historically, repertory companies toured the UK offering programmes of production in which the same group
of actors performed in different plays that alternated with each other (Rowell & Jackson, 1984).