Okay, this is probably not news to some of you, but the way in which retention data is spoken about in FE, you would be forgiven for thinking it is a new crisis. However, having watched a public lecture given in 2012 at Gresham College by Dr Patrick Wallis and Dr Christopher Minns (as they were then – now both Professors at LSE) I can confidently inform you that apprenticeship retention has been an issue for at least 400 years. (Minns, 2012)
Apprentices have always left early. In large numbers. What has changed is what it means.
In the Gresham lecture, Minns tells us that in early modern London roughly half of apprentices did not complete their full term. He asserts that this cannot be explained by mortality, illness, or record loss alone.
Leaving early often occurred between the end of the second and beginning of the third year of indenture. This coincided with the acquisition of usable skill, formation of networks and awareness of opportunities elsewhere.
Crucially, for those from more privileged or better-connected backgrounds, completing the full term was not always economically rational.
For some apprentices the goal was skill extraction, not credential completion. London was seen as a training hub, not a place to set up. Guild restrictions made staying much less attractive once competence was achieved. In other words, “get the skills and leave” is not a modern phenomenon. It is a long-standing feature of apprenticeships operating within labour markets and importantly it is not evidence of learner failure.
I think this means we are asking the wrong questions about retention, but I am not yet sure exactly what the right ones are.
Perhaps instead of “why don’t apprentices complete?” we should be thinking about what we assume staying means, and then we need to consider what it means for who …?
Am I saying then that retention as an indicator of quality is inherently flawed, if completion has never meant the same thing to all apprentices? Demanding completion ignores (what I am discovering to be historical) evidence of a diversity of purpose. I feel the more research I do the more questions I have… and the fewer certainties. I never knew how much I didn’t know.
If attrition as Minns refers to it, is a pattern that can be traced back over 400 years then the things we do in relation to withdrawals (including blame learners and assume non-completion = disengagement) must be questioned.
Those who left early back in early modern London had gained enough skill, developed enough judgement and formed an occupational identity to be able to practice effectively (where guild compliance requirements didn’t reach). The gaining of skills and connections then, as now, precedes formal completion or qualification. *
I suggest that the social pattern of attrition may have inverted. Historically those with more resources, confidence, and mobility left early once they had usable skill and networks. Now those with fewer resources leave early because they need higher wages immediately. The opportunity cost of staying is too high and the payoff of formal completion is too distant and uncertain.
Meanwhile those who can afford to delay earnings, who place value on credentials, and who can ‘play the long game’ are more likely to complete.
This change can be explained by understanding that credentials/qualifications are believed (by most: certainly, there is a pervasive belief that we live in a state of meritocracy which is linked to hard work, qualifications and social mobility – even if the statistics show this to be fiction) to carry exchange value.
In the past, skill itself was often sufficient to practice elsewhere. Now formal qualifications act as gatekeepers* even if they add little to practical competence.
To be clear, I am not implying that the training adds little to competence. The apprentice who has spent 18 months learning their trade, competence is there whether they can demonstrate it under high stakes assessment conditions or not. The training, the steady build-up of a portfolio which shows progression of skill over time to a point of autonomous ability is the evidence – not the certificate of achievement.
Recognising the exchange value relies on a set of cultural capital and privilege which is not universal.
Modern apprenticeships sit within an economy of high housing costs, insecure employment where many families are reliant on every wage earner. For some apprentices, staying in training is not a developmental choice, it’s an economic risk. If the dumper ticket pushes your short-term earning potential up from £11 per hour to £22 per hour, staying in training is just not economically viable.
We have moralised completion. It’s seen as showing perseverance, commitment, employability. Non-completion is seen as failure, lack of motivation, someone being ‘not suited’. This obscures the fact that economic rationality now cuts the other way and cuts deep.
I don’t think I am saying that completion doesn’t matter. I think I am saying that completion measures different things for different people. Completion is not a proxy for learning, retention is not a proxy for quality, and attrition/withdrawal is not a proxy for failure.
If I am right about this then the current system rewards those who can afford to stay, penalises (and blames future versions of that person for a lack of commitment to their progression) those who can’t and then claims a kind of neutrality by using the get out of “look at what the data says” without recognising that the data is skewed by the variables not measured.
Data is effectively laundering inequality. By saying we have run the numbers and these are the results, we are avoiding asking the important, uncomfortable questions.
I wasn’t expecting the historical research to help me think to clearly about contemporary problems. But it seems, though language and systems and society may have come a long way since the 1500’s, we are still using education as a socio-economic sorting mechanism.
So instead of saying the dropout rate is 45% we should be asking: Who leaves? At what stage? To do what? Under what pressures (I recognise this is one is empirically difficult). I never really understood the importance/purpose of destination data until this moment.
*I feel there is a link to be made here with Ogilvie’s lecture on guilds where she talks about guilds as being like modern occupational licencing associations – but I am not yet able to formulate this.
References
Minns, Christopher. W. Patrick. (2012). Apprenticeships in Early Modern London: Economic Origins and Destinations of Apprentices in the 16th and 17th Centuries. In Lecture at Gresham College.
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