or was it Compliance? 

I have just finished reading Simon Field’s paper for the Sutton Trust. It compares the apprenticeship systems of a variety of countries with the English system, looking specifically at how well it serves disadvantaged young people. It’s an interesting read and I recommend it to you if apprenticeships are your area of interest.   

There are points where I would say Field and I are not on the same page. He attributes high dropout rates with poor tuition and what he refers to as “excessive reliance on online training” ​(Field, 2025)​. Having reviewed attrition rates in apprenticeships from the 1500s onwards I can say that they have changed very little over the last 600 years ​(Knight, 2026)​. It has always been that a significant number of apprentices break their contract before completing their term. Centuries of which took place before the invention of virtual learning environments and Teams.  

However, if you look at the data pre and post pandemic (Covid-19, not The Plague) they do show an uplift in non-completions (Fig.1). There was an increased move to online teaching during the pandemic which has been maintained by many providers. It may be a fair assumption that the two are linked – or it may be spurious correlation.  

Fig.1. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/national-achievement-rates-tables-2018-to-2019  https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/qualification-achievement-rates-2022-to-2023 (Cooke, 2020)​  ​​(FE Statistics Production and Dissemination Team, 2024)​ 

For many of the business suite of qualifications this is often the preference of the learner and the employer as it causes the least disruption to work patterns. This may also speak to the other point Field makes that ”roughly half of all starting apprentices are now incumbent workers, rising to four out of five for those over 24.”​(Field, 2025)​ If you are putting full time members of your workforce onto programmes which require them to be in training for 6 hours a week, you do not want them to also spend time travelling to another site, you want them to be able to log out of class and pick straight back up where they left off with the work you’re employing them to do.  

My experience is that teachers prefer to teach face to face, not just because ‘it’s the way we’ve always done it’ but because of the human element of teaching. Being able to pick up when people are not getting it, are disengaged or need a different approach. 

I would of course argue that training is of high quality, as I am involved in the delivery of content for apprenticeships. I am not, however, naive and am very aware that the quality of training is not consistently high. There are many reasons for this, but that is for another day. 

One of the other reasons given for drop out is “their apprenticeship programme is not what they expected” ​(Field, 2025)​. While this may be attributed to” inadequate careers advice” ​(Field, 2025)​, I feel this is a little reductive. When it comes to certain jobs, until you are doing them, there is no way of knowing whether they are ’for you’. I love hands on, practical work. I like to make things and be creative. A careers advisor might point me in the direction of bricklaying, I would read up on it and think, yes, that sounds like a good fit. I enthusiastically take a job and get stuck in, but 3 months in never want to touch another brick again and quit. The careers advice wasn’t poor; it just wasn’t for me. I am not sure there is a way to circumvent this without all apprenticeship having a pre-apprenticeship period. It’s something we do at CETC, but only for Groundworks. It gives employers the chance to make sure the apprentice is the right fit for their company, and the would-be apprentices the chance to see if Groundworks is for them, because it absolutely is not for everyone. However, this is very high-stakes. If after 8 weeks the trainee decides it’s not for them, the employer has ’lost’ the money paid out in wages. If the employer decides the trainee is not a good fit, that learner becomes NEET. 

What I found interesting was the data linked to indices of multiple deprivation. It’s disappointing that data is not (easily) available on this for the 18/19 academic year as that would be interesting to see. However, I have always championed apprenticeships as conduit for social mobility. But the article I wrote recently on attrition lead me to the conclusion that where historically (medieval) withdrawals were linked to privilege as apprentices gained enough skill to go and set up on their own, outside of the stringent restrictions of guilds. Now, withdrawal is linked to disadvantage. Those apprentices who need to contribute to the household income, get just enough knowledge, skills and (in construction) tickets to get paid more elsewhere. The data on withdrawals would seem to support this conclusion. Though Field suggests that these learners “may add to the NEET population” (​(Field, 2025)​ he doesn’t link to any sources that show this explicitly. 

All that being said, what I found most thought provoking was considering his recommendations and then also thinking of a number of schemes or provisions that we could run at a local level, that could attempt to tackle some of the issues he raises.  

But here’s the crux of the matter.  

I could sit down with employers and come up with a plan to reduce NEETS, get them on to pre-apprenticeship programmes that give them an experience of a number of different roles within a given company – I could timetable in learner focused, contextual maths, English and digital skills. I could design a provision that was agile, responsive to local employer needs in collaboration with groups that raise the voices of our most disadvantaged young people to ensure it felt meaningful to them. I have the skills; I have the network. I absolutely have the inclination. 

What I wouldn’t have is backing.  

Why?  

Because for all our talk of making colleges a place where students feel safe to try things, to make mistakes, the whole FAIL just means First Attempt in Learning and the power of YET. In spite of all the lip service to ‘giving it a go’ – Education itself has become systemically risk averse. 

Funding frameworks are king. Innovation is pushed out in favour of formula-driven, qualification-led funding models built on retention, achievement and completion metrics. Pilot schemes will likely have lower uptake, lower completion rates or delayed outcomes. Programmes that are responsive to local needs, courses which require slower developmental learning, provisions which value tacit, relational or craft knowledge are inherently risky. So, ultimately, even if they are educationally sound, we are not going to do it. Or more accurately – we are not permitted to do it. 

Most Further Education establishments don’t have principals anymore, they have CEOs. We have built our organisational structures and governance systems to mirror the corporate world – only we don’t have their money. We are expected to be for profit organisations. College mergers spiked in 2017 and “There are currently 211 further education, sixth form colleges and designated institutions in England. This compares to more than 450 when colleges were incorporated in 1993.” ​(Association of Colleges, n.d.)​. We are no longer communities of practice; we have become data obsessed systems. The idea that we would – without instruction or funding – develop provisions with small cohorts which require higher staff contact time, that have a foundation of strong pastoral, employer engagement and long-term relationship building would be considered absurd.  

We recognise the problems, we have some ideas about how we could resolve them, but we are constrained. 

Instead of constantly asking “why don’t colleges do better?” we should be asking “What forms of educational practice are currently made possible – or indeed, impossible – by funding and inspection regimes?” 

I feel like I am beginning to sound like a broken record, but that is not accidental, it’s because the question remains unanswered – what is the purpose of education? ​(Biesta, 2016)​  

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References

​​Association of Colleges. (n.d.). Understanding college mergers. About Colleges. 

​Biesta, Gert. (2016). Good education in an age of measurement : ethics, politics, democracy. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. 

​Cooke, A. (2020). Apprenticeships Overall Headline Achievement Rates Tables 2018/19. In Department for Education. Crown Copyright. 

​FE Statistics Production and Dissemination Team. (2024). Achievement Rates Learner Characteristics – Volumes and Rates by Std-fwk flag, STEM, SSA T1, Level, Detailed Level, Age, IMD quintile. In Achievement Rates Learner Characteristics – Volumes and Rates by Std-fwk flag, STEM, SSA T1, Level, Detailed Level, Age, IMD quintile. Crown copyright. 

​Field, S. (2025). A World of Difference: International apprenticeship policy and lessons for England. 

​Knight, A. (2026). Attrition is not new …? In Calcined Bauxite Fragments. WordPress. 

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