Rude Awakening for Retail Giants?

Regular readers will know that I have written in the past about the expansion of the Apprenticeship programme. There has been lots of "good news announcements from the Government quoting figures of 20,000, 50,000 or indeed 500,000 places, but we've also seen many in the sector wonder where these numbers have come from.

This piece, spotted by the Big Vocational Debate on Facebook, maybe shows where some of the smoke and mirrors are in the Apprenticeship landscape.

However, this is not all bad news as with every new Apprenticeship, comes learning and now that we are moving away from the awful, easy to pass Key Skills which is more about accreditation than learning to wards Functional Skills which is definitely about Learning rather than accreditation, we'll see these big employers having to make a very big investment in their staff.

So I for one am looking forward to seeing how these Apprenticeship programmes develop over the next 2 years as we transition from Key Skills to Functional Skills. After all, if employers sign up and take the money, they should deliver the learning as well - this is not a free ride!