Rachel Credidio, chief transformation officer at Aster Group, suggests that apprenticeships and vocational training will play just as vital a role in ‘levelling up’ the regions as improving transport infrastructure and housing.
The government has long been vocal about its desire to level-up the UK’s regions by spreading opportunities more equally across the country, and through the Levelling Up White Paper it has outlined just how it intends to do so.
Some of the White Paper’s most eye-catching announcements include a pledge to improve public transport links across the country, the promise of devolution deals to every part of England and a £1.5billion tranche of funding to kickstart the regeneration in an initial 20 towns and cities.
Yet, according to a recent survey by thinktank Centre for Cities, the area the general public wants to see levelled up the most is not transport or culture, but job prospects. This is especially relevant in smaller towns and villages, as the pull of larger metropolitan areas often leaves many with a smaller talent pool to choose from.
Talent exodus
In recent years the proportion of students attending university has reached a record high. 2021’s intake saw 37.9% of the entire UK 18-year-old population start a full-time undergraduate course, with numbers having risen year-on-year since 2015.
As a result, towns across the country are experiencing an exodus of talent, as the pursuit of higher education takes their aspiring students to the UK’s more densely populated urban centres.
This is evident in the fact that almost 25% of the UK’s 2.75million students are based in London, Manchester or Birmingham. London alone is home to almost 366,000 students across 40 higher education providers.
And the draw of these urban areas is not just limited to education – a 2021 report from the Office for Students (OfS) shows that London has a higher proportion of graduates in well-paid work than anywhere else in the country, as well as a strong concentration of graduates in highly-skilled employment.
Consequently, areas outside the UK’s major cities suffer from a shortfall of skills, leaving them less equipped to deliver on their potential. In order for that to change, these areas must demonstrate that they offer young people a practical and attractive pathway from education, to acquiring skills, and building a career.
Building a skills infrastructure
In order to tackle this geographical shortfall of talent, it’s important that more local routes to accessing skills and education are opened up. This isn’t about building universities that compete with the country’s leading academic institutions. It’s about offering high-quality vocational training and apprenticeships that lead to skilled careers that give young people more of a reason to stay in their hometowns.
Positive mentions of apprenticeships were included throughout the Levelling Up White Paper but no additional investment was promised. Focus was given to schools and specialist sixth forms to ensure that more children have greater access to higher standards of education.
Boosting regional education is important but does nothing to stop school leavers exiting the area in search of their next step. Instead, more emphasis must be placed on developing links to businesses and creating the skills pathways that will encourage the next generation to build their careers where they grew up.
In my role at Aster, I’ve witnessed first-hand the role vocational education plays in nurturing talent. We are a regional employer with lots of our housing in rural areas and small towns. Many of our employees do highly skilled work that requires training, not normally offered through traditional academic education.
Alongside this, as the price of attending university remains consistently high every year, apprenticeships can offer an attractive alternative for school leavers looking to start earning and training straight from school – and, in turn, bolster the local economy.
Since 2017, we’ve taken on almost 50 apprentices who have gained qualifications in disciplines ranging from business administration to plumbing, to chartered surveying. This has played a vital role in maintaining the pipeline of skilled people we need coming up through the business, as I’m sure is the case for many other parts of the housing industry. Regional housebuilders, for example, are reliant on construction workers with vocational training not normally offered by a big-city university.
Like apprenticeships themselves, the solution needs to be a joint effort between government, businesses and education.
More support for this vital, missing link between school and employment is needed from the government, but it’s also important that as employers – especially in the housing sector – we continue to deliver excellent apprenticeship schemes. We also recognise that as an employer, we need to find ways to mobilise harder to reach groups and attract talent from a diverse range of backgrounds. That’s why we’re continuing to build on our relationships with local schools by developing a virtual work experience solution. This will enable us to offer work experience to students across our operating area to showcase the range of careers available here at Aster which hopefully inspires them into a housing career.
It’s worth noting that the opportunities presented by vocational training should not be limited to school leavers. The routes offered by vocational training are ideal for those looking to change direction in later life. For example, one of our colleagues, Will Green, joined the company as an apprentice carpenter to carve himself a new career path after realising his career in finance wasn’t providing him with the job satisfaction he needed.
In the immediate future, it’s unlikely that some of the towns targeted in the Levelling Up White Paper will be able to compete with the country’s elite universities in offering an academic education. However, they might be able to provide a more direct route into meaningful, skilled vocational careers for the young people that call those towns home.
