Education and Skills Impact Framework (ESIF) - modern apprenticeships provision: contextual summary report 2022

Context

Modern Apprenticeship Characteristics

Modern Apprenticeships (MAs) provide employed individuals (either new or existing employees) with the opportunity to secure industry-recognised qualifications from SCQF levels 5 to 11 while in work. This section presents MA starts and in-training numbers in 2020/21 broken down by age group, gender, disability status, ethnicity, care experience and Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) where available.

As Modern Apprentices are employed, the COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on apprenticeship start volumes. The number of MA starts dropped during the 2020/21 financial year, with volumes at year-end 33.1% lower than the same point the previous year. In line with policy priority, most MA starts were aged 16-24 (55.9%).

In 2020/21, there were 7,415 female MA starts and 11,240 male starts. The high number of male starts was influenced by increased intake to the Construction & Related grouping, which was the largest occupational grouping in 2020/21 and is male-dominated.

As of July 2021, 1.5% of children in Scotland were looked after or on the child protection register (Scottish Government, 2022). These students are likely to leave secondary education earlier, with fewer qualifications and are less likely to achieve a positive destination. SDS started collecting self-declared information on care experience in 2015/16. In 2020/21, 1.7% of MA starts (312) self-identified as care experienced; this is equal to the proportion of care-experienced students in 2019/20.

All MA starts are asked to complete an equality monitoring form. The proportion of MA starts self-identifying an impairment, health condition or learning difficulty was 13.0% (equivalent to 2,386 starts) in 2020/21. This is compared to 15.4% (4,220 starts) in 2019/20. In 2020/21, 494 (2.7%) MA starts self-identified as being from a Mixed or Multiple; Asian; African; Caribbean or Black; and Other ethnic group, which was a fractionally higher proportion than 2019/20 (+0.2 pp).

The proportion of MA starts who lived in the 20% most deprived areas (Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation quintile 1) is higher than those who resided in the 20% least deprived areas (quintile 5), although the distribution across SIMD areas is quite even.

Social and Wellbeing Impacts

It is widely recognised that education can have benefits beyond earnings and employment. Such benefits may include improved health outcomes, greater social mobility, increased civic engagement and reduced crime (BIS, 2013). These benefits can be particularly important for lower-level qualifications where individuals may face multiple challenges and originate from more deprived backgrounds. Other notable benefits from post- school education include greater job satisfaction, and increased community engagement (DfE, 2019).

In order to more fully understand the non-economic benefits resulting from education, a social returns workstream investigated the relationship between education and wellbeing, a non- economic outcome associated with a wide range of other positive outcomes.

Research

Due to the impact of COVID-19, the social and wellbeing workstream focused on measuring individual wellbeing using already available datasets: the Annual Population Survey, the Apprentice Wellbeing Survey and the Graduate Outcomes Survey. Wellbeing is measured as happiness, satisfaction, sense of worthwhile and reduced anxiety. Datasets were restricted to individuals who hold a Scottish school-level qualification, and a regression analysis carried out to identify marginal wellbeing returns across different learner groups and qualification types.

All findings are associations – it was not possible to determine if education itself caused improvements in wellbeing.

Findings

Analysis suggests that possessing any form of qualification is associated with reporting higher levels of personal wellbeing. Respondents with no qualifications at all consistently reported lower wellbeing than the Scottish average.

Overall, the findings suggest that there is a relationship between acquiring qualifications and individual wellbeing, however further work is needed to understand if the changes in wellbeing can be attributed to education.

Apprenticeship Wellbeing Survey

Earlier primary research with Modern Apprentices was conducted in 2019 to assess the wellbeing impacts of undertaking an MA. MAs report higher levels of satisfaction, happiness and feeling that their life is worthwhile than the general population. However, MAs report similar levels of anxiety as the general population.

Wellbeing for MAs varies by a range of personal characteristics, including gender, employment status, framework and ethnicity. Those who completed their MA were also significantly more likely to gain confidence in their abilities and believe they had better long-term career prospects than non-completers (Skills Development Scotland, 2019).

Next Steps

Investigating non-economic impacts of education is at an early stage, however these initial findings are a first step in recognising education gives value beyond that captured in wages and employment status. The research to date provides the building blocks for future work to support decisions that take a wider definition of value into account.

Short-term Outcomes and Average Earnings

This section summarises existing information on earnings and employment outcomes associated with the completion of Modern Apprenticeships in Scotland, from the individual and employer perspective.

Modern Apprenticeship Short-term Outcomes

MA outcomes have previously been measured 6 months post-completion via the MA Outcomes Survey, most recently published in 2016.

• 91% of MA completers were in employment 6 months post- completion, compared with 63% of non-completers.
• Completers also reported greater satisfaction, personal development and career progression than non-completers.
• MAs reported high levels of satisfaction. 87 per cent were satisfied with their apprenticeship overall.
• MAs reported that their skills and abilities had improved due to their apprenticeship including: improved communication skills (77 per cent); better at working with others (74 per cent); and better at problem solving (70 per cent).

Modern Apprenticeship Earnings Outcomes

The Scottish Government Longitudinal Educational Outcomes (LEO) report (2019) provides data on median earnings for individuals who completed their MA in 2011/12. The publication reports that:

• The overall median earning for MA completers 5 years post- completion is £21,000.
• Female MA completers earned on average £16,000 five years after completion, £9,800 less than males, who earned on average £25,800.
• MAs in the Engineering and Energy occupational grouping had the highest earnings: £34,600 on average.

Employers’ views on Modern Apprenticeships

Findings from the SDS Apprenticeship Employer Survey 2020 include the following:

• Almost all employers (90%) said that completing an apprenticeship had significantly improved the MA’s ability to do their job.
• The most common benefits reported were improved productivity (83%), followed by improved staff morale (79%) and improved image in the sector (74%).
• Most employers (60%) kept all of their MAs as employees after they had completed. The main reasons for not retaining MAs were that MAs chose to move to a different industry, left due to personal reasons or that there were no positions for them.
• Almost all respondents (96%) would recommend the MA programme to other employers.