Take 5: Phil Smith CBE, Chair Skills England, Episode 3 - Apprenticeship Assessment Reforms

In this episode of Take Five, Phil Smith, Chair of Skills England, joins us to discuss the recent apprenticeship assessment reforms and what they mean for employers across sectors.

We explore the rationale behind the changes, how the reforms aim to create a more streamlined and responsive system, and the role employers are playing in shaping assessment approaches that better reflect workplace realities. The discussion focuses on how these changes support productivity, workforce development and the delivery of high-quality apprenticeship experiences.

This episode provides clarity on the direction of reform and reassurance for employers navigating changes to the apprenticeship system.

Further detail on the apprenticeship assessment reforms can be found here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/apprenticeship-funding-rules-2025-to-2026/changes-to-apprenticeship-assessment-2025-to-2026

Employers who wish to contribute to Skills England’s Expert Groups can do so through relevant sector or membership bodies such as The 5% Club, or by contacting Skills England directly at: expertnetwork.skillsengland@education.gov.uk

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Hello and welcome to Take Five, the podcast from the Five Percent Club, where we bring you insight, inspiration, and innovation from employers, sector leaders, and policy makers, all in just 5% of your working day. So grab yourself a cup of tea or pop on your trainers and headphones. However, you like to listen, we're glad that you've chosen to listen with us. I'm Lindsay Conroy, Director of Policy and Strategic Engagement at the 5% Club, a national employer movement built by employers for employers, inspiring organisations to take positive action to create high-quality, inclusive, and accessible earn and learn opportunities for all. Today's episode is part of a mini-series with Skills England, and today we're looking at recent reforms and changes to the apprenticeship ecosystem. We're here to look at how Skills England are working to make the system better for employers through simplification, pace of change, and practical reform. And to help us understand the changes that are coming, I'm joined today by Phil Smith, Chair of Skills England. So, Phil, thanks very much for coming back and joining us again. I'm really excited to talk about assessment reforms with you today. You know, the announcements that we're we're seeing and we have seen over recent weeks and months show us that there is some you know really significant reform happening within the system at the moment. But let's not jump straight into the specifics, let's think about the bigger picture stuff. From your perspective, you know, why is this the moment that requires change? What is it about the current system that needs to be reformed? Why are you prioritizing assessment reform?

SPEAKER_00 1:26

Yeah, I mean, assessment of anything, you know, clearly is meant to make sure that it's got quality. All right. So, you know, we we and and right at the heart of all this, we want to make sure that we're still delivering quality apprenticeships, quality, you know, training, quality skills. But the reality is that you know, there isn't a single one size fits all. And we've heard this from employers as we've talked to people, people saying, you know, it's a massive overhead for the endpoint assessment that needed to be done. You know, it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of money, it's actually slows the whole system down. And there are definitely circumstances where that's entirely appropriate, but there are definitely circumstances where it could be a lot lighter, where it doesn't need the kind of level of assessment that we've done in the past, or it maybe needs some assessment done on a more continuous basis throughout the the um throughout the program. And I think recognising now that when we've heard from employers that things need to be more dynamic, that we need to focus on how we get people, you know, through these things as quick as we possibly can and not wait till everything at the end and find that, you know, maybe people are not even doing the you know the end of their apprenticeships. We recognize that maybe there's an opportunity here to actually look at this and work out whether it's really fit for purpose. So the priority has really been not to say, oh, you know, we want to sacrifice quality or we want to sacrifice safety or we want to sacrifice women. It's just saying, is it fit for purpose and can we look at it and try and find vehicles to make it more effective, probably a better use of the money and you know, fit for the for the economy and the market we're in today, you know.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

So and I don't I don't think there will be anyone that that disagrees with that as a you know, as a need and as a priority. There are examples all the time, aren't there, where it's really difficult for someone to access endpoint assessment. You hear stories of people sitting in that period for a long time or endpoint assessment happening at a time that's wrong for the employer because of the seasonal demands of the job, etc. So we can absolutely I think understand that. And and I I do think that listeners will be really pleased to hear you talk about the fact that quality still sits at the heart because that is a concern of course will come through from employers. Um, talk to me a bit about how then you're engaging now with employers and also the sectors more broadly to help um shape those reforms to assessment in the right way.

SPEAKER_00 3:57

Yeah, so I think you know that um Skills England inherited the IFA and with that, a whole bunch of people who are very engaged in the system, you know, the trailblazers, the root panels, and so on. But there's a much wider group of people as well who we need to engage in. I think one of the things we're trying to do is to build a network of people that we can talk to continuously about whether things are working for them or not working for them. And different sectors, you know, behave in different ways. You know, if you've got sectors that are well established on apprentices, like construction sector, who have obviously used apprentices for a long time, they'll want some continuity. They'll want to assure that when somebody employs someone, they've got the skills, they've understood the basics and so on. And so there'll be, and of course, some sectors, you know, have regulatory requirements. If you're in a sector where if you're a qualified accountant, then you actually are regulated on what you can do. So they need to make sure that assessment or the delivery of the quality or the completion of an apprenticeship is appropriate for particular sectors. So we're doing this on a, you know, an in uh economy-wide basis, but on a sector-by-sector approach and recognizing that in some sectors they need to do some things in a particular way and others they need to do in a different way. I mean, the digital sector is probably less um used to having apprenticeships. There's definitely apprenticeships in a lot of digital companies, but it's not like construction or manufacturing and others where that's you know been decades of people going through these kind of processes. So I do think that what we're trying to do is to say, can we build on what's been done before? Can we spread the net a lot wider and get a lot more people involved? And then can we build it with the requirements of the sector in place to say that actually we want to do it in any kind of assessment, but some endpoint assessment or continuous assessment in line with what the industry needs, and but that might not be appropriate for another sector. And so, construction, for example, have been an example where people maybe have slightly overcharacterized it and saying, Oh, if we change assessment, you know, we're going to compromise safety, we're going to compromise, and you know, that's not necessarily um, well, certainly not what we're intending to do. There's no way that people want to um decrease quality, but it isn't the same for every sector, and so we are definitely focusing and talking to people on a sector-by-sector basis. In fact, we're doing some very specific work with a kind of task force on construction to make sure we get this right.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

So I think that's that's really good to hear because you know the the safety critical piece, I think, is a message that it has come through quite clearly, hasn't it, from individual sectors? So understanding that there is that sector-by-sector approach is is really important actually, because some sectors have a completely different set of needs to say other sectors. So I think that's great. So I think what you're referring to there is very much that the expert network that we've talked about in previous episodes, actually. Um so is there anything further kind of around the expert network that you can talk to our listeners about? You know, uh obviously at the 5% club, we're keen to support in any way and we're happy to bring groups of employers together. So we'd we'd absolutely recommend that our listeners come and talk to us and we'll provide more information as soon as we can. Um, but just talk to us a bit more about that sector.

SPEAKER_00 7:21

Yeah, I think that that that kind of expert environment is really important. The expert network, this ability to bring people in, whether it be individually or in you know groups through um through intermediaries or partners like yourselves, I think is is really important. Because actually, one of the things that's emerged as you talk about, you know, the uh you look at the apprenticeship standards, you look at the evolution of the system, this is a lot of overlap on things. There's a lot of things that maybe when they were originally created were unique and completely different. But actually, now as the system has evolved, we see a huge amount of overlap with things. I mean, I remember when I was chair of the Education Skills Committee at the Royal Academy of Engineering, we brought in a bunch of sectors, you know, to talk about future skills. It was the transport sector, defence sector, um, you know, construction and various others. And funnily enough, they all started to talk about the same things. They wanted people who had data analytic capability, they wanted people who understood AI, they wanted people with digital skills in clean energy, they wanted people who were, you know, had more fundamental understanding of some of the issues that were in there. And so you can see that as the world has moved on, there's been a lot of things which are are common. And so I think that one of the advantages of bringing a broader community together is we can look at areas of commonality. I was chairing a group of um people looking at the emerging jobs plans in the professional and business services, and they were saying, why would we invent the digital bit when we know the digital sector will probably be doing the best job on this? So I think getting that kind of overlap, commonality, sharing of resources, which I've we've all been frustrated about in the skill system for years because there's lots of duplication, lots of fragmentation, so on. The idea of the expert networks can we talk across sectors as well as about sectors specifically and try and find areas where we can cooperate, collaborate, you know, bring value or simplify.

SPEAKER_01 9:21

I think that's that's really good to hear, actually. Um, and we hear it a lot. You know, we talk to we talk to, as an example, the defence sector a lot, and they talk about the fact that it's not unique skills for the defence sector. Actually, what they want is data analytics skills, they want AI skills, they want digital skills, etc.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

So interesting. Defence is a good example because we used to talk to defence a lot in in my Cisco days, and one of the things that was really interesting was the language they used was different. So they would talk about, oh, we've got someone who's you know weaving um the uh uh the services who's a lorry driver, and of course, you know, in the outside world they went, okay, a lorry driver, you're an HGV driver. This person was a logistics expert, yeah. You know, so they they the kind of way they talk about things, and so that's one of the beauties again of bringing sectors together, realizing they've actually got transferable skills, people who, you know, are we've said already in things like foundation apprentices, but people who are in retail and hospital who've got great customer service skills, they really fit into other areas. So, why would you sort of try to do customer service in an area that doesn't is not an expert customer service where retail and hospitality said exactly that? They're experts in those areas, you know.

SPEAKER_01 10:28

So and then one of the things that you mentioned um earlier was was about simplification, and I think this is a really important topic because employers, especially SMEs, and we talk about SMEs a lot, don't we? But they describe the skills landscape as being really complex and they don't really know how to engage and navigate that that landscape. So, how are you as Skills England kind of approaching how to join up the kind of skills system and make it feel less fragmented for those employers?

SPEAKER_00 10:57

You know, Lizzie, I I'd love to say I had all the answers and I would fix this, but I do think it's a journey we're on, which we're super passionate about because genuinely, if we can solve that problem, which is giving people straightforward access to the skills they need when they need them, it will be a great thing. And so, you know, there's lots of work going on in that area. I mean, the truth is it would be, you know, you would love to be able to help every individual business and have an account manager, you know, who was out there talking to them and helping them and saying, Oh, you need to look at this system, you need to look at that system. But the reality is we probably can't scale to that. Um, but through partners, through others, and through thinking about this in a kind of an account management way, you know, how do we manage, how do you give people the things they need? Well, one is you make the system a bit easier to get at. Um, you know, so you maybe take the numbers of you know, apprenticeships in this case, for example, but maybe just the simplification, the number of front doors you have to go through. Some of that's about doing it regionally and locally, that's important, but some of it's just about making it simpler. But I think we need to also think about how we use technology to do that. You know, I was um saying earlier that I'd that I'd, you know, just gone into Chat GPT and said, I'm pretending I was a small business, tell me where I can get support and help. Well, it gave me a very credible answer. Now I'm not saying we, you know, generally just say, oh, just help yourself in Chat GPT, but I think the use of technology to make it easier for people to find their way around, to know where they are locally, to help them fill the form in, to tell them what funding's available. We've got to think about that over time. So we've got to think, we'll do this with real people, of course, but can we use technology to augment those real people so that we've actually got a much more scalable solution than you know is available today? And there's lots of work and thinking going on about that as well as to how we can do that. And again, there's partners who have done some of this, who are actually doing it locally, some of them who are doing it um, you know, sectorally. Why not just work with them and actually use some of those systems that are already there? And that's definitely stuff that's gone on.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

So I think that's really good. I think you know, the more that you can look to work with partners and utilize technology that and the more we can all pull together in the system, the better, quite frankly. One of the things that we're looking to do at the club is create uh skill surgeries for our members so they can just kind of drop in digitally but online to ask the questions because and again, you you know, you and I talk about this a lot. Employers don't, they're not close to the detail, they don't know the answer, it's not their day job, right? So we need to be able to help make it easy for them to find the answer.

SPEAKER_00 13:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Um, one of the things I'm I'm interested in in understanding a bit more about is the accelerated approach that you're taking to updating apprenticeships. And um, obviously, um, in particular with the assessment reforms, where you know, there's some there's some quite ambitious timescales that are set around those. So um talk to me around this kind of accelerated approach, why it is that you know it's really important, how you can be responsive, etc.

SPEAKER_00 14:04

Yeah, I think the accelerated thing is also a a bit of a uh a symptom of the modern world, which is that things are moving very, very quickly. You know, I think it would be nice to think that we could, at a fairly glacial pace, define what the skills we need are, you know, sort of look at what the curriculum should be, get into, you know, training providers, uh, you know, private or public, and you know, teach that and eventually people come out. I think we all recognize that's not the world we live in anymore. I'm not just talking about AI and digital, because that is clearly the sort of you know, the poster child of this particular day. There are lots of things that are changing very, very quickly. I mean, obviously, clean energy and renewables and so on is changing very, very quickly. We've got global pressures, which means some of the skills that we relied on other nations to provide, we're having to provide ourselves now, whether those being manufacturing or um, you know, or other areas of supply chain, or even your semiconductors and other such things. So I think the um the sort of principle here is that actually if we can take out some of the overhead, and again, I'll go back to the point we were talking about before. This is not about reducing quality. This is not saying, oh, you just do a bit quicker and all be fine. There was lots of stuff built into the process of, you know, you had to go to a panel to do this, and then that panel had to do something, and then they had to sign off with someone else. And again, the the process flow of that of, you know, have you checked it? Is it right? We definitely will still continue to do. But we don't need to build in some of the kind of slower mechanisms that were frankly just overheads. So I think this ability to either have a shorter apprenticeship in the in the case of apprenticeships, which we announced some time ago, or to start to have more rapid ways of going through and saying, is there something we need to get approved in a three-month time frame? That's pretty attractive. And I think it is what we heard from you know employers in the various reports that Skills England's published over the last um year or so, which have really said we need it to be more flexible, we need it to be more reactive to what we need now, we need it to be somewhere where we don't have to wait forever for the thing to even appear before we can get people trained on it. So I think that general trend it sort of plays to a degree to the assessment reform, but it also uh plays into the how do you actually create and maintain these things. So I think you know, that's something that I definitely feel that there's some great opportunities for us to to work through. And I think some of the announcements we made already about, you know, shorter form, about quicker approvals and so on is all part of that. And again, just to stress, this is not about somehow making it all less, you know, robust than it was. It's about you know doing things in a in a smarter way in the modern world.

SPEAKER_01 16:59

And I and I think um, you know, hearing that loud and clear, and it's great to it is great to hear that because there have been those challenges, haven't there, around you know, the worries around, you know, are we going to um perhaps not be able to balance quality and speed in quite the right way? But it it sounds like there's some mechanisms in place now to make sure that you're able to move at that pace within Skills Inc.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

Yeah, and you know, I I I'm fair to say I suspect it will not be perfect straight away. We're working hard to do this, but you know, the team are really um, and part of the beauty of the kind of expert network model that we talked about before as well is the fact that it can continue to give us that feedback as to whether this is working, it's not working, and you know, and maybe it is a bit of the traditional view that when things were created in sort of government departments of government issues, they were sort of beautifully polished and complete, and that's it, we're not doing anything for the next number of years. I don't think we can afford to do that anymore. And I think part of the dynamism of Skills England is trying to react to is the fact that we'll put these things in place, we'll do everything we can to assure the quality and relevance of them, but we need the feedback to say this is or isn't working. And some of that will be, you know, people putting the money where the mouth is, they don't use it because it's not appropriate to them. Some of it will be, oh my god, this is going crazy. We've got to try and find a way of balancing it against um, you know, against the resources we have. So so I think we really recognize that this is going to be more dynamic maybe than than it's been in the past, but hopefully, based on real requirements with real people part of that dialogue and hence, you know, getting a bit of foresight, maybe that they maybe didn't get in the past.

SPEAKER_01 18:37

You know, and we again we've talked about this before. There's lots of change, there's lots of transition, and and change is not always the easiest thing for um people to deal with and to manage. And a lot of work has been done to build brand apprenticeships. And I think you know, when we hear challenges come back, it is because people care. Yeah, you know, Skills England care, that's clear because of how you're engaging. Employers definitely care because apprenticeships are so highly valued. Um, so it's clear that you know any concern comes from that place of really caring. So tell me, as we kind of come to a close today, what gives you the confidence that these are the right changes and the right direction for employers and for apprenticeships?

SPEAKER_00 19:15

Well, I think the confidence, first of all, comes from what we've heard, and that's a good thing. It's not some person in a room, darkened room coming up with this idea. You know, we have heard from employers that we need, you know, dynamism, that we need lighter touch, that we need something which is relevant to their sectors, we need things which can evolve quickly, we need things which are, you know, cross-cutting and and uh you know, and sometimes allowing people to get into the system in a different way. I think what we're trying to do now is to react to those by putting in place, you know, um quicker approvals, shorter apprenticeships, apprenticeship units, foundation apprenticeships, you know, and I think those are all fundamental. And I think, you know, again, I think we talked about it. So I think we have crossed the Rubicon on apprenticeships now being credible. You know, there was this thing about, oh, you know, a degree or you do an apprenticeship if you can't do a degree. I think we've gone past that, thankfully, because those of us who are passionate about apprenticeships know how compelling they can be and how amazing the talent you generate as a result of that, which is why it's so exciting to get young people involved in it. If we can get young people and small businesses who maybe weren't on this path before suddenly getting excited, I think it'll just escalate and escalate. So I'm confident because I think it's what we've heard. I'm confident because I've seen in some of the early instantiations it's re it's working well for the people it's working for. I just think we need to go faster, we need to go deeper, and we need to keep pushing on this.

SPEAKER_01 20:47

And confident, I think, because you're engaging and listening to employers, right? You know, that definitely seems to be what I've heard loud and clear today. So look, thank you so much for your time today, as always. It's been great to hear your views. Um, and I do look forward to being able to continue this conversation in the future. We'll be welcoming you back in April where we're going to be talking to uh an employer, in fact, and having a conversation directly with an employer, which I think would be really interesting. So uh so thank you very much. So if today's conversation has sparked ideas or helped you think differently about apprenticeships, workforce strategy or skills development, we'd love for you to share it with a colleague or on your social channels. You can find more episodes, resources, links to the expert network panel, and the full government press release in the show notes from today. You can also find more information at the5%club.org.uk and across our LinkedIn channels. Join us next time for more insight, innovation, and practical learning on Take 5.