When the Skills for Jobs white paper finally arrived in January this year, it was met with a generally positive welcome from the sector.

Hundreds of delegates recently attended the Future of Apprenticeships #FoA2020 online conference, produced by #SkillsWorldLive for the Federation of @AwardingBodies. Tom Bewick reflects on the day and argues that more impetus is needed to recalibrate England’s apprenticeship model: 

"Let me begin by saying this," says @TomBewick, "There is absolutely nothing 'German-style' about what the education secretary @GavinWilliamson proposes for the future of #FE, #Apprenticeships and #Skills policy in England  You’ll have to read right up until the end of this essay to fully understand why. To really appreciate what lies at the heart of this new mantra about the future direction of the country’s technical education system, it is critically important to understand the strategic contours of England’s over three decades’ old skills policy debates.

@TomBewick argues that in a post-COVID world, financial resources for #reskilling should be put in the hands of individuals, not institutions  It is rare these days for governments to get much credit for anything. But the urgency and efficiency in which the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) was first devised and then rolled out to millions of businesses and the self-employed was an amazing feat of both imagination and inspired delivery. (The same perhaps can’t be said about other aspects of the government’s handling of coronavirus but that is not for this article).

In the back streets of Hatton Garden in London there once existed a little known music college. Owned by the big clubbing DJ, Graeme Lloyd, Subbass Academy helps aspiring music producers and DJs hone their skills to play at a professional level. It still exists, now located in the Waterloo area of the capital.