The director of training company PBD, Ross Midgley, has obtained permission to apply for a judicial review of the interim apprenticeship framework, under which some English and maths GCSEs won’t be valid.
The framework, which came into force in September, states that apprentices must have English and maths GCSEs at grade C or above by the time they complete their apprenticeship.
There is also a five-year time limit, meaning that GCSEs achieved more than five years ago will not count unless the candidate achieved an A grade. As a result, many apprentices will have to sit the exams again in order to receive Government funding. Some are opting to pay fees out of their own pocket to avoid having to do the re-sits.
Apprentice Devorah Nyman, 31, has an A and a B obtained in maths and English GCSEs sat 15 years ago, but will have to re-sit the English GCSE to get apprenticeship funding. The rules mean that she could get a worse GCSE grade than she had previously but still qualify for the apprenticeship, because the new exam would be recent. She said, ‘The whole thing doesn’t make sense. What is their reasoning for this?’
Mum-of-two Christa Peers, 33, (below), is also doing a Level 3 Early Years Educator (EYE) apprenticeship. She has relevant grade Cs but took her exams in 1997, so is applying for the Government’s Advanced Learning Loan of £1,800 to avoid re-sits. This also has a grade C entry requirement, but no GCSE time limit.
She said, ‘I work part time in a pre-school, so it’s quite a lot of money to find. This isn’t a job you do for the money; I do it because I am passionate about it, and would like to progress. You are 16 when you do your GCSEs and to be told to do them again this many years later is a daunting thing. I was quite shocked that it was necessary – it’s daft.’
Mr Midgley has accused Skills for Care and Development, the issuing authority, of ‘modifying the …framework in a way that is irrational and unreasonable, or …unlawful, to the detriment of potential apprentices.’
The ‘five-year rule’ applies because it is a hangover from the Specification of Apprenticeship Standards in England (SASE), which sets out the minimum requirements for frameworks, and which must be complied with by law.
Mr Midgley is also querying the fact that, in an apparently contradictory move, officials have removed the Level 2 functional skills English and maths from the interim framework, which were in the original SASE.
He said, ‘If the Government is able to remove functional skills, it must also be able to remove the five-year rule. And if it isn’t able to remove the five-year rule, it couldn’t have been lawful to remove functional skills.’
These rules will be superseded by a new standard from mid-2015, under which there is no time limit on GCSEs. The new standard has been devised by a ‘trailblazer’ group of employers, of which Mr Midgley was part until he left earlier this year.
Mr Midgley told Nursery World, ‘This whole issue is scheduled to become history some time next year. But not before hundreds of people will have been forced to study, take time off work and put themselves through unnecessary re-sits.’
The five-year rule applies only to apprenticeships. For non-apprentice qualifications, such as work-based EYE courses, there is no time limit on GCSEs and O Levels will also be accepted.
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, which licenses Skills For Care and Development as a sector skills council, said in a statement, ‘It would not be appropriate
to comment on an ongoing legal process.’
