Need to compare quality of workplace training
David Coombes, founder and managing director of Logistics Job Shop says there is a need for better mechanisms to compare the quality of employee training such as apprenticeships.
School league tables are now the norm. Anyone can go online and see which is the best school in their area according to government metrics. We can see how schools compare for SAT results, GCSEs, or A-Levels.
Universities too have to publicly share data which informs choice. At the click of a button we can see a range of metrics which indicate the quality of the learning, the facilities on offer and even the destination of pupils.
Even medical care is now being opened up to competition and publicly sharing information. You can see how your GP or local hospital does in comparison to others.
But there is a distinct lack of data available on industry specific learning. So a logistics employer might actually be asked to make a spending decision based on data showing that the college is really good at teaching brick laying.
It is really very difficult to find a set of comparable data which allows comparison between providers in the logistics sector. We can look to see what OFSTED ratings look like – and that does offer some insight into the quality of teaching. But whilst OFSTED tells us how good a provider the institution or organisation may be, it goes beyond their remit to consider what sort of logistics training is delivered, and that is surely the key piece of information required in making a decision on procuring training.
To me, there is a lack of a clear and robust independent standard which signals the strength of logistics training.
With the advent of the Apprenticeship Levy this is a clear weakness. Employers will continue to make spending decisions with at best incomplete knowledge. There is simply no way to make an at-a-glance comparison of training quality.
For me this is a current gap in the infrastructure surrounding Apprenticeships. Government is trying to create a genuine market in vocational training, but for it to work we need to have market signals – who is good, who is cheap etc. Without those signals we are simply not going to have a market, and without a market we will never have competition and we certainly never will be genuinely employer led.
