"UCAS is for universities. We need VCAS for vocations"

The construction sector is losing workers faster than it can recruit them (CITB) – I’ve seen firsthand how firms are struggling to fill the sites. Like so many others, our industry is up against the full force of the skills gap, so we need a skills strategy that will energise young people and support businesses that are feeling the pinch; we need a ‘VCAS’.

VCAS, based on UCAS and otherwise known as the Vocational Courses Admissions Service, could provide the sorely needed scaffolding to help us build a skills transformation. It’s high time we started recognising apprenticeships as the credible, vital training programmes they are; they set thousands of young people up for successful careers just as university degrees do, so why don’t we have the same machinery powering these vocational courses?

For any university student, UCAS is a pivotal part of the journey towards a degree. The centralised system allows prospective students to browse courses and submit their applications through one easy, joined-up platform – a far cry from the experience of students considering an apprenticeship.

Instead, they have to duck and dive through a series of competing job vacancies, countless job boards, and the wall of information on the Government’s apprenticeship portal. And for employers, it’s no simpler. They come up against a mountain of different training providers and often struggle to find the perfect fit for them.

You might think that with so many educators on offer, businesses would easily stumble across the skills programme they need – but you’d be wrong. Even though the apprenticeship levy is up for grabs, many businesses avoid the scheme altogether because of all of its hassle and admin.

The Labour Party is clearly hoping to alleviate the skills gap crisis with their Skills England initiative, which Starmer unveiled early into his term (Bloomberg). Still, I’m struggling to see how setting up a task force and making the levy slightly more flexible will completely solve the problem – particularly when the task force will have none of the power of an independent body and instead be a sub-section of the Department for Education (Financial Times).

We must be bolder in our approach. I firmly believe that, by emulating the success of UCAS, we could draw more young people and employers to apprenticeship courses, and up the success rate of the programmes, too.

In 2022/2023, only 54% of apprentices successfully completed their training and assessment (FE Week). At a time when businesses are crying out for an injection of skills into their workforces, this just isn’t enough. The reality is that we are wasting the potential of apprenticeships and apprentices because we’re not keeping track of our precious resources.

With a central management platform like VCAS, we could offer funding on the condition that employers disclose their training programmes, course leaders, and extra-curricular career support. The reporting requirements would go both ways, with students having to demonstrate progress towards targets and submit their attendance regularly.

If we don’t begin to monitor the progress of these courses via a one-stop-shop apprenticeship management platform, we will continue wasting a stack of cash. The truth is that we have a lot of money to play with here, but our failing system means it’s not being put to good use.

The apprenticeship levy operates under a ‘use it or lose it’ model – and British businesses are losing far too much of it. Every year, over £1 billion of the levy is returned to the Treasury (Financial Times); we need a funding shake-up, as well as a centralised platform, if we’re to accelerate apprenticeship starts.

We could make the unspent funds count by offering government-backed loans inspired by the Student Finance system. University degrees are often associated with independence, in part because students can access maintenance loans to support them as they leave home and step out into the wider world. While I’m keen for apprenticeships to remain an affordable option, and would never want to see apprentices saddled with the same debt as university students, we should adopt a similar approach in our use of at least a part of the levy.

Government-backed loans could be put towards travel, uniform, and equipment costs for apprenticeship trainees, elevating the courses so that they finally receive the same respect as university degrees. Students could shoulder a small proportion of the burden – say 20% – and businesses could draw from the levy to make up the other 80%.

The levy should also be used to provide employers with a year of fully funded apprenticeship courses. Those without the resources to train apprentices are currently avoiding the scheme; by covering training costs, we could draw in more companies and boost course uptakes further.

I’m glad the Government has identified the skills gap as a problem that needs tackling and that they’re looking at reforming the levy, but again, I’d urge them to take bolder action. In many ways, we already have the model for a successful skills system – UCAS and Student Finance mean that, for the most part, applying for university is a smooth sailing process.

These bodies mean university degrees are easily accessible and well respected – two factors that are currently missing from our apprenticeship system. We must adopt a similar approach to help young people onto the career ladder and drive our national skills development – and we must do it now.

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About Haman Manak

Haman Manak is Procurement Director at Stanmore, a leading UK-based specialist contractor. Haman has experience working on multiple property types, including residential, commercial, student living, and modular homes. Also an active investor in construction technology, he is an advocate for the use of emerging technologies like AI in the construction and development sectors, and believes it has the potential to enhance work quality, improve health and safety, and increase productivity. Alongside his role at Stanmore, Haman is also a Director at Manak Homes, an award-winning house builder based in London.  

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