Lee Elliot Major is quoted in the Economist presenting Sutton Trust’s line on apprenticeships.

As the football World Cup approaches, so too does the prospect of another drubbing by Germany. The England team crashed out of the last tournament, in 2010, in a humiliating defeat to its old rival. Sports fans, however, are not the only Britons looking to learn from the Germans. So are many in Westminster, for whom the 2008 financial crash was the economic equivalent of that 4-1 defeat in Bloemfontein. By broad agreement, the country needs to move away from finance and towards the sort of sturdy manufacturing industries in which Germany specialises.

British ministers strive especially to emulate their near neighbour’s apprenticeship system. Adopting what David Cameron, the prime minister, calls a “Germanic approach”, they have increased by half the budget subsidising workplace training and introduced £1,500 ($2,500) grants for small businesses to take on their first apprentice. The number of people starting apprenticeships in England has duly soared (see chart). A similar pattern is evident in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, where devolved administrations run their own skills policies.

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So perfunctory are many apprenticeships that they not only fall short of the government’s Teutonic aspirations but are of little use at all, says Lee Elliot Major of the Sutton Trust, an education charity. They waste public money, do not encourage firms to invest in training and do nothing to plug a yawning skills gap. Between 2011 and 2013 investment in training by employers fell by £2.4 billion, and the number of job vacancies without qualified applicants rose from 91,000 to 146,000.

Why is England struggling to import the German apprenticeship model? It turns out that good wishes and state cash are not enough to overcome several big differences between the two countries.

Read the full article here.