The Big Conversation
Research report
As a part of the work to improve the skills system being conducted by the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE), this report presents findings from externally commissioned research with employers as part of IfATE’s Big Conversation. This research draws on findings from 46 interviews and 2 focus groups with employers who were engaged, semi-engaged and not engaged with IfATE.
The central aim of this research was to support IfATE’s ongoing work to improve the skills system in England to find out what is working well and avenues for potential improvement. IfATE were particularly interested in talking with employers who were not familiar with the skills system and did not have apprentices, employees undertaking other technical qualifications or host T Level placements, to discover any potential barriers they faced. In this report, this type of employer is referred to as ‘not engaged’. IfATE chose a qualitative approach to this research in order to gather rich information from a range of employers that could capture the contexts in which they operate their business and their range of experience with the skills system. Further detail on the qualitative approach is included in Appendix 2.
For this piece of research, employers from small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs; [fewer than 100 employees]) and larger organisations [100 or more employees] who were either defined as: not engaged, semi-engaged or engaged with the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) were asked to provide their views.
Employers were recruited from a total of 12 routes, and just under half of the employers were from the engineering and manufacturing and the education and childcare routes. More information about the interview sample, including engagement level with IfATE, company size, route and location is provided in Appendix 1. Views were captured through semi-structured interviews and focus groups on: the skills system; apprenticeships; technical education (including T Levels); IfATE communication and branding; equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI); and green skills.