Public Relations Education Report 2024 3/4
Skills policy and apprenticeships
Policy on education and skills
Higher education receives plenty of attention. From talk of fees and student debt to global university rankings to condemnation of low value ‘Mickey Mouse’ degrees, higher education is political and high profile. But what about further education? What about adult skills? What about lifelong learning? It’s useful to take a broader view of tertiary education and not just to focus on universities. To do this, we have reviewed the main policies from three UK nations on post-secondary education in the 2024 election manifestos (more parties are included than the main Westminster parties since education policy is devolved.)
| Political party | Higher education | FE and adult skills |
| Conservative | 100,000 more apprenticeships funded by closing university courses with the worst outcomes for their students | Introduce the Advanced British Standard for 16-19 year olds
Introduce new National Service “We will deliver the Lifelong Learning Entitlement, giving adults the support they need to train, retrain and upskill flexibly throughout their working lives. From the 2025 academic year, adults will be able to apply for loans to cover new qualifications.” Skills bootcamps to meet skills shortages |
| Green | Restoring grants; ending tuition fees | £12bn investment in skills and lifelong learning for further education Investment in skills and training for energy transition |
| Labour | ‘Labour will continue to support the aspiration of every person who meets the requirements and wants to go to university.
We recognise that UK higher education creates opportunity, is a world-leading sector in our economy, and supports local communities. |
‘‘We will establish Skills England to bring together business, training providers and unions with national and local government to ensure we have the highly trained workforce needed to deliver Labour’s Industrial Strategy.’
Labour will transform Further Education colleges into specialist Technical Excellence Colleges.’ ‘Labour will establish a youth guarantee of access to training, an apprenticeship, or support to find work for all 18- to 21-year-olds, to bring down the number of young people who are not learning or earning.’ |
| Liberal Democrat | ‘Safeguard the future of our world-leading universities’
Review of HE finance |
‘Improve the quality of vocational education, including skills for entrepreneurship and self-employment.’ |
| Plaid Cymru | ‘We will work to expand the numbers studying at Welsh universities.’
‘Our ambition remains to make University education free again for all.’ |
‘We would offer a grant of £5,000 to the Personal Learning Accounts of every individual over 25 to train or retrain, with added loans to cover more expensive courses and maintenance costs for those who want to take courses full time (repaid in the same way as student loans).’ |
| Reform | ‘Scrap Interest on Student Loans.
‘Extend loan capital repayment periods to 45 years. ‘Restrict undergraduate numbers well below current levels, too many courses are simply not good enough and students are being ripped off. Enforce minimum entry standards. Stop backdoor route to immigration through use of low quality degree courses.’ |
‘Value young people with vocational talents. Britain needs skilled workers in engineering, construction, IT and high demand sectors.’
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| SNP | ‘We will continue to fund our commitment to free tuition.’ | ‘Full-time college students in Scotland can now benefit from the highest bursary of anywhere in the UK, and we will review student funding to make it even fairer.
‘To help people back into work, we continue to fund short courses that lead to work or career progression, and we are boosting training opportunities for older workers.’’ |
This new body, Skills England, launched by the Labour government in July 2024 and to be created over the next year promises to bring together the ‘fractured skills landscape’ to boost the nation’s skills, thus reducing the demand for migrant labour. It will also take on responsibility for apprenticeships from the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE).
Apprenticeships as a degree alternative
The main political parties differ in their support for higher education, but there is general agreement over the need for greater vocational skills training including technical apprenticeships.
Within the public relations sector, the PRCA has been delivering an apprenticeship scheme in partnership with employers since 2012 (the PRCA is on the Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers – RoATP).
Since 2012, some 248 apprentices have been enrolled on the 19 month scheme (14 months in work and five months for assessment).
The PRCA reports that 80% of apprentices are offered full-time roles by the same employer on completion – and 93% stay within public relations sector.
PRCA apprentices are drawn from the same demographic as undergraduate students: they are 20 years old on average and will be school leavers with A level or equivalent qualifications.
The advantages of choosing an apprenticeship over a degree are apparent: there is no student debt as study is financed and paid work is offered for the duration – with a very high chance of becoming permanent.
An apprenticeship offers work and pay, but it does not promise the intensely social experience that many school leavers seek from university (a rite of passage). And if 18 year old school leavers find it hard to choose a degree subject they know little about, then this constraint will apply even more strongly to those choosing an apprenticeship. A degree allows a student to keep their options open, but an apprenticeship is a much more certain first step towards a trade or profession.
Then there is the academic consideration raised in the previously-cited chapter by Howard Nothhaft and Ansgar Zerfass: public relations problems may seem simple on paper, but are always more complex in practice.
How many public relations tasks can responsibly be delegated to an apprentice within a consultancy team that is charging high fees to its clients who expect senior level advice and support?
When you break down the typical public relations workflow, many of the junior tasks that would be given to apprentices (such as desk research, drafting documents, creating digital assets and taking notes) are the same tasks that are increasingly being automated by AI tools. Traditionally, media outreach has been delegated to juniors, but this is becoming less common as an activity and there are many risks to entrusting key external relationships to the most junior members of the team.
If apprenticeships focus on technical skills and degrees emphasise broader intellectual development, then the obvious niche for apprentices is where traditional public relations meets search engine optimisation (SEO), a space often known as digital PR. There are technical skills to be learnt, including how to make best use of AI.
In this space, The Juice Academy is a pioneering digital and social media apprenticeship scheme established by Manchester communications agency Tangerine ten years ago. This has since been expanded into a PR and comms apprenticeship in partnership with Smoking Gun PR and into charity fundraising with Jane Montague Consultancy. The Juice Academy has trained around 600 apprentices in the past ten years.
Yet the choice between technical skills via an apprenticeship and intellectual development via a degree need not be so stark. In theory, degree apprenticeships (in England and Wales) combine the paid work element of an apprenticeship with the longer process of intellectual development associated with a degree course (three to six years depending on the level). In Scotland, degree apprenticeships are known as Graduate Apprenticeships, and Northern Ireland offers higher level apprenticeships (HLAs).
There are various marketing, communication and events apprenticeships on offer through UCAS, but only two specific PR and communication apprenticeship programmes are currently available and both of these are Level 4 apprenticeships – the same level as the PR apprenticeship through the PRCA – rather than being degree apprenticeships.
No degree apprenticeships are currently being offered in the marketing, PR and communication fields according to prospects.ac.uk.
Public Relations Education Report 2024
