Yet another consultation that isn’t good enough!

Not everyone has heard of the Institute for Apprenticeships. In time, perhaps we will.

That is because it will have important role to play in the Government’s high-profile ambition of 3 million new apprenticeships by 2020.

You might therefore expect that the way in which this new public body will work would be of interest to a great many stakeholders from schools and colleges through to local authorities, local enterprise partnerships, employer groups, employers separately and a host of others. They would, one imagines, expect to have some thoughts on the way the new Institute goes about its business. Might they therefore have been waiting to be involved through the Government consultation launched on 4^th January by the Department for Education and seeking views on the Draft Strategic Guidance to the Institute for Apprenticeships?

We think they would have been disappointed. It reflects the worst kind of tick-box exercise.

1. It fails to meet several of the Government’s own 2016 Consultation Principles
2. Does not identify those parts of the Guidance where the Department is open to influence – and where its mind is made up.
3. An inadequate targeting of stakeholders who might have an interest in the Guidance
4. There are NO questions at all. Only a request for comments (A very lazy approach to consultation!)
5. No impact assessment – or even an attempt to discover whether respondents represent equality interests
6. Lasts only 4 weeks ….

These and other deficiencies would make the consultation extremely vulnerable to legal challenge, if anyone was motivated to seek a Judicial Review

The Department for Education has a reasonably good record for undertaking best practice consultations. So, it is deeply disappointing to see it fail in this particular one. How can it avoid such mistakes in future?