The Great Apprentice Scandal Panorama

With one young person in five out of work, life for many is just one

long rejection letter. I have applied for well over 250

jobs. I've had six interviews in that time, but nothing has come up.

The coalition government funded a rise in apprenticeships last year,

but how many are real jobs? All the young people who thought that they

were getting a decent apprenticeship, they have been let

down. A waste of time. I should have stopped on at college or got a

proper job. With millions in cash up for grabs

with apprenticeships, we are asking if the young are getting value for

money. Some apprenticeships are nothing

short of money-making scams. What does that make you think

looking at that? Forged documentation.

And Schneider blow the whistle in private companies making a killing.

What is behind all of this? Coins. Presents are back. Big time. From

loir driving to shop work, there's been an explosion of the type and

the number on offer in many parts of the UK. Last year more than

450,000 apprenticeships were created in England alone. That is a

huge rise on the year before, at a cost of more than �1 billion to the

taxpayer, but tonight we investigate claims that for some,

it's a licence to print money. Sam Healy was 18 when he became an

present draper at Pinewood Studios. The training takes him through

years. Most of it on the job with a skilled craftsman showing him the

ropes and there is theory that Sam will learn at college. How an

apprenticeship should be. I knew at school, I didn't used to

go that much, so I think that an apprenticeship like this and

learning on the job whilst getting paid is what I wanted to do while

enjoying something that I am doing. Crucially, there is a real job

attached. That's long been a requirement for aapprenticeships in

Scotland and Wales, but not always in England or Northern Ireland. So

when is an apprenticeship not really an apprenticeship? Declan

Bellinger and his friends in Sussex did an IT apprenticeship, but it

was classroom based there. Was not job. The teaching was done by a

private training company, paid for with public money. The whole thing

lasted six months. The apprenticeship you associate

working at a company, that they might then take you on, but this

was just training and a promise of a recruitment team at the end and

they help us find a job. The company is called Zenos. Now

owned by publisher Pearson, its training has been rated outstanding

by education inspectors. Last year, Zenos had a Government contract

worth �45 million. The company makes bold claims about its

employment rates. Almost 90% of our learners get

careers within the IT industry within a few months of leaving

Zenos. Since their apprenticeship with

Zenos ended 18 months ago, things have not been so Rosie for Declan

and thinks class of 206789 How many people have gone on to

work in IT? I think... A couple? Three or four.

What are you three doing? unemployed, still. Looking for word.

I am unemployed. I finished a two- week contract. That is all that I

can get. That is freelance. I found a job through Gumtree on my on --

own, it did not give a lot of money. What sort of job? Packing.

What do they ask for when looking for a job? Experience.

When you say Zenos, it was not really experience, it is just work,

books. The Government decided some time

ago to no longer fund apprenticeships in England without

a proper job attached. It was supposed to end last April. The

training was given until last April to find jobs for their

apprenticeships, but that has proven a hard task for Zenos. Lisa

Prudhoe's son was taken on by Zenos last September, long after the new

rules were announced. He did 18 weeks in the classroom and supposed

to start with an employer in January.

He should do 21 weeks of work experience, as we speak now he is

on week 11 and is waiting to get his workplacement.

So he has not got an employer? He goes every day to the academy

and waits. Lisa says about three- quarters of his classmates don't

have an employer, even though it is part of the revamped Zenos

apprenticeship. After the amount of time he has

waited and nothing has come out of it, I don't think he will get a job.

No. I think he will end up unemployed.

How do you feel about that a as his mum? Terrible. I think it is

terrible. I can't believe that they can get away with it.

Last year, Zenos got more public money to train young

apprenticeships than any other college or private training company.

2,000 were taken on in September. Only half now have an employer.

Does the Government think that is taxpayer's money well spent? I said

that every apprenticeship has to be a job. I know that is tough.

I know that some people think I'm relentless about apprenticeship.

Surely it is a no brainer that they should be employed? That is why I

insist that they are employed. That is not to say you can have good

training and that maybe Zenos is providing that, but it is not an

apprenticeship. I will not call it one.

And it should not be funding to the same level? It should not be funded

to the same level nor called an apprenticeship.

The Government has not asked for money back, but has reduced the

contract by Zenos by �1.8 million. Zenos did yot want to be

interviewed, but we were told: Zenos acknowledges and regrets that

there has been inconvenience to some learners during the

transitional period, but the long- term commitment is to equip the

young people with the skills and the ability that they need to with

work in a highly competitive economy.

Nick Linford is an expert in vocational training. He thinks that

quality is being sacrificed in the race for numbers.

We have seen record growth of apprenticeships. If some of the

programmes don't have employers, some of them that are short cannot

be taking place, there is a difficulty if the numbers can be

met. Scratch under the surface, maybe we should not be calling them

all present. When it comes to quantity, no-one

does it like Morrisons. The supermarket chain employs more

apprenticeships than any other company in the UK.

ADVERTISEMENT: Let's get the party started.

We've discovered that 52,000 Morrisons employees last year were

on presents. That is nearly 40% of the whole workforce. It is about

one in ten of the whole number of presents created across England

last year. With the taxpayers' help it seems,

that we are becoming a nation of shopkeepers apprenticeships. 40% of

your staff are apprenticeships? made a huge commitment a few years

ago. Is that right that 40% are

apprentices? 40% are trying to get a basic qualification. People who

don't leave school with a Cornwall fik often feel that they don't have

access nor school the skilled jobs or the management positions as

something that they can aspire to. Most are not school levers, though,

two thirds are over 25. I was interested in doing butchery.

Then the opportunity came up for the apprenticeship. I was 25 when I

started the course. Obviously, the apprenticeship schemes are from

school, but I was with Morrisons. Most of the company's

apprenticeships are existing employees, so if new jobs are in

the being created, should the taxpayer subsidise Morrisons's

inhouse training? Charlie Mullins is not convinced. He began his

working life as an apprentice. He takes pride in the skill involved.

We have shelve stackers and apprenticed people. All I am doing

is undervaluing the work that the apprentice does and seeing a

loophole in the system claim money on it.

In his plumbing business, it is done the old fashioned way. He

employs 18 apprentices out of a staff of 200. The training involves

a big commitment on both sides. There is a skilled worker being the

mentor of people. It takes minimum of three years.

They go to day release college and evening college and hopefully learn

a bit on their own of an evening. At Morrisons, the retail

apprenticeship last year took an average of six months to complete.

Last week the scheme came under scrutiny from a government select

committee, Elmfield Training, the private company that accredit's

Morrisons apprentices, has a �37 million Government contract.

I am Ged Syddall, the cefplt O of Elmfield. The Committee had

question force the borne the �2 million profit that the company

made in 2010. How much of the �12 million was

Government money? It was all Government money.

I think that much money made out of the business of your kind is a rip-

The other than paid himself a dividend of nearly �3 million in

2010, all taxpayers money. Yet when train train was inspected last year,

the training for Morrisons was rated satisfactory.

Actually, whether you look at the results delivered through the

programme with a private provider, we are doing something that is

actually exemplary in the terms of the qualifications... Satisfactory

is what Ofsted said. That is satisfactory with regards

to all of the qualifications. Stkpw if a principle awarded

himself nearly �3 million of public money, people would have something

to say about that? In terms of the qualifications numbers that they

provide assessment on, to provide those numbers and those quality

results is a lot better than most further education colleges in the

In fact, more than two thirds of colleges are rated good or

outstanding. Training that is merely satisfactory, like Elmfield

Training is in the minority. With regard to the rating

satisfactory, well, we know in the further education sector that is

not good. That is three out of four. Four is the worst.

Are you comfortable with a private company creaming off so much profit

for providing a service that is merely satisfactory? I have said

that I would look at every contract. I have said we will ensure value

for money in the contracts k we are doing that. I said I would place in

statutory standards. They will apply.

So we might see an end to these types of apprenticeshipships?

will see an end to the apprenticeships that are not up to

the standards. At least these big companies are

finally coming under the spotlight. We have discovered one growing

group of training providers who seem to be operating under the

inspection radar. The sub- contractors.

As colleges struggle to find the capacity to cope with the growing

demand of apprenticeship training, more of the work is sub-contracted

out to private companies. There is little scrutiny as to how some of

the companies are spending your money.

It is young people like Kyle Emery who are counting the cost. Last

summer he saw an ad for a painting and decorating apprenticeship. He

was 18. He thought it sounded a great opportunity.

They said interview on the phone. So, I got there, it was basically

an induction day. I filled in a few forms, they said

I was on the apprenticeship. That they would give me a ring before I

started. So no interview? No, just sign up

and you are on it. Nearly 300 apprentices in all were

recruited for the first few weeks, they were then sent to this hotel.

Kyle Emery expected to be decorating, but then began an

apprenticeship in customer service. What did that involve, then?

Filling out a work book ent. Dooing the answers, -- filling out a work

book. Filling in the answers and sending it off to get your

qualification. How long were you there? About a month.

The rest of the time you were sitting at home? Yes.

The Government funding for the presents came via Bournville

College. They brought in Forward Thinking Training Solutions to

deliver Kyle Emery's course. Forward Thinking Training Solutions

are based here at this business park in Basingstoke. The company is

only three years old, yet last year it was awarded a total of �277

million in Government contracts to train apprentices.

Forward Thinking Training Solutions's experience is in

security training. Though, Bournville College contracted them

for painting and decorating. Mark Harris was employed by Forward

Thinking Training Solutions for eight weeks to train the

apprentices and assess the work. They had been moved to the

employer's training centre. Mark was shocked by the conditions.

There was no hot or cold running water. No toilet facilities. There

was no proper fire exits so to speak. They were chained and locked.

The inside of the building there was two make-shift marquee tents to

be used as temporary classrooms. How do you describe it? A shambles.

And Kyle Emery says that the training was almost non-existent.

It was cleaning out a old office block. It hardly had floor boards

in. It was a death trap, really. We thought that was the prepare

work for the painting. We tried to get it over and done with to start

painting. Basically, it was this is a

paintbrush, crack on. Nobody taught us what we were doing. A painting

and decorating apprenticeship leading to an NVQ should take a

year. Mark says that staff were under pressure to deliver it much

faster than that, in 16 weeks. said that is not possible. You

cannot do an NVQ in 16 weeks. It is totally impossible. What was the

response? It has got to be done. It was as simple as that. Mark and

another assessor raised their concerns with Forward Thinking but

nothing happened. When the contractor, Bournville College,

came to inspect the work place, he says they were kept away. We were

taken to a different destination. We were taken out of the way while

they came down in case we said something. While we were at this

other venue, we were given a letter to save that our contract had been

terminated. -- to say. Lyons Paint Squad denies that the working

conditions were sub-standard. The company told us: The marquees were

short-term measure and used prior to the completion of classroom

facilities. These were perfectly adequate. Apprentices were involved

in the cleaning out of the offices. Our hope was that giving the

apprentices the opportunity to be involved in readying the

surroundings in which they would study, would leave them with a

sense of pride. But there was just his appointment in the end for Kyle

and the other apprentices. Six months after they started, they

paid them all off. How do you look back on the experience? A waste of

time. I should have stayed at college or got a proper job, not an

apprenticeship. Was it an apprenticeship, as you understand

the word? The Way I See It, no. It was just cheap labour, really.

Bournville College received money but they will not tell us how much

or whether it has been paid back. We visited Forward Thinking's

office and discovered the company has now got into administration. No

answer. We wanted to put our allegations to the company, but

they refused to take part in the programme. Colleges are legally

responsible for ensuring their sub- contractors are up to scratch.

Bournville College told Panorama that it did all the necessary

checks before giving work to Forward Thinking. But we have

discovered that another college had problems with the training provider

the year previously. Wiltshire College told us that Forward

Thinking had not met expectations on response times and deadlines.

How robust art colleges when it comes to checking out sub-

contractors? Unfortunately, and maybe it is a sign of pressure to

hit targets and hit them quickly, maybe some of them cut corners and

do not do due diligence. They don't ask for references and they get

involved in relationships with partners without doing enough

homework. When that happens, it tends to end in tears,

unfortunately. And it is the learners that lose out. Learners at

college at least have the reassurance that the training they

is inspected by Ofsted every three years. The same rules do not apply

to sub-contractors. Forward Thinking got work worth �2.7

million last year without ever having been inspected. We took a

closer look at other private training providers with Government

contracts over half a million pounds and found that Forward

Thinking is not an isolated example. We discovered that last year nearly

a quarter of a billion pounds worth of taxpayers' money was given to

sub-contractors who have never been inspected. The apprenticeship is

the gold standard of vocational training. Rhenium funding rates for

and they are the longest-running programmes. -- it is what you get

the most funding rates fall. People are looking to put apprentices

through a programme as quickly as they can without necessarily

providing the highest quality programme. That is something that

should be of concern to all of us, We have been told by insiders that

the lack of checks could be leading to a much more serious misuse of

public money, even fraud. JML Dolman is a private training

company based in Wolverhampton. They have a Government contract to

train apprentices and more than 70 were recruited last spring. Allan

Middleton worked for the company until five weeks ago. His job was

essentially quality control but at JML Dolman he soon found it was all

about wanted to. As far as I am led to believe, the company had an

agreement that for each apprentice on the completion of the award,

they got �9,000 for each apprentice. This is where the pressure started,

because you have to imagine at this stage that there are 80 students,

from 70 to 80, now being trained by three people. So only three people

within the company actually do it? They were at that stage but they

took on another 80 as well. The 80 apprentices? Yes, last July. So you

have got 160 apprentices and free people training? Then they took

another 80 on. A third time? Yes. Do the maths. 200 apprentices at

�9,000 each. That is almost �2 million of taxpayers' money. They

were looking at it as a money- making scheme. If 200 apprentices

are earning �9,000 every 26 weeks, that is a lot of money. And that

was the length of the course, 26 weeks? That is what they were

hoping it would be. That does not sound like an apprenticeship.

not. Allan was asked to sign of students only so that there could

be more apprentices that would release blocks of funding. He

refused but became suspicious that it was happening anyway. He checked

some files and found this. Look at this. If possible recall the

apprenticed to complete the work. The award has been issued. This

will need to be invalidated as incomplete. You are quite clear

that he should not have passed? file was incomplete. Learning

outcomes and units require the signature of an assessor. This was

your view in February of this year, but it is saying that he was

awarded the qualification. On the 1st October! This person has been

qualified. And the certificate has been sent out. And that is not all.

Before Allan left his job in February, he saw the records of two

dozen apprentices. Many of these raised serious concerns of

malpractice. Assessment plan is incomplete. There is nothing that

can be applied for as achieved. Recall apprentice if possible. This

apprentice would have to start from the beginning again. Seeing as this

has been claimed as achieved, it needs to be invalidated. Nobody

from JML Dolman wanted to be interviewed for this programme but

the company told us: We absolutely and vigorously denied any intent to

deceive or deliberately mislead. There were administrative failings

that resulted in mistakes being made. As soon as the anomalies were

identified, those responsible were dismissed and systems were put in

place to make sure they could be no recurrence. No time has there been

any hiatus in the provision of assessors. Mr Middleton is a

disgruntled ex-employee and his claim that we are in receipt of

�9,000 per apprentice is substantially inaccurate. With

regard to those cases mentioned, none of those individuals ever

received city vacation and we claimed no payment. The inspection

undertaken by the external there if there has given us a clean bill of

health. According to a current employee, at the problems still

exist however. Remember Mark Harris? After he left Forward

Thinking he got a job with JML Dolman. He is so unhappy with what

is going on there that he has handed in his notice and taken the

difficult decision to whistle blows. Have you been asked to sign of

documents that you are not happy to sign? I have not because I have

refused. I have been told to check files and put my name to them. I

have not. And I will not. Not without knowing the person and

seeing what they are capable of doing. What response to you get

when you refuse? It has been put to one side but from what I have seen,

they have already been signed off and been claimed for. What do you

think of that? I think it is atrocious. We showed Mark some of

the internal documents that we obtained and he pointed out an even

more serious discrepancy. This young man, for example, it says

that he has already been awarded two of his qualifications. Do you

think he was ready for that? don't think so. I know for a fact

that at that time there was no assessor there. If there was no

assessor, no one to do the assessing of the work? How could he

be side of? What does that make you think? Forged documentation.

BBCi in off? That is pretty serious. Yes, it is. We have spoken to the

assessor whose signature is on the document. He said he did not sign

of any apprentices before he left JML Dolman last August. The rapid

expansion in the number of apprenticeships has seen a huge

rise in the number of sub- contractors. The Government says it

has beefed up investigation and will have zero tolerance of fraud.

The crackdown on sub-contractors that are not delivering will be

relentless, I can assure you. have looked at two examples where

hundreds of apprentices have been let down because of the sub-

contractors. Clearly there has not been enough scrutiny of what they

are doing in advance. We were not aware of this in terms of the

overall picture. The character of sub-contracting is something I was

sufficiently concerned about in order to insist that we tightened

the screw. It is something that I have acted on but of course if you

have got specific examples then we will take a close look at them.

Behind the impressive numbers, there are many first-rate

apprenticeships. But our investigation has found a

significant number that are not as good as these. That angers those

that want to give young people the best start to their working lives.

All the time you are teaching them there apprenticeship and nurturing

them into adults as well. It is what to do not get paid for

sometimes that you do more of. -- you do not get paid for. It is a

shame. I get quite passionate about this. These guys really deserve

more than what we have been doing. The around the country, some young

people have been left completely demoralised by their first taste of

work. I thought painting and decorating was all right work to do

and there would always be a job if you learnt to do it properly, then

I could start my own business and get some money but it never

happened. They all feel let down, disappointed. No hope. You look for

jobs and you read the job description and it always says that

experience is essential. How am I meant to get experience if I cannot

get any work? The Government is under pressure to help create new