The triple helix of an apprenticeship
In this blog – which originally appeared in Countdown, AELP’s member benefit newsletter - Ben Rowland, AELP Chief Executive Officer, explains the concept of the apprenticeship triple helix.
You may have seen or heard us talking about ‘the triple helix’. What is it and what’s our thinking behind it?
We want to find a way of capturing what it is that is valuable about what AELP members do, in a way that then guides Government in some of its key policy and implementation decisions, especially as it contemplates the Growth and Skills Levy, as well as other skills programme reform.
The triple helix is what makes the best training programmes as good as they are. It is made up of three strands:
- A paid job.
- Off-the-job learning.
- Structured supervision from the employer (normally in the form of a line manager), that binds 1 and 2 together.
If all three strands are present and working together well, you have a powerful skills learning programme. Take one away, and you are likely to be dealing with a less effective programme.
What AELP members (and others in the government funded space) do is deliver programmes that have the triple helix. Even for those programmes where the person is not employed in a job, there is often a clear line of sight to a real job and tangible involvement of real prospective employers.
We should also add that delivering programmes with the triple helix is hard – we all know the work and expertise (and resilience!) that is required to deliver the ongoing orchestration between teaching teams, the learner and the employer.
Apprenticeships are perhaps the most obvious example of a ‘triple helix’ programme, but effective pre-apprenticeship programmes often have the three strands (albeit sometimes with different versions of particular strands e.g. employer involvement if not an actual job), as do the best privately designed and funded corporate learning and development (L&D) programmes.
What they are not is courses where the employer has little knowledge (and sometimes very little concern) about what the employee is learning and how they are going to deploy their new knowledge or skill in the workplace. If you don’t believe me, I thoroughly recommend you read this article from Harvard Business School. I was surprised and slightly shocked during my stint advising corporate L&D teams just how many were prepared to put up with low-no impact training programmes that were often just remote courses that they could say they had sent someone on.
This is important for us: this allows us to explain to the Department and the Treasury why what we do is valuable, why they need to make sure upcoming reforms play to our strengths as a sector while, simultaneously, maximising the economic impact of what they spend on skills. It also allows us to explain, cherish and nurture what we do more effectively and more collaboratively.
I should add as well that many of you run programmes may not have all three strands – but often that is because you are engaging with individuals who are not yet ready for a full triple helix programme (especially the employment part). Lots of pre-apprenticeship programmes, 16-19 programmes, bootcamps, SWAPs etc are highly effective in catching people, engaging them and readying them for their next stage. These pre-triple helix programmes play a vital role on the ladder as well.
The triple helix of an apprenticeship
In this blog – which originally appeared in Countdown, AELP’s member benefit newsletter - Ben Rowland, AELP Chief Executive Officer, explains the concept of the apprenticeship triple helix.
