Construction Diploma is Struggling

The Government admitted last week that take-up levels for the new Construction Diploma are dismal.

Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families Ed Balls revealed that 20,000 students would be taking the Diplomas five different sectors from September - around 50% of the department's most recent, most conservative estimate on uptake.

Take-up for the Construction Diploma is estimated to be less than 35 per cent in some areas.
But construction employers are still in the dark over how many of the 20,000 students will be taking the Construction and Built Environment (C&BE) Diploma.

Joe Johnson, CECA Director of Training, said: ‘Contractors want the Diplomas to succeed but students have voted on the new qualification with their feet.

‘DCSF has failed to meet even its own most recent, most conservative aspiration on how many would take up Diplomas, reinforcing our message that the implementation of this policy has been poor.

‘Parents, students and employers have not been given enough information to understand the Diplomas and take them on with confidence. Students looking for an alternative to the academic pathway would have been bemused by the down grading of the vocational element.

‘Contractors have been particularly unimpressed with the change in the work experience element to ‘experience of work’ meaning that a holder of the C&BE Diploma might not have set foot on a construction site during the entire course.

‘The Government have failed to make it clear to employers how the new Diplomas will better prepare students for the workplace or how they can get involved with the consortia delivering them in their area.
Rather than raise the standard of the course content and make the Diploma pathway straight forward they have chosen to complicate matters by introducing Progression Diplomas.

‘Employer engagement has been limited at best and nothing in today's announcement has answered the concerns that CECA has raised with ConstructionSkills and the DCFS.’