Home - AAT policy work - education and skills training

AAT policy work - education and skills training

AAT actively engages in the debate regarding the future of skills education in the UK.

AAT has always had an open access policy to help those who may have been limited before by lack of education, so we feel in a unique position to talk about our qualifications and the route it provides to the chartered accountancy bodies.

Specific examples of our work are included below:

UKCES consultation on the simplification of employment and skills services
The UK Commission for Employment and Skills was set up in 2008 to provide independent advice to the highest levels of government on steps required to achieve world class standing in employment and skills by 2020.

One task is to review and make recommendations on the bureaucracy surrounding the planning and delivery of vocational education in the UK.  Our submission supports a rationalisation of the bureaucracy surrounding skills education. It also highlights the need to move away from process measures, and to focus on

  • real productivity benefits for employers
  • the employability and progression opportunities for learners.


Apprenticeships
A key policy objective shared by all political parties is to raise the number of apprenticeships available in all sectors of the economy.  The AAT supports this and there are already over 3,000 accountancy apprentices studying our qualifications.

New legislation will give a statutory basis to apprenticeships, and will require the development of new standards for apprenticeship frameworks - including the associated qualifications that apprentices must study.

The AAT has actively engaged in the consultation on these standards emphasizing the risk of making the framework too rigid.  As we say in conclusion:

"We believe that there are considerable opportunities for growth but that growth could be put in jeopardy if the specification of apprenticeship standards is too restrictive and does not reflect the wide diversity of sectors.

We strongly urge the government to take account of this and to revise the specification to set robust and rigorous standards for outcomes while allowing the Sector Skills councils to work with awarding bodies to develop the most appropriate means to deliver those outcomes in their sector."


Sector qualifications strategy for accountancy
The Financial Services Sector Skills Council is responsible for developing a qualifications strategy for accountancy.  This involves

  • working with employers to map the people and skills needed within the sector now and in the future.
  • developing a framework of qualifications and learning opportunities to meet those needs.

As the lead provider of technical qualifications in the sector, the AAT has played an active part in helping to develop the strategy and our contribution to the strategy is available to view here.


Fair access to the professions
In the spring and summer of 2009, the government set up a panel under the chairmanship of Alan Milburn, to investigate

  • access to the professions.
  • how social mobility could be promoted through widening access to professional careers.

The AAT supports this work, and demonstrated through its evidence the important role that we have played in opening up the accounting profession with accessibility being one of our core founding values.

We showed that we were delivering "a qualification framework with no formal initial entry requirements but progressive rigorous testing of competence that rightly focuses on the final outcome for the individual not their social background or the qualifications with which they started."

You can also read our responses to Government consultations below. All documents are downloadable in Microsoft Word format unless otherwise stated.

AAT education and skills consultation responses 2009

 

AAT education and skills consultation responses 2008

 

AAT education and skills consultation responses 2007