Stairways is calling for a rethink to apprenticeship reforms that threaten our sector

For decades, apprenticeships have provided a critical pathway into the construction trades, bringing in young people, giving them on-the-job experience, providing robust training and assessment, and helping build a competent workforce.

At Stairways, we know how important rigorous training is. Our staircases, doors and joinery products rely not just on machines, but on the craftsmanship, training and judgement of our skilled team members.

We are proud to have taken on apprentices at our factories for more than two decades – but proposed reforms to apprenticeship delivery and assessment have now forced us to pause this programme.

We are joining others across our sector to call on Skills England to stop, listen to industry voices, and have a serious rethink before further damage is done.

What’s changing?

The carpentry and joinery apprenticeship in the UK was designed to build competence, through training, hands-on work, and a robust end-point assessment that ensures all required skills, knowledge and behaviours are met.

But under the reform pilot being developed by Skills England (with backing from the Department for Education), several fundamental changes would be introduced.

The most worrying is the cutting of the timeframe to just eight months. Our apprenticeships were two full years, which allowed time to gain meaningful hands-on experience, develop consistency in their work, and prove their capability across the full range of skills, knowledge and behaviours required for their trade.

In our view, compressing their learning into such a short timeframe would not allow apprentices to develop genuine competence.

Alongside this, the proposed new assessment model shifts from a comprehensive independent end-point assessment, to what’s being described as “sampling”.

Instead of proving proficiency across every requirement, apprentices may only need to demonstrate a selection of key skills and behaviours. In practice, this could mean people qualifying without ever having been assessed on every element of their trade.

There is also a move toward a more flexible assessment structure, with the potential for assessments to take place during training rather than at the end, and with awarding bodies and training providers given greater discretion over how assessments are designed and delivered.

While all of this is intended to make apprenticeships more “responsive” and “accessible”, the risk is clear: without the depth, duration and independent scrutiny the current model provides, the meaning of a “qualified” apprentice could be eroded – with a potential for negative impacts for employers, the construction industry, and the public, not to mention the apprentices themselves, who deserve a qualification employers in this safety-critical sector can trust.

Push back from industry

The proposed reforms have triggered a strong reaction across the sector. The British Woodworking Federation (BWF), which represents the woodworking and joinery manufacturing sector and sits on the Level 2 Carpentry and Joinery Apprenticeship Trailblazer group, spoke out after its feedback was “ignored” at “every stage.”

The BWF has spearheaded an industry response, bringing together a coalition of 23 organisations that have written to the Prime Minister calling for an immediate suspension of the plans.

They warn that the reforms would “severely weaken the pathway to required training” and “undermine employer confidence” in apprenticeships. It would “spell disaster for the construction industry”, it adds, threatening national growth ambitions.

The government has already paused the carpentry and joinery pilot in response to widespread and unified industry concern. We see this as an important opportunity to listen, reset and design a model that truly works – one shaped with employers and trade bodies, not imposed without them.

Pressing pause and the call for a re-think

Because of the concerns surrounding the pilot reform model, at Stairways, we have taken the difficult decision to pause our apprenticeship programme, as we throw our weight behind this industry pushback.

The implications for us are significant – but this issue has an effect far beyond individual businesses. With the UK building thousands of homes, refurbishing older housing stock, and facing ever-tighter regulations on safety and quality, we cannot afford to see this vital training route undermined and devalued by wrong-headed reforms.

This isn’t about resisting change for the sake of it. We recognise that apprenticeships could be more accessible, and we support efforts to simplify the system for employers and learners alike. But any reform must protect the core principle that a qualified apprentice is a competent apprentice.

Because if we get this wrong, we don’t just face a skills shortage — we face a competence shortage. That is a risk the construction sector cannot afford to take.