3aaa collapses - 4,500 apprentices left guessing their futures

Apprentices, photo National Assembly for Wales/CC (Click to enlarge)

Fred Ray, Leicester East Socialist Party

For the last two years I've been working as an apprentice through the training provider Aspire Achieve Advance or 3aaa. This all changed when the Education and Skills Funding Agency terminated all of its contracts with the company resulting in its collapse.

There is now a police investigation into fraud at 3aaa and 4,500 apprentices (including myself) are left guessing at what happens next. I'm lucky enough to still be employed, unlike the apprentices who were directly working for the company, who have found themselves jobless.

While it operated, 3aaa represented everything that's wrong with privatised education. They had enlisted me onto a course that they had no other students for with plans to hire a trainer if they were able to get enough to make it profitable. When no other students enlisted they decided to cancel the course.

I was being told that it wasn't profitable enough to provide the training I'd been promised in Leicester, while Peter Marples (the multimillionaire co-founder of 3aaa) was posing for photographs with sports clubs he'd given hundreds of thousands of pounds to!

After this I was placed onto a lower level course (from a Level 4 BTEC to a Level 3) which they did have a trainer for. Eventually I was able to get myself placed back onto the Level 4 course in Derby, where they did have a properly qualified trainer.

Months of my life were wasted by the greed of 3aaa. I'm now in a position where I can't be certain that the work I've completed since restarting the Level 4 qualification will have been for anything.

I've received a letter from the Education and Skills Funding Agency promising that I'll be able to "continue my learning" but have no guarantees of what that means.

Examples like this show that teaching for profit is a disaster for everyone involved - except the people on top who fund their vanity projects with our public money. Shutting down 3aaa hasn't fixed our broken education system.

In order to do that, we need to take education and training out of the bosses' hands and into our control.

Donate to the Socialist Party

Finance appeal

The coronavirus crisis has laid bare the class character of society in numerous ways. It is making clear to many that it is the working class that keeps society running, not the CEOs of major corporations.

The results of austerity have been graphically demonstrated as public services strain to cope with the crisis.

The government has now ripped up its 'austerity' mantra and turned to policies that not long ago were denounced as socialist. But after the corona crisis, it will try to make the working class pay for it, by trying to claw back what has been given.

The Socialist Party's material is more vital than ever, so we can continue to report from workers who are fighting for better health and safety measures, against layoffs, for adequate staffing levels, etc.
When the health crisis subsides, we must be ready for the stormy events ahead and the need to arm workers' movements with a socialist programme - one which puts the health and needs of humanity before the profits of a few.

Inevitably, during the crisis we have not been able to sell the Socialist and raise funds in the ways we normally would.

We therefore urgently appeal to all our viewers to click here to donate to our Fighting Fund.