The Budget report says the government will:
introduc[e] a levy on large employers to fund 3 million new, high quality apprenticeships this Parliament
Now I approve, very strongly of training and very highly of on the job training. But let's get real here. There are 28 million or so employees, based on tax records, in the UK. As some do not pay tax and some are part time the total may be a bit over 30 million in reality.
Roughly speaking as many now leave the workforce as join it for age reasons: growth is from net migration on the whole.
So, on this basis one in ten employees in the UK is going to be an apprentice in the next five years.
Really?
I'm finding that one a bit hard to believe.
As much as I am finding it hard to imagine where the training and trainers are coming from.
I'd rather fewer high quality apprenticeships than same made up number and I fear that's what we're getting.
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You’ll have the re-defining of apprenticeship ….this will now include working on the shop floor in supermarkets..
Totally agree – look at the proper apprenticeships offered by the major firms. The major local industrial employer near me has a plant with a workforce of about 4,000. It takes on about 60 apprentices a year across all trades.
The apprenticeships the firm runs last for three years and also feature Day Release at College leading to a BTEC and potentially, the opportunity to apply for a company funded degree….
……quite some distance away from a 6 month training course in how to work in a warehouse and drive an FLT safely.
Apprentishsips were about 7 years indentured which produced highly skilled carpenters, electricians, engineers. There are only now a few pockets of manufacturing firms probably, taking young people to train. BAE systems not too far from me are very up and down.
As, on the whole, we are not now a manufacturing nation, shipbuilding and steel of yore, it certainly is difficult to see where these training places will occur. I wish them well wherever they may be. IT specialists seem to be in demand and are valuable for sure, and will probably be producing our cars and houses from their giant printers.
Well, I can see it working perfectly.
Apprentices are paid a training wage of three quid an hour, and you won’t have any trouble finding an apprenticeship in the catering and hotel trades that nurtures and certifies your expertise in tossing burgers or folding sheets.
In my blog yesterday about HE I mentioned the impending chaos in the Training, FE and Apprenticeships sector. It is a complex business involving Ofqual, the Awarding companies and the training companies etc. Changes in financing, organisation and with mergers are going wrong compounded by software problems. I have it on good authority that thousands are going to be classified as Deemed failures because personal information and records cannot be transferred from one agency to another.
“A couple of months ago, I wrote about some remarks Alison Wolf made about the impact of immigration on training, noting that the decline in training investment coincided with the rise in immigration. According to the most recent UKCES data, training spend per employee and per person trained is now lower in real terms than it was in 2005. Maybe she’s onto something. After all, why go to the bother of training people when you can just grab a work-ready graduate?”
https://flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com/2015/07/07/grab-a-graduate/
The real winners from the apprenticeship “explosion” will be the corner shop training providers that will move in on the market,just like they did with NVQ (remember them?) provision.