Newell McGuiness, Managing Director of SELECT, discusses apprenticeship standards and how the industry must strive for success.
'Apprenticeships need higher standards, not Government targets.' This was the headline that caught my eye in the January edition of Engineering and Technology, the journal of the Institution of Engineering and Technology. The article was by Tess Lanning, co-author of a report by the Institute for Public Policy Research entitled 'Rethinking Apprenticeships'.
The report, which focuses on England, is wide ranging and includes discussion on some subjects which McGuiness finds of interest to the Scottish electrical industry for example;
'the apparent success of apprenticeships in recent years is not what it seems.'
'a vast array of training programmes now sit under the apprenticeship banner. Yet an engineering apprenticeship is completely different from an apprenticeship in retail.'
'the increase in numbers has not been associated with the reversal of these factors, but rather with a watering down of what constitutes an apprenticeship, driven largely by government targets. The government should abandon quantitative targets and focus instead on increasing the demand in the economy for better trained workers, so leading to a revival of apprenticeships led by demand not supply.'
'The government has already expressed a desire to move away from provider-based apprenticeships, which are understood by young people and employers alike to be poor quality'.
'Low-quality training does not benefit anyone.'
All good stuff and sentiments that McGuiness is sure resonate with and reflect the views of most employers in Scotland.
Of course none of this means that apprenticeships in retails, hairdressing or business administration do not have a value. They clearly do, but they must be recognised for what they are as being quite different. For example, they normally focus on accreditation of employees existing skills and usually over a very short period of time (as little as six months in some cases). At the other extreme, many engineering or construction industry apprenticeships take four or five years, with a huge amount of new learning, skills and experience obtained both within the workplace and at college.
It is this latter approach that really adds value to society and which will ultimately help the UK develop the skills base necessary to compete in the global economy and provide real growth. Such high value, high quality apprenticeships create many more opportunities for people to develop their vocation and go on to build sustainable businesses which contribute to the economy and in turn will generate more quality apprenticeships.
So we must come away from this push for numbers and shift the aim to raising demand for apprenticeships that rasie skills, develop competence and add value. Surely that is what the very nature of an apprenticeship is?
(Source: CABLEtalk, February 2012)