Dashing hopes of young must end

Today (Monday March 6) is the first day of National Apprenticeship Week, when industry and government indulges in back slapping and tells up how well they are doing at increasing apprenticeship numbers.

Behind the hype the reality is far more troubling.

Apprenticeships are the absolute lifeblood of the construction industry, without a constant supply of well-trained new entrants the industry would stagnate and eventually collapse.

Yet employers have been failing to train sufficient numbers of apprentices for decades – creating an ever widening skills gap. The Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) conservatively estimates that the industry needs 31,350 new entrants every year. Yet during the last 12 months just 21,460 people began any form of apprenticeship and at least around 30 per cent of these will not complete their training.

The real scandal

Yet there is no shortage of young people interested in a career in construction – and that is where the real scandal lies.

Following a Freedom of Information request by Unite to the government’s Skills Funding Agency it has been revealed that 192,000 people began a classroom construction course in 2015/16 – a 14 per cent increase on the previous year.

Critically, 89 per cent of these courses are not linked to an apprenticeship. The mainly young people undertaking this training can only achieve a “technical qualification” which has no value in the industry.

The only qualification which is recognised in the construction industry is an NVQ, which can only be achieved if the applicant has substantial site experience.

In reality thousands of mainly young people are having their hopes of a construction career dashed every year as they undertake what is essentially a ‘ dead-end’ course and have no way of accessing the industry in a skilled role. This is a terrible waste of talent and breeds resentment in those who are having the door slammed in their face.

“These figures are truly shocking,” commented Gail Cartmail, Unite acting general secretary. For whatever reason we find ourselves in the terrible situation of increasingly offering young people a classroom construction course but also in effect denying them the chance to acquire the qualifications needed to enter the industry in a skilled role.”

There is nothing wrong with teaching construction skills in a classroom, in fact classroom based teaching is an essential component of a high quality apprenticeship course. The problem is that on-site training and experience is essential.

The challenge

The challenge is to force employers to recruit a significantly higher number of apprentices and use the existing capacity in further education colleges to provide the necessary classroom training for a dramatically increased number of apprentices.

One added area of concern is that while the majority of ‘dead-end’ construction courses are undertaken in FE colleges this is not exclusively the case. The private sector has its hands in the till, 19,200 courses were publicly funded but in the private sector with a further 7,000 courses being undertaken by social enterprises. Someone is profiting from organising essentially worthless training.

Unite has to ask, is this really the best use of taxpayers money?

The government’s latest big idea is to create streamlined training pathways as these are meant to be employer-led. Unfortunately as is the employers who are the biggest problem with regard to construction training, perhaps we should not hold our breath for a solution.

If the new pathways system is going to be a success the first thing they need to do is to end the waste of talent and the dashing of hopes that ‘dead end courses’ are currently creating.