Feature Apprenticeships Illustration: Peskimo

Young people are flocking to college construction courses, but all they find is barriers to the career they’d hoped for. Elaine Knutt asks what we can do for...

Generation Lost

WHEN BOLTON-BASED contractor Seddon advertised 70 apprenticeship places to celebrate its 70th anniversary earlier this year, it was overwhelmed by 1,400 applications. But only a third were post- GCSE school-leavers seeking their first foothold in construction. Instead, many applicants already held technical diplomas from Further Education colleges in bricklaying, joinery or plastering. But they’d never had a placement on a construction site or experienced site life and were viewed — by Seddon and many other industry employers — as no more job-ready or productive than when they left school. Seddon’s director Nicola Hodkinson

spoke out about what she saw as a gross waste in financial and emotional resources: the £10,000 in college funding from the government’s Skills Funding Agency (SFA) for each student completing a diploma that didn’t qualify them for a job; and the dented enthusiasm and commitment of the youngsters who’d enrolled on full-time courses with the promise of being eligible for jobs then realising they’d been sold false promises. In West London, dry-lining contractor

Astins is in full agreement. “The break between the FE colleges and employers was one of the reasons we decided to do our own thing,” says Justin Hopkins, head of the Astins Institute which trains 10 apprentices a year. “The FE colleges train people in a way that doesn’t prepare them to work efficiently on site. And they just

don’t have the remit to link courses to potential opportunities in employment so they don’t do enough to link programmes with employers — it’s all driven by results at the end of the two-year course. We deliberately sat down and created our own training programme rather than attempting to recruit our trainees from the colleges.” There are 60,000-70,000 students

enrolled on full-time construction courses in universities and FE colleges — excluding apprentices and non-apprenticed trainees studying at colllege on day or block release — far exceeding the number of apprentices the industry is training (see table overleaf). Of course, many students will be attending college because they haven’t been able to find an apprenticeship: in 2011, the CITB-ConstructionSkills-run website bconstructive.co.uk registered around 19,000 enquiries compared to the 5,248 apprenticeship places it could offer. But there is nevertheless growing

awareness that the FE sector is absorbing a high proportion of the available funding for construction training, yet steering a course too far removed from the needs of both employers and young people. Levels of engagement with local

construction firms vary, but many colleges just aren’t proactive enough about getting students into employment or work placements. Courses don’t prepare students for the realities of construction sites or even the basics of health and safety and there’s a bias towards the

> CONSTRUCTION MANAGER | SEPTEMBER 2012 | 15