Feature Apprenticeships

The Shared Apprenticeship Scheme >

traditional trades and sketchy provision for new technologies. “It’s bums on seats,” agrees Geoff Lister,

chair of the Cross Industry Construction Apprentice Task Force, set up by industry and government in 2007 to increase employer engagement in apprenticeship policy. “Thousands of young people are taking full-time courses and get a diploma, a technical certificate, who’ll never get a job. There’s no work-based learning at the end of it, and frankly, I wouldn’t employ them. The standards of the FE colleges vary, but some colleges just don’t have the depth of knowledge within their construction departments,” says Lister. Now, however, there are hopes that the issue is starting to be addressed. Late last month, CITBConstructionSkills chief executive Mark Farrar reported that further education minister John Hayes had agreed “in principle” to address the problem, indicating there could be a revised formula for distributing the Skills Funding Agency budget to allow his organisation a greater role in establishing training pathways to serve young people and the industry.

Increasing gulf The increasing gulf between what the economy and employers needs and what FE colleges are offering was raised in a June report by the Local Government Association (LGA), which looked at the mismatch between FE course provision and job vacancies in a range of employment areas. It uncovered anomalies such as the oversupply of leisure, travel and tourism students in Nottingham (1,140 trainees compared to 60 jobs) and the lack of hairdressers in Windsor and Maidenhead (20 trainees versus 43 jobs). But in Cambridge, it found only 50 young people training in construction, despite the volume of new development in the area.

One reason why the apprenticeship completion rate in 2010/11 was just 71% is the trend for local authorities to link construction procurement and planning agreements with apprentice training contracts. Whereas apprenticeships take at least 18 months to complete, the contractors and sub- contractors delivering new schools, hospitals and commercial developments might only be on site for nine months, leaving locally-recruited apprentices high and dry. But a CITB-ConstructionSkills

Shared Apprenticeship Scheme (SAS), piloted in the north-west, lets several contractors share the same apprentice. It is now underway in Lancashire and Cumbria, Merseyside, Yorkshire and Humber, East of England and London. Under the scheme, local

authorities set up a not-for- profit company that employs the young apprentices, then contractors delivering local construction projects pay the SAS company for the apprentice’s labour over a six to nine-month placement. At the end of a placement, the

SAS finds the apprentice a new “host” company. On completion of the apprentice framework, it is hoped that they will have made a good impression on the contractors and be offered a full-time job. In the pilots, 94% were offered jobs. CITBConstructionSkills

account service manager Keith Watkins says these places will be “additional” to single-employer apprenticeships. “We don’t want the number to get too big, or to replace existing recruitment. We’re trying to lower the barriers for contractors,” he says.

“ Thousands of young people are taking full-time courses and get a diploma, a technical certificate, who’ll never get a job.” Geoff Lister, Cross Industry Construction Apprentice Task Force

The report blames FE “colleges receiving funds directly from Whitehall [the Skills Funding Agency is part of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills] based on studying and passing qualifications rather than on job outcomes, particularly local work. This in turn is resulting in thousands of students being steered onto popular courses that they can easily pass but that are unlikely to help them into future employment.” The LGA instead proposes a “localist”

approach to training and employment strategy, creating local partnerships of local authorities, schools, colleges and employers to match skills training with local job pipelines, which it says would “reduce disengagement, slash the level of skills mismatch and save public money”. One construction training insider takes a

Apprentices trained by the industry Year

England

ALL CONSTRUCTION STARTS APPRENTICES

2006/2007 20,700 2007/2008 20,400 2008/2009 16,790 2009/2010 14,070 2010/2011 15,590 2011/2012* 9,330

COMPLETION RATE

63% 68% 69% 70% 71% n/a

Scotland STARTS

2,120 2,650 2,370 2,230 2,040 2,690

COMPLETION RATE

43% 65% 54% 65% 65% 75%

cynical view of the situation. “Colleges are run as quasi-private companies — they’ll get £5,000 a year for a full-time student, and only £1,000 for a part-time student studying for an NVQ. Colleges will seek to maximise their income to stay in business, and will recruit until there’s no more room and the workshops are full. But we’ve heard of cases where they’re squeezing the day release students out of the workshops — the real apprentices. It’s bonkers. No one has really had control of the FE colleges since 1992 — the Learning and Skills Council tried but couldn’t.” Following the LGA survey, the

Construction Youth Trust, which campaigns to improve access for young people to construction careers, has also spoken out about the lack of joined-up provision. “Young people apply for a course they fancy, the college lays on as many places as they can fill, but they’re not doing people any favours. Young people are not being advised about areas where there are skills gaps — our research suggests these exist in scaffolding and drylining — instead they’re being asked what they want to do, then offered that provision,” says operations director Jo Hills. “It’s kind to the young person, but it’s not

kind to the economy,” she continues. “The issue is about supplying a skilled workforce for our future. It’s very short-sighted not to be creating a strategic approach, or we face the prospect of mass unemployment together with skills shortages. There has to be a partnership approach, a connection between training and employment, with better linkage with colleges on a local level, and awareness of jobs coming forward.”

Wales STARTS**

1,500 1,550 1,700 1,600 1,350 n/a

COMPLETION RATE***

60% 64% 67% 75% 77% n/a

* figures for 2011/12 are provisional details, not full year ** All construction apprentice starts for Wales are estimates from overall Construction, Planning and Built Environment details *** All construction apprentice completion rates are for Construction, Planning and Built Environment – Construction only figures are not available

16 | SEPTEMBER 2012 | CONSTRUCTION MANAGER

Gold standard Youth unemployment stands at an unprecedented rate of around 1 million, or 22% of under-25s. At the same time, four years of declining output in construction have slashed the number of apprenticeship starts — the table opposite shows the total figures for all managing agencies funded by the Skills Funding Agency, while the number of apprenticeships where CITB- ConstructionSkills is the managing agent has roughly halved, from 10,800 in 2007 to 5,248 in 2011. At the same time, there’s widespread agreement that the industry needs to create more apprentice places — to deliver an agreed “Golden Standard” in training and development, build employers’ own capacity for the future, and guard

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