Charlotte Scheffmann Continued from Page 77


KH: Employers want to upskill their workforce and sending them off to do a three-year full-time degree is not really going to happen. Access to HTQs gives people that stepping stone to work in a staged manner so they can get to degree level. Young people are more aware that the experience of working on the job is very valuable.


MR: A young girl knocked on our door, she was finishing her A Levels and didn’t want to do a degree. We chatted about what she’d like to do and it turned into an interview. We went to the college and asked, ‘What range of opportunities would fit with this person and fit with us?’ We’re potentially going to make an offer now based on what the college came back with. But we didn’t go to the college and say, ‘Can you do a degree apprenticeship, can you do a T Level?’ It’s one day a week out of the business, four days a week in, and there’s no doubt about it, that’s a great system.


PP: We really don’t understand what these different qualifications are going to offer us. We’re investing in young people. We’re paying money to put them through education, hoping that we’ll get a great engineer out at the end.


Our best manufacturing engineers have worked their way through an apprenticeship, touched a product, felt it, understand how it fits in the machine and can design the tooling for that machine. We can’t take a graduate straight


John Boys


from university and pay them all this money that they’re commanding. We don’t know a lot about HTQ’s, we’ll be looking at what value they are going to offer us in terms of skills coming into the business. We’re looking at practical and problem-solving skills.


KH: Our experience of T Levels across the county is in areas where they’re working well, like Blackpool and Nelson and actually students being are offered jobs and further training


We have an ageing workforce and therefore we need to invest in our young people and bring them through. So, whether it’s apprenticeships, whether it’s HTQs, whatever opportunities we’re offering, we need to have


Morag Davies


It is hard to know which is more valuable than another and what has happened to get that person that qualification. A lot coming out of education departments previously, certainly in our industry, hasn’t been aligned to what we need. We are a technical organisation and we like technical skills to have been taught to people when they come to us. We want to feel as though the training and the education is robust.


MD: We can develop a model that suits the employer. For some of our T Levels, the students go out on extended blocks for placement. Some go out for two weeks at a time or longer.


It’s about what works for the


employers and then we can work the curriculum around that.


There’s been a lot of change in education


in the last ten years and a simplification, if it works, will be good


that investment in young people because we need it for our workforce, regardless of sector.


RL: There’s been a lot of change in education in the last ten years and simplification, if it works, will be good. It’ll help us understand the value of some of the qualifications.


MR: I left education young and I went into industry and ended up going back into education. I valued my education when I was in my early 20s. I did an AIMS course which was A Levels in one year for mature students. This college and these qualifications mean an awful lot. Education is giving people skills and a grounding that’s generic and can be applicable to any area of the business that they’re working in.


PP: You’ve got to try and look out there and say, “Well, what do we need in the business and what qualifications can we give our staff?” The biggest thing I’m being asked now is for mature apprenticeships. We must see how we can develop long-standing engineers to get some technical skills and make them feel like we value them. Is that an HTQ? I really don’t know.


MD: It’s important that employers see us as providers as trusted advisors, and that you are sharing your future skills needs with us. We can advise you on the right balance of qualifications and skills.


What are the barriers or challenges in delivering HTQs for skills providers and for employers recruiting apprentices?


MD: With every new qualification, it takes time to embed. We, as educators, need to understand them and need to develop them with employers and there is a process with communicating what they are.


78 DEBATE


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