News analysis with BESA


New training model emerges from COVID crisis


The COVID-19 crisis magnified the existing skills gap in building services, but also created opportunities and accelerated potential solutions including widespread adoption of online learning models


T


he industry is braced for a wave of redundancies in the autumn, but the rapid adoption of online learning during the COVID-19 crisis has created a model that can help tackle the sector’s long-term skills challenge, the Association believes.


BESA president Neil Brackenridge said many employers were being forced to defer taking on new apprentices and were, instead, focusing on their existing intakes who missed out on several months of training during the lockdown.


“We are prioritising our existing apprentices; getting them back into our businesses and focusing on developing them before we take on more recruits,” he told a webinar hosted by BESA. He added that there would also be a lot of displaced workers after the end of the Government’s furlough scheme, but that many of these could be redeployed and upskilled.


A survey carried out by BuildUK showed that 45% of employers in construction expected to make redundancies this year and 74% were taking on fewer apprentices than last year. 31% also said they would not be able to spend the funds available to them through the Apprenticeship Levy this year.


Opportunity


“Investment in skills is one of the first things to get cut during an economic downturn,” said BESA’s director of training and skills Helen Yeulet. “However,


the COVID crisis has also created an opportunity for employers to take a fresh look at what we actually want our people to be doing and, therefore, what skills they will need.”


The crisis accelerated the demand for new skills as well as the upskilling of existing workforces to embrace modern ways of working, such as off-site manufacture, and to help deliver the government’s vision for a ‘green recovery’. A new generation of teachers will also have to be upskilled, according to Ms Yeulet.


“BSE is a very scattered sector that needs a wider and more varied range of skills than many others,” she told the BESA webinar. “This makes it relatively expensive and complicated for FE colleges to deliver our apprenticeships. “However, a lot of learning moved online during the lockdown. We were already going that way, but the crisis speeded things up and created a new learning model. If we can deliver more of the theoretical elements remotely that will free up the colleges to focus on the practical training. It will also reduce volume of students attending in person at any one time to help colleges maintain social distancing.” The wider availability of remote learning also meant essential regulatory requirements like health & safety training and F-Gas registration could still be delivered during the lockdown even when the colleges were closed.


This ‘blended approach’ to training is the foundation of the new BESA


Academy, which is launching this month to support employers and the FE sector with a wide range of targeted online courses.


“It should also help employers engage more easily with the education sector especially as the new standard apprenticeships are being rolled out this summer. Many of these were developed by employers through BESA to produce a workforce directly suited to the industry’s needs,” said Ms Yeulet.


Jill Nicholls from the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education told the BESA webinar that the crisis had also led to better collaboration between different government departments. It had produced “new money, new policies and new processes” for technical education as it was seen as “a key vehicle in helping the economic recovery”.


“It is also important that we support redundant apprentices and we are looking at ways to help them transfer their skills without having to start again from scratch,” she said.


Ms Nicholls said there were still gaps in the new standard apprenticeships being rolled out for the building engineering sector and urged employers to come up with ideas for more apprenticeships that could help them develop the skilled workforces they need. Chris Nicholls from the Association of Colleges added that the blended learning approach adopted by the BESA Academy would help to support the phased entrance of students back into their FE colleges in September.


BESA’s director of training and skills Helen Yeulet


!" August 2020


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