Rachael’s blog 8 July 2011

Raising the roof on apprenticeships

Incredible to be at the new £60 million Sheffield City College this week.

I was there hosting one of (FEdS’ member) City & Guilds’ regional Apprenticeship Summits in support of their campaign to deliver a million apprenticeships by 2013.

The new college, the first purpose-built vocational college in the region, is home to a host of sustainable features including a trio of high roof mounted wind turbines, solar panels – and a rainwater recycling system.

It opened last October in time to welcome 6000 students to facilities including an aviation wing, training salons, dental and science laboratories, a learning resource centre, a sports hall and outdoor sports pitches, a spa and a £1.2million catering centre.

An ideal venue, then, for the City & Guilds’ summit for the north which brought local business, political and educational leaders together to discuss the future of apprenticeships in the UK – as part of its Million Extra campaign: www.million-extra.co.uk

I think the campaign is well worth supporting – but, as City and Guilds knows all too well, it’s about more than achieving a target figure. What came out strongly in the summit discussion is a fear that apprenticeships could be devalued in a numbers game that pays lip service to some fundamental issues.

The event broke into round-table discussions with each in turn feeding back their views on issues such as quality and brand; barriers to hiring and delivery; funding and age bandings;  employer engagement, particularly SMEs; the role of mentors and parents; and effective partnership working between employer, provider and learner.

I was struck by the commitment of those at the summit who had given up a morning’s work to be there. About a third of the audience had started out as apprentices themselves. One employer told me he left school and went straight into an apprenticeship and never looked back. He said he would take on 16 to 18 year-olds on because the training was fully funded– but would not take on anyone older. That’s one of the fundamental issues, he added.

This whole area of targeted funding and age bands really needs to be better explained and understood, together with a much clearer – and jargon-free – explanation of what an apprenticeship is and means.

City & Guilds is collating the feedback from its four regional summits and its national launch event in February for its ‘Manifesto for Change’, which it will deliver to Government later this year. Let’s hope it packs a punch – just like the audience feedback.

For partnership in action, however, Sheffield City College seems to be showing the way. I spoke to Alan Biggin, a senior manager there, after the summit. He told me that employers had joined college “client groups” to help design the new building, particularly the learning areas relevant to their industry.

He said: “We believe this is a time for FE to really punch its weight and we want this college to have one key focus – employability.”

Then he added that the college was hosting the national Skills for Chefs conference later this month with various Michelin starred chefs doing master classes.

I’m sure I could be free to host another summit then……. please!