Home / National Apprenticeship Week

Celebrating apprenticeships and their many benefits

National Apprenticeship Week takes place from 7th-13th February and celebrating this thoughtful and effective means of developing individual skills and knowledge has never been more important.

Apprenticeships play a tremendously important part of our skills pipeline and development. They offer opportunities for young people, our wider communities and those in work. They also help answer any talent issues that businesses may be facing at a given point in time and increase productivity.

The last two years have been tough for everyone, but especially so for those taking their first steps into the world of work, who must have found it really strange. It’s only right to applaud those who have been tenacious enough to stick at it and thank the incredible employers who had faith in the system and kept going despite a myriad of challenges, not least the move to online and remote workforce management.

A real and wonderful cause for celebration this National Apprenticeship Week is the significant increase we’ve seen this year in the number of apprenticeship vacancies that are available.

Kudos to the teachers and lecturers who have promoted this valuable route to skills and employment and who take our apprentices through the programme, and to the employers who give up time and effort to work with those – young and old – learning new skills for the first time.

So many apprentices and their families have recognised the value of apprenticeships and are seeing a positive career impact. The ability for our young people to learn while they earn, develop technical and practical skills and work towards a recognised qualification, with the potential to study at degree apprenticeship levels, should not be under-estimated. We are hopeful that the current momentum and increased success we are seeing will encourage even more to follow suit and sign up.

What’s particularly exciting is the number of new apprentice routes coming through, which really create varied career options. For example, many are coming through for the first time from various employers within the public sector including many of the government departments with which we work, such as DEFRA and the NHS through to the Cabinet Office.

Our emerging sectors, from energy, offshore and health and life sciences, are also rich in apprenticeship opportunities. All of these open the door to more and better jobs and are great for those keen to develop and stay future-ready.

From what we see in schools and colleges, the apprentice route is becoming well established and our work with national stakeholders such as the Education Training Foundation and Amazing Apprenticeships is really helping our drive to achieve parity in technical and academic education. It’s a really positive step that apprenticeships are increasingly seen as a clear, proven and successful career route with parents, carers and young people.

Apprenticeships are embedded into our North East Ambition Programme and our big ask is for even more employers to get involved.

Changes to the system and particularly rules that came about during the COVID period have occasionally made navigating official websites quite complicated, however the team at North East Ambition are always here to answer any issues or questions. Our apprenticeship providers also have teams of experts dedicated to working with employers. If you’re interested, please just ask for help as it’s out there to explain and simplify the process.

Finally, I am struck when I talk to business leaders from around the country and our region about how many of them came through the apprenticeship route. We have some great ambassadors and advocates for apprenticeships and that is something to be proud of.

I hope National Apprenticeship Week 2022 inspires even more people to choose an apprenticeship, and even more organisations to reap the benefit of securing talent in this way. It’s a tried and tested way to help people into employment, to support businesses and to boost our local economy.

Visit www.northeastgrowthhub.co.uk for information and support on apprenticeships for businesses.

By Michelle Rainbow, Skills Director for the North East LEP.

Home / National Apprenticeship Week

Investing in a sustainable future through apprenticeships

The Liebherr Group is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of construction machinery, employing nearly 50,000 colleagues globally. The Group’s Sunderland site is part of its maritime division, manufacturing maritime cranes for use in port environments on ships and offshore rigs. Liebherr-Sunderland Managing Director, Ralph Saelzer, explains how the business continued with its successful apprenticeship programme throughout 2020.

How many apprentices does the Liebherr Group have in Sunderland?

In Sunderland we employ 180 people, and 23 of those are apprentices. Apprentices at the Liebherr Group take on a whole spectrum of roles and at our Sunderland site the majority are in shop floor roles like welding and fabrication. We also have apprentice roles in quality engineering and dispatch, and there are opportunities for staff to take on degree-level apprenticeships – three of our team have already completed a degree apprenticeship in leadership and management with Sunderland University.

What challenges did you and your apprentices face during COVID-19 and how did you overcome them?

When the pandemic hit, the question was whether we could continue to provide training on site for our apprentices. And could our apprentices still work alongside experienced staff in a meaningful way? It became clear that we could introduce the necessary social distancing and other precautions and still be able to carry on.

Another question was whether our training providers, like SETA, who we work with very closely, were still operating. We verified that they were, and that some of the training would now take place over Zoom. So we haven’t faced too much real disruption, we have just had to change the format of what we do, and people have had no problems with adhering to the guidelines.

What value do your apprentices bring to the business?

The value is immeasurable. Our apprenticeship scheme means that we can counteract any problems that might arise due to an ageing workforce, or difficulty in recruiting skilled tradespeople. This way we train our own staff and we bring skilled young people into the business. Apprenticeships aren’t a cost, they are an investment into a sustainable future.

What advice for other businesses hoping to work with apprentices potentially during lockdown?

It would be a big, big mistake to stop offering apprenticeships. It’s crucial that companies are still prepared to invest in apprenticeships despite the current situation – what you don’t invest in now, you will miss tomorrow.

Find information and guidance for businesses on hiring an apprentice on the North East Growth Hub.

Home / National Apprenticeship Week

In conversation with Michelle Rainbow, Skills Director at the North East Local Enterprise Partnership, about National Apprenticeship Week

03-07 February 2020 sees the arrival of National Apprenticeship Week, putting this important route to employment in the spotlight. Michelle Rainbow, Skills Director at the North East Local Enterprise Partnership, highlights the benefits that apprentices can bring to businesses and new support that’s on offer from 2020.

If you’re a business planning for 2020 and beyond, it’s likely that staffing and skills will be on your list of priorities.

Apprenticeships can be a great way of bringing fresh talent and skills to your business, by employing an apprentice or upskilling staff via an apprenticeship scheme, with qualifications going all the way up to degree-level.

From 2020, larger employers who pay the Apprenticeship Levy can transfer up to 25 percent of their funds to smaller businesses to support them to take on an apprentice, which is great news for SMEs.

However, smaller businesses often tell us that they struggle with ‘where to start’ when it comes to hiring an apprentice; from how to fund an apprenticeship to recruiting the right person for the job.

To support businesses in that situation, we’ve just updated our Apprenticeship Toolkit on the North East Growth Hub to offer simple and clear advice on where to start and where to get support.

The Toolkit brings together useful information to help businesses find, recruit, train and develop an apprentice. It also includes case studies from local businesses that have benefited from employing apprentices.

On a national level, a significant development for 2020 is that all employers in England will soon have access to all the benefits of the National Apprenticeship Service – including greater choice of quality training providers, more control over how they pay for training, and how they access and recruit apprentices.

The transition of non-levy paying businesses onto the full apprenticeship service will take place from early 2020 and extra funding will be available to support up to 5,000 new apprenticeship starts through the service every month until March 2020.

If you’re not able to offer an apprenticeship, you might want to consider offering a traineeship instead, which consist of 20 percent on-the-job and 80 percent off-the-job training.

Traineeships help 16 to 24-year-olds get ready for a job or apprenticeship if they don’t have the appropriate skills or experience. It involves a minimum of 100 hours of work experience over a maximum of six months. Employers need to deliver a meaningful work experience to the trainee, but it’s a much smaller time commitment than an apprenticeship. It’s a great way to give someone their first step onto the career ladder, and your business gets to benefit from an injection of fresh ideas and talent too.

During 2018/19, we saw over 15,500 apprenticeships start in our region. By offering an apprenticeship or traineeship, businesses can help to improve skills across the North East, boosting the economy and creating more and better jobs. It would be fantastic to see these numbers really grow from 2020 onwards.

To find out more about the benefits of apprenticeships and the value they can add to your business, visit the Apprenticeship Toolkit on the North East Growth Hub.

You can also find more information about apprenticeships and traineeships by visiting www.gov.uk or www.apprenticeships.gov.uk.

 

Home / National Apprenticeship Week

National Apprenticeship Week – What next for the North East?

North East LEP Skills Director Michelle Rainbow gives the lowdown on apprenticeships and calls on the Government to listen closely to businesses and help create more demand.

The Government plans to create three million apprenticeships by 2020. It’s an increasingly ambitious target, not least because the number of apprenticeships has dropped since the Apprenticeship Levy was introduced in April 2017.

So what’s going on? Here in the North East it’s a mixed picture. Having seen apprenticeship schemes promoted heavily, pupils, parents and schools have understandably bought in. Conversely, businesses have been hanging back, waiting to see what the quality standards will be like – so there is supply of eager applicants but less demand.

The complexity of the Apprenticeship Levy hasn’t helped. An early assessment report by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) shows that 22% of employers don’t know whether they have to pay the Levy or not.

This plays out here, where SMEs continue to seek clarity. There is a big difference between sectors which are used to hiring apprentices, such as construction, manufacturing and engineering, and those for whom this is still a new innovation. It’s one of the reasons our case studies focus on the fields of pharmaceuticals and law as they’re not traditionally associated with this type of scheme.

Right now our ask of Government is that it continues to liaise closely with employers to understand their needs, provides reassurance about quality standards and simplifies how the Levy works – and this has to include clarification on how unspent monies will be used to set the record straight.

We need an agile system which can flex and respond to opportunities and issues in a much quicker timeframe. We also need to create real business demand.

Better qualifications and better jobs for all

Here at the North East LEP we particularly welcome higher and degree apprenticeships as we strive to create more and better jobs to support the local economy.

The North East Growth Hub lists the various providers and is well worth a look for those looking for more information.

However we are keen that the government takes steps to ensure these remain open to everyone.

Access to affordable degree-level education will of course prove popular across the board as more people understand the opportunity and move to maximise this. As such there is a particular need to engage with the more disadvantaged and not just the squeezed middle classes if we are to raise ambitions, keep a level playing field and make sure no one gets left behind.

Ultimately the apprenticeship drive is moving in the right direction but implementation always brings new challenges, as well as the need for expectation management.

Rest assured, we will continue to work with the business community, schools and parents to represent their needs with Government and do all we can to achieve the greatest success possible.