There has been a massive 377% increase in the number of new apprentices aged over 25 as employers look to upskill and motivate their existing workforce during the recession.
Government figures have revealed that 46,800 over-25s joined apprenticeship schemes this year.
For the full story please see the Personnel Today website.
The Skills Commission is issuing a call for evidence for its inquiry into the provision of teacher training in vocational education.
Chaired by Sir Mike Tomlinson, the Commission is now inviting written submissions relating to teacher training in vocational education and is supported by the educational foundation Edge.
More details can be found at the Skills Commission website.
Dr David Collins CBE will join the Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS) as its new chief executive from 1 August 2009.
The president of the Association of Colleges and outgoing principal of South Cheshire College, will replace Roger McCLure, and serve for a one year period until 1 August 2010. Further details can be found at FE News.
Employers should work with schools and colleges to help close the “soft skills gap” according to the communications firm BT. A report on the Personnel Today website quotes Mike Rake, BT Group chairman as saying:
“We can’t afford to educate our young people without giving them the personal, management and communication skills they need to be effective in the workplace. It is vital that business, education and government find ways to work together.”
Skills Secretary John Denham today pledged to help apprentices go to university, and to ensure higher education meets the needs of students who have come up through a vocational route.
Welcoming Progression into Apprenticeships, a Skills Commission’s report published today, Mr Denham said:
“Apprenticeships are valuable in their own right, but I believe there should be clear progression routes for young people and adults who complete their apprenticeships and want to go further – whether that’s onto an advanced apprenticeship, a diploma or a foundation degree and beyond.
“Alongside this, I want universities to offer high-level vocational courses to meet the needs of students who have come up through vocational routes. Vocational routes to higher education are important. But it is also important that vocational training should continue to higher levels.
“Demand for apprenticeships far outstrips supply and they’re proving increasingly popular with young people and adults alike. More and more people will reach the threshold of university education through vocational routes, such as apprenticeships. Our education system must be able accommodate those people and help them gain higher levels of skills and qualifications.”
The Government affirmed its commitment to incorporating Apprenticeship frameworks into the UCAS tariff to make it simpler to go to university after an apprenticeship in its New Opportunities white paper, published in January.
Currently, apprentices can progress onto a foundation degree. Foundation degrees are rising in popularity: 72,000 students studied for one in 2007/08 and the Government has a target of 100,000 enrolments by 2010.
Over the coming months, ministers will be considering a fresh form of vocational degree which would benefit learners and employers alike. Vocational degrees could help more people get the high-level skills they need to pursue a rewarding career and could address particular skills gaps in industry.
The Skills Commission report published today also recommends clearer mapping between diplomas and apprenticeships, so that people studying diplomas know precisely when and where they have acquired a qualification that is also part of an apprenticeship and what further qualifications they would need to complete the apprenticeship.
Mr Denham reaffirmed that young people completing a diploma would have clear progression routes into apprenticeships, and that, from 2013, learners in England will have entitlements to both apprenticeships and diplomas.
Mr Denham said:
“We are making good progress on supporting progression from diplomas to apprenticeships. We will make sure the links between apprenticeships and diplomas are clear and understandable to learners and their parents, as well as to employers and apprenticeship training providers.”
The Skills Commission report also called for a clearer definition of programme-led apprenticeships, courses which involve an apprentice studying full time at a college or training provider without necessarily having an employer.
DIUS and DSCF will respond in full to each of the Skills Commission’s recommendations in the summer.
Responding to the Government’s announcement of 21,000 new Apprenticeships across the public sector, TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said:
“As well as encouraging employers to take on apprentices, it’s good to see the Government practising what it preaches and taking on trainees across the public sector too.
“The Government should now use its purchasing power to make sure companies that bid for public sector contracts provide more Apprenticeship opportunities. Unions are committed to high quality Apprenticeships and believe they should be at the heart of a skills-based economy that we would like to see emerge from the recession.”
As the Government prepares for its job summit today, a new TUC report published is calling for state funded training to be extended to all workers facing redundancy.
Skills in the Recession welcomes the Government’s recent £350 million expansion of Train to Gain for small and medium-sized employers to train staff. The TUC report calls for this to be expanded further by relaxing Train to Gain funding rules, so that all workplaces threatened with job losses can access funding.
The report also calls for the Government to revise the ‘16 hour rule’ that prevents people studying for more than 16 hours a week from claiming unemployment and housing benefit. This discourages benefit claimants from taking further education courses, even though evidence suggests that it can help people back into work.
As well as short-term measures to help dampen the impact of the recession, the report calls on the Government to link its skills strategy with a more active industrial strategy.
The TUC wants the Government to match investment in sectors that the UK is performing well in, such as creative industries and low energy manufacturing, with investment in appropriate skills so that the UK workforce can meet the demand for new jobs in these sectors.
TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: “Providing more training will give the millions of people who have lost their jobs a better chance of returning to work as quickly as possible. The Government deserves credit for increasing investment in training, such as the extra £140 million announced to boost apprenticeships.
“But more can be done, such as expanding Train to Gain to all those at risk of redundancy and removing the ‘16 hour rule’ that discourages benefit claimants taking further education courses.
“As well as the short-term need for training, the Government must also look at the kind of economy we want to emerge from the recession. We want to see a fairer, more balanced economy, with a greater emphasis on high value jobs. To do this, the Government must ensure that UK workers have the skills to take up new jobs in high performing sectors like our creative industries and low energy manufacturing.”
The Conservatives proposed this week to abolish income tax on savings paid by basic-rate tax payers. They aim to fund this through restrictions on public spending amounting to cuts of some £5.4 billion. Although the Tories say they will match Labour’s spending on health and schools, we doubt further education and training would escape the axe.
TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said:
“The taxpayer will have to shell out £5.4 billion to fund this proposal, which would mostly benefit big banks, the super-rich and tax avoiders.
“It would not create a single new job but would instead add to the dole queues as a result of proposed cuts in public spending.”
The Educations and Skills Act 2008 received Royal Assent this week. The Act will require 16 and 17 year olds who leave education without achieving a certain level of qualification to participate in accredited training. For employers, it contains a new obligation to allow 16 and 17 year old employees the equivalent of one day a week off to undertake training (which may be accredited training provided by the employer) and a new duty not to employ such individuals if they have not made appropriate training arrangements.
The new duty to participate post 16 will not start to come into force until 2013 and there are many details still to be specified in regulations and guidance.
The new rights and obligations contained within the Education and Skills Act 2008 are in addition to the Government’s proposal to give employees in England the right to request time off for skills training once they have worked for their employer for 26 weeks and for the employer to consider such requests seriously.
A database of vocational experts who want to ‘pass on their skills’ as a further education teacher, tutor or trainer has been launched by Lifelong Learning UK to help colleges and independent learning providers fill key learning delivery roles.
The Pass on Your Skills vocational practitioner database allows providers to search, free of charge, for professionals with technical or vocational backgrounds who want to start a new career in teaching. It links providers with individuals who have expertise in specific areas where corresponding skills shortages exist in the learning and skills sector.
The pilot database launched on 14 November and contains details of over 500 individually assessed individuals from engineering and health and social care backgrounds. It was developed following a national Pass on Your Skills recruitment drive by Lifelong Learning UK, to encourage industry professionals to consider a career in further education and help learing providers strengthen vocational expertise in their workforce.
Further Pass on Your Skills recruitment campaigns in 2009 will lead to a wider roll out of the database, extending the range of vocational expertise offered by candidates in the database to cover additional ‘in-demand’ skill sets including STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) and construction and the built environment-related expertise.
Learning providers can access the Pass on Your Skills vocational practitioner database at www.lluk.org/poys-database.htm. Registration takes five minutes, following which providers can search for and request further details about candidates who match their recruitment needs.
