The Apprentice

No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it for anyone else

It was National Apprenticeship Week last week. How do I know this? I know this because my email inbox was awash with news releases highlighting it. There were case studies galore, comment, news pieces, surveys, interview opportunities.

Good. There’s no getting away from it: if we’re serious about fixing the skills gap, apprenticeships have to be front and centre.

For years, the construction sector – trades, merchants, material suppliers alike – have relied on apprenticeships as one of the most reliable routes for bringing new talent into the sector. The BMF, and NMBS, have been in the vanguard of that for some years. Yet government tinkering around the edges of how the system is funded and administered in the past few years has left some feeling it’s more paperwork than its worth. The Apprenticeship Levy, I suspect, worked better on a spreadsheet that it did in reality. So the Government’s decision to introduce a UCAS-style clearance system for apprenticeships is, on the face of it, a positive step.

Anything that makes the process of getting an apprenticeship – and recruiting apprentices -clearer, more transparent and easier to navigate has to be good news. If young people can better understand what their earning and long-term career possibilities look like, then suddenly a career in the sector becomes more visible and more appealing.

The Government’s construction agenda is ambitious — housebuilding targets, infrastructure projects, public sector upgrades and all that jazz. But ambition is just wishful thinking unless it’s backed by action. And action tends to need investment and proper, structured management.

I’ve said before that the government’s push towards net zero and the electrification of our home-heating will die on its you-know-what if there isn’t sufficient suitably trained installers. The last thing we need is another issue like the insulation problems uncovered by the Public Accounts Committee, which discovered major defects in over 30,000 houses fitted with insulation through government schemes since 2022.

So it was pleasing to see find evidence amongst my inbox of the investment that heating companies such as Vaillant and others – are making into heat pump apprenticeships. There is, of course – see also the comment about the insulation scheme – a need to ensure that new entrants are trained properly, in order to maintain quality.

 Which means that the plans to review of the existing apprenticeship standards, with a view to “streamlining” the system could be a little more contentious.

On paper, simplifying a complex system is a good thing. But there’s always the worry about what “streamlining” actually means in practice. Does it mean ditching some of the areas where there is currently a low take-up, yet which could be in highly specialist technical areas, which are precisely the kind of skills we can’t afford to lose.

In her November rootle around down the back of the sofa, Chancellor Rachel Reeves found an extra £725m to fund 50,000 more apprenticeships during this Parliament. Hurrah. Although a good chunk of that is ring-fenced to help connect young people not in education, employment or training with local employers.

Meanwhile, the Department for Work and Pensions has said it is committed to creating a simplified apprenticeship system that gives businesses greater flexibility over how they use their levy funds.

For builders’ merchants, their materials suppliers, and their contractor customers the priority has to be a system that delivers skilled, competent people and does so in a way that maintains high standards, without getting bogged down in red-tape, and without costing the earth for an industry already reeling from the Reeves Effect.

Alongside all this, there is a lot of noise about the absolute Sh** Show that the Student Loans issue has turned into. More and more young people, nearing the end of their standard educational journeys, are wondering why they would tie themselves into loans that they may never get anywhere near re-paying. They are looking at apprenticeships through different eyes, and that route is becoming more and more appealing.

If the government, education authorities, training providers and employers can all pull in the same direction on apprenticeships, this could be a genuine turning point. For this industry, but also the rest of the economy.