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Stuart Nathan
Features editor
Raising the profile of apprenticeships
It’s National Apprenticeship Week, although you could be forgiven for not knowing. For something that’s supposed to be a key part of the UK’s education and training policy, everyone’s been curiously quiet about it. It seems like our old adversary, public perception, is once again causing trouble.
Apprenticeships are an often-neglected but valuable way of starting a career. Ensuring that necessary skills are imparted in a work environment, they used to be a vital component of many industries. They’re still important in engineering. Not everybody has the disposition for academic study. Qualifications achieved while working are just as valid as those earned at a university or college.
Indeed, sometimes those are the same qualifications. For many engineering companies, apprenticeships continue into sponsored courses, both full-time and part time, and the apprentices graduate as part of their career, generally debt-free, and with all the experience, contacts and bank balance of someone who’s been in industry for several years. We’ve heard stories of people coming out of mechanical engineering degree courses who start work not knowing what a gasket is.
So is there still a stigma to apprenticeships? It does seem that way. Even the few press releases we’ve received seem reticent. One tells us that Vince Cable welcomed the expansion of British Airways’ successful apprenticeship scheme, set to take on 120 students this year; this, we’re told, ‘will give more students the opportunity to become full-time employees of British Airways.’ Will it? Will it really? Thanks for telling us. How enthusiastic that sounds. Tempted? Probably not.
Perhaps the problem is to do with the breadth of apprenticeships. You can become an apprentice at companies as diverse as BAE Systems, McDonalds, and probably Supacuts hairdressers down the road. Some of these sound more tempting than others. There’s also a lingering suspicion about it; something of the whiff of the widely-derided Youth Training Schemes of the 1980s, which were seen as a pretext to keep 16- to 24-year-olds off the unemployment figures, and (often, but not always, unfairly) as a licence for employers to exploit cheap labour while providing minimal training.
There are things that could be done to correct this. One of them might be to provide schools with some more incentive to guide pupils towards apprenticeships, if that’s the appropriate route for them. At the moment, university entrances are counted on the school league tables; apprenticeships could also be factored into the scores. Definitely, schools need more information about apprenticeships, what they are, and what they offer: some reassurance of the equivalence of apprenticeships with different organisations would be useful.
There needs to be a perception that starting an apprenticeship is not a failure. While readers of The Engineer are united in thinking that UK society needs to put a higher value on the status of engineers, we also need to recognise that there are many routes to achieving that position, and all of them are valid.
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Readers' comments (28)
Richard | 9 Feb 2011 1:59 pm
An apprenticeship is vital in engineering. The issue is later in life, when armed with many years of relevant expertise you find that graduates with no experience are shooting over you for promotion and pay. Big companies ignore the experienced and pay them very badly and pay over the odds for graduates with no knowledge. My advice is GO FOR A DEGREE AND DO IT THE EASY WAY. The pay and progression is possible that way.
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Anonymous | 9 Feb 2011 2:04 pm
Little is done to promote apprenticeships. My old school could tell me all I needed to know about uni but nothing about an apprenticeship.
I chose an apprenticeship over going to university 7 years ago and have never regretted that decision espeically as i have a good job now and no big debt hanging over my head.
As an advocate of apprenticshipes i try to give back what i got out of it and help with engineering programmes in schools as a way to open pupils eyes to other options.
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Mathew | 9 Feb 2011 2:11 pm
Apprenticeships, I believe are the key to UK engineering and manufacturing.
I myself completed a mechanical apprenticeship with a company called TTE in the NW, all of which was company sponsored. I left with an NVQ 3 in Process Engineering and an ONC in Mechanical Engineering and progressed to do a HNC. I am now 25 and have a degree in Mechanical Engineering, and also starting my MSc in Mech Eng. All has been support by the company and with their training program and support I am on the way to be come a Plant Engineer.
Some would say that this is not what all companies want as with the aging profile they need hands on workers, and I know plenty who completed the apprenticeship and are some of the best Fitters, Electricians out there.
Apprenticeships are the back bone to good companies creating good hard working employees, which in turn expands the engineering market, and more does need to be done to promote them. Especially when most people believe an Engineer in the UK is a car mechanic!!!!!!
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Anonymous | 9 Feb 2011 2:14 pm
The problem isn't just employers. Some idiot in government years ago decided that an abitrary 50% of all secondary school students should go to university. The end results?
1. every college out there became a "university" overnight
2. many degrees are now not worth the paper they're printed on
3. we as a country have "dumbed down" our education system and are seen as having done as much by other countries and employers overseas
4. you cannot get hold of a fitter or a plumber for love nor money
Bring back (real) apprenticeships (they're still required), move some of the so-called "universities" back to being technical colleges etc. Manufacturing in this country is not dead (despite what we're constantly told) and there is a future for it if we go back to basics!
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Anonymous | 9 Feb 2011 2:15 pm
I am a trainer with a major provider of engineering apprenticeships in the North-West. Last night we had our annual open evening and the number of prospective applicants was significantly higher than in recent years. It appears that the message of the value of apprenticeships is starting to be heard. I hope that this is not just because young people (or their parents) are running scared of university courses and perceptions of debt, however, because we need a range of options available in engineering education to suit all.
This new coalition government has been saying the right things about apprenticeships and appears to want to encourage their growth and wider uptake. My concern is that this area may be being developed (or appear to be so) at the expense of higher education. It would be cynical in the extreme of this government if part of its strategy for encouraging the uptake of apprenticeships was to make the university degree route less attractive through funding removal and simultaneous hikes in tuition fees. There is a role for all options, not just because we have a duty to provide choice to young people, but also because we need the skill-balanced workforce that different education routes provide.
Whilst encouraged that apprenticeships are seen in a favourable light I would find it objectionable if people were forced in this direction because they could not afford, yet had the calling and talent for, some other route that would allow them to develop in a different way. I want to work with people on my apprenticeship programme who have chosen it for all the right reasons, not because financially it is their only option.
On 26 October 2010, John Hayes made an encouraging speech to The Royal Society of Arts on the value of hands-on skills and 'craftsmanship'. In this he extolled the virtues of using ones hands and hinted at how our society undervalues practical skills.
"People speak of the intellectual beauty of a mathematical theorem. But there is beauty, too, in the economy and certainty of movement of a master craftsman. I believe that both kinds of beauty must be recognised on their own terms. And that implies not that the stock of academe must fall, but that the stock of craft must rise" he said then. This suggested unequivocally that both routes were valued.
He also said in the same speech "In my view, the skills of a bricklayer are in no way less admirable and certainly no less hard-won than those of a stockbroker. And admired is what they should be. For each feel value, all feel valued." Nice line, Mr Hayes, but it's not bricklayers who 'earn' 6-figure bonuses.
I hope that the government keeps making the right noises and turning these into positive actions for our sector. And I hope it will come to realise too, hopefully quickly, that this strategy will only work if those of us who are already the trained generation, the teachers, the trainers and the existing craftsmen and craftswomen, are respected, valued, and paid handsomely for their true worth to this nation's prosperity and survival. We are at the coalface doing it, every day, right now, but it's hard, back-breaking, poorly-paid work down here in the dark.
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Anonymous | 9 Feb 2011 2:18 pm
It's all well and good going for a degree but in my experience degree holders do not want to get their hands dirty.
Who is going to do their dirty work if we don't have apprenticeships?
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Dennis | 9 Feb 2011 2:33 pm
I agree entirely with Richard in that it would seem that employers are advertising for graduate positions but even worse than that, once an apprentice has completed his / her training, companies seem reluctant to fund further study to degree level, the level they are actually insisting on to fill their own posts.
Is this because they are frightened that once armed with a Degree AND Experience the apprentice is in such a stronger position to fly the nest?
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Mathew Lewis | 9 Feb 2011 2:39 pm
"It's all well and good going for a degree but in my experience degree holders do not want to get their hands dirty.
Who is going to do their dirty work if we don't have apprenticeships?"
I agree, but because I did my degree after my apprentiship and come from a mechanical background I am very hands on as an engineer. I see full time students on my course and the idea of touching a spanner (for those that actually know what one is) is horrid!!
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Simon Martin | 9 Feb 2011 2:43 pm
I would agree with apprenticeships generally, but would note their pitfalls which are considerable. Much of this is the way qualifications are achieved these days, and the lack of practical experience from degree qualified staff.
Too much emphasis is based on a Degree and apprentices have largely been ignored which puts an emphasis on paperwork above practical skills. Practical skills appeal to a much wider segment of the population who may lack the intelligence or inclination to do a degree, but are excellent at what they do. It is this imbalance which needs addressing.
A graduate may be able to design a machine, but can they fabricate it, weld it, and make all the components? NO, most cannot. If we allow this situation to carry on we will have a lot of theorists but no practical skills, another imbalance.
Degree qualifications need looking at in detail, the watered down Degrees of today do not compare with the older degrees. Those of us of a "certain age" are often dismayed at what those with a modern watered down degree do not know, but should know. It would appear thet the basics are not taught as they should be, and this is detrimental to engineering and the holder of the qualification.
My personal opinion is that we should go back in time and do what we used to, as it worked.
People start as apprentices, they learn their craft and develop practical skills from experienced staff. If they make the grade, they go on to do a degree on merit and not on a school or other qualification.
Abuse of qualifications is another issue, many go for a Degree unrelated to their field because it is easy, the sociology degree is a fine example. They do it to hold a degree and abuse the system financially as they still cost to do. They then approach an employer with a worthless degree unrelated to a profession, and get a position based on a degree.
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David Wickett | 9 Feb 2011 2:47 pm
Once again, as we always have to, we seem to be defending the position in society of engineers. I have been in a job that I love for 45+ years and things have never changed. Position is status quo.
I trained in an apprenticeship scheme during the early 1970's, position called professional engineer trainee. For various reasons training took seven years to complete and with only one of the years being even remotely university based. Gaining chartered status was, and is, a real honour.
In the words of the staff that I am now responsible for, I am a very good boss. Fair and reasonable usually, hard when necessary.
Until industry back off from paper chasing and employ HR staff that KNOW the needs rather than being capable of computer cv sorting, apprenticeships, whether "blue white or professional collar" will never locate real talent from the younger generation. Perception of the youngsters will always be "it is hard" to engineer, when in fact it is actually fun to learn. Convince the youngsters of this and they can achieve high rewards for success and they will flock in droves.
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