Apprentices quitting as world of work is ‘more attractive’

Apprenticeships offer on-the-job training and can include a bursary but typically pay less than regular employment.

Marches Local Enterprise Partnership chairman Mandy Thorn MBE said they were “very highly regulated” and “inflexible” and sometimes failed to keep pace with changes in their industries, prompting candidates to drop out.

She and chief executive Rachel Laver were updating Telford and Wrekin Council’s Business and Finance Scrutiny Committee on the LEP’s recent activity, which included a £520,000 partnership with Telford College that developed a virtual and augmented reality training suite and delivered 152 apprenticeships.

The Marches LEP covers Telford and Wrekin, Shropshire and Herefordshire and works to attract government and private funding and promote economic growth.

A report by LEP Corporate Services Director Ilia Bowles told the committee it had channelled £44.1 million of funding from the Local Growth Fund, Getting Building Fund and Marches Investment Fund to projects in Telford and Wrekin since April 2015.

“Telford College benefits from a £684,000 project, including £520,000 provided by the Marches LEP’s Local Growth Fund under the ‘Investing in our Future Workforce’ project,” she wrote.

“The funding was used by Telford College to develop a VAR training suite enabling students across curriculum areas to engage with the latest VR platforms and learning programmes to enhance their education with bespoke technology packages.

“The project had delivered 152 apprenticeships and assisted 3,992 new learners by contract completion on March 31, 2021.”

Committee member Kuldip Sahota said the number 152 seemed small.

“This is something the government and the council administration are quite keen on,” he said.

“Wherever we go we always say, we give a contract to any builder, we always insist on having some apprentices.”

Ms Laver said it was a “struggle”.

She said she had met with Telford College CEO and principal Graham Guest recently and was due to meet the Skills Advisory Panel next week.

“I think we’ve got to find out why apprenticeships are not so attractive to young people at the moment,” she said.

Ms Thorn noted that those 152 apprentices only represented one directly-funded LEP project, and said there were more in the wider market, but admitted apprenticeships were “not as popular as we all thought they would be”.

“Telford College is doing a really good job but, more widely, some apprentices are being trained in areas where the business world is moving more quickly than the courses are,” she said.

“It’s very highly regulated, it’s not flexible. I think if you spoke to Mr Guest, if you spoke to college principals, they would suggest that a lot of people start apprenticeships and don’t finish them because the world of work is much more attractive.

“If you are doing an apprenticeship with an employer who pays the apprenticeship wage, not the wage of somebody who is working, it is very low.

“So there is a lot of work we all need to do about making apprenticeships more flexible and more attractive for young people.”