UCAS PLEDGES TO MAKE FINDING APPRENTICESHIPS EASIER

More than half of students looking to apply to higher education in 2022 are interested in apprenticeships but find it difficult to find information about them.

A third of students at schools and only half in colleges said that they were not told about apprenticeships, despite there being a legal requirement placed on schools to do so.

Now, the Cheltenham-based national Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) has promised to make it much easier for students to find out more information on its website.

UCAS research reveals that more needs to be done to highlight the benefits of apprenticeships. Only eight per cent of students surveyed associated apprenticeships with a good job.

Education should last a lifetime

By Ian Mean, Business West Gloucestershire director

Boris Johnson’s lifelong loan entitlement revealed in the Queen’s Speech really does offer us a significant change for access to learning and skills.

And in my view, it could pave the way for a new culture of skills fit for the 21st century.

We are living longer so careers will need to extend too.

Is it feasible that as education finishes in the teens and twenties, those early learnings will see someone through their whole working life?

The Prime Minister’s lifetime guarantee is a great idea. But it must be planned and

A paltry four per cent associate the word “prestigious” with apprenticeships compared with 76 per cent for a traditional university degree.

UCAS Chief Executive Clare Marchant said: “UCAS is about much more than executed with all the partners involved –particularly our further education colleges and universities. applying to an undergraduate degree – we provide information across the full range of post-18 opportunities. But more needs to be done to shake off the outdated stigma or misplaced snobbery associated with apprenticeships, given they are a great start to any career.”

Hitherto, careers planning for young people and vital retraining for older workers has been something of a shambles.

I hope that a proper Work Plan to take Boris’s lifetime guarantee forward will start to put an end to the belief that university entrance is the be-all and end-all to a successful career.

But that will only happen if the guarantee remains a flagship policy with plenty of cash investment and good leadership.

I would like to see an industrialist of stature like James Dyson being the figurehead of this new work and training culture.

Apprenticeships are currently in intensive care and the whole system needs major surgery.

I am reminded by the headline over the Sunday Times business news column written by James Timpson, chief executive of Timpson Group.

“The apprenticeship levy is a load of old cobblers”, it said.

And James is right. It’s a good idea in principle but needs urgent reform.

Isn’t it appalling that more than £1 billion in levy money has recently gone unspent by businesses?

The manufacturing sector’s trade body, Make UK, says the unspent money should be used by government to revamp the scheme.

Our economic recovery relies heavily on young people being given new opportunities – many through apprenticeships while our older, displaced workers must be offered retraining.

I am proud to be an ex-apprentice having started as a junior reporter at 17.

And at 74, I am still learning.

Ian Mean is an honorary vice president of Gloucestershire College and a board member of GFirst LEP