Apprenticeships – who should foot the bill?

Here’s two facts:

Fact 1: 55% of this year’s graduates will end up unemployed or taking a job that doesn’t specifically require a degree.*

Fact 2: An average undergraduate course is expected to jump to £9000 a year.*

Put these two facts together and it’s fair to assume that for school leavers, Apprenticeships, with their promise of employment, wages AND recognised industry training, will seem a more viable route to getting a job, building a long term career and avoiding debt than university.

Employer benefits
Apprenticeships make sense for many school leavers. But do they work for employers? Well, thousands of companies already use Apprenticeships as a means of recruiting and training employees. Because they give them them:

• Access to school leaving talent
• More secure return on their skills investment
• Greater employee loyalty
• Employees trained to recognised industry standards
• Tailored support and advice on recruitment & training from training providers
• Job ready candidates for interview

With the current state of higher education, many companies who have traditionally focussed on graduate recruitment will no doubt be thinking again. With its strong brand and industry standards, Apprenticeships seem well placed to become a principle recruitment tool for many more businesses.  

 
Who pays?
Apprenticeships are an intrinsic part of the Government’s strategy to build a world-class skills base for the UK, part of its recession busting plan. But in times of economic crisis, in a climate of cuts, who should be funding the industry standard training, the assessments, the ongoing tailored support?

Currently, the Government pays:

• 100% training costs for apprentices aged 16–18
• 50% for apprentices aged between 19 and 24
• 0% or a minimal contribution for those aged 25

Plugging the funding gap
Apprenticeships funding is usually paid directly to the training provider by the Skills Funding Agency, through carefully managed contracts. For apprentices aged 19 or over, these contracts assume training providers collect a percentage of their training costs from employers. But through fear of losing customers in this economic climate, many training providers are not asking their employer clients to make any contributions towards this funding gap. Instead they absorb the losses and the effect on quality is inevitable.

Charging employers: cost vs quality
Charging employers is a complex issue that colleges and training providers have to manage carefully. Many good training providers have lost well established employer clients to larger providers who severely undercut to compete on price but in doing so run the risk of jeopardising quality. The very features that make Apprenticeships so attractive and so successful are in danger of being eroded in the drive to keep costs to employers at an absolute minimum. Features such as:

• flexibility to shape training delivery to meet individual employer’s needs
• tailored support for the apprentices themselves
• high qualification achievement rates
• low drop-out rates
• high standards of service
• individual, personal approach

Would YOU pay?
Has anyone asked employers how they feel about making contributions towards the cost of Apprenticeships for over 19s? Everyone assumes that all business will go for the short-term cost benefits rather than having the insight and business sense to take a long term view.

As a director of tpm, I want to give employers the chance to say what they really think about making financial contributions to training costs. Do you fund any private courses for your staff? Would you be happy to make a contribution to your employees’ Apprenticeships training? Under what circumstances does this become acceptable? When it comes to choosing a training provider to deliver your company’s training, whether it’s Apprenticeships or a privately-funded course, is cost always the most important factor? Does it come secondary to quality?

*source: http://founddegrees.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/employers-give-views-on-apprenticeships-over-degrees/

Advertisement

Tags: apprentices, apprenticeships, employers, funding, training, training provider