According to a CIPD report of last year (http://bit.ly/2bXbNwZ), 33.8% of the manufacturing workforce is aged over 50. That figure ranks it fifth out of 18 UK business activities (highest to lowest percentage).
Having taken some 25 years to come full circle, the UK is to return to levy funding of apprentice training as of 6 April next year. The government’s intention is to boost apprentice starts by three million in the five years to 2020, an increase of around 26%.
It was 25 years ago this year that the training-levy-funded Engineering Industry Training Board (EITB) morphed into the paid-for-services Engineering Training Authority. The EITB had been prompted by the 1964 Industrial Training Act, so had had a good innings. But with levels of training inadequate, moving to an employer-led, commercial basis was considered the way ahead. Over the years, the model has been tweaked and for some years now Semta has been the body charged with skilling engineering and advanced manufacturing. But again, apprentice numbers have not until very recent years started to climb, following a massive focus from government and a dawning of the realisation that there is an ageing workforce issue. And now the levy system returns to help further.
This new funding model and apprentice number target operates across all sectors of activity, not only the craft or technical areas that used to be the heartland of apprenticeships. Indeed, that has been one of the criticisms of the claims for boosted apprenticeship numbers; that they are attached to jobs that are not like apprenticeships as were previously understood.
The government has acknowledged this, specifying that its new Trailblazer apprenticeships must be no shorter than 12 months, plus other criteria. That still sounds brief when compared to a five-year EITB apprenticeship. But the training need is across all sectors, as the CIPD figures underline, so the expansion of apprenticeships to formalise and codify training in general should be seen as a positive thing overall.
Back to the engineering and manufacturing challenge specifically, though, and EngineeringUK says in its 2016 report (https://is.gd/zoyoba) that there is an annual UK shortfall of 29,000 people with Level 3 skills and 40,000 with Level 4+ skills entering “engineering occupations”. For Level 3, the recorded number of 27,195 UK apprenticeship achievements needs to more than double to meet demand, it says. Although EngineeringUK frames its ‘engineering occupations’ more broadly than just within engineering and manufacturing companies, there is clearly a mountain still to climb. And while celebrating growing apprenticeship numbers overall, Machinery will keenly watch for progress in its sector of interest.
