City training campaign launched today
Mar 19 2009 by Anna Blackaby, Birmingham Post
Ed Balls, John Denham and Sir Alan Sugar are in Birmingham today to encourage a wider take-up of apprenticeship schemes among local companies.
The Secretaries of State for Children, Schools and Families and for Innovation, Universities and Skills are touring the country with the celebrity entrepreneur as part of the government’s campaign to get 130,000 apprenticeships completed every year by 2010-11.
Despite unemployment in the region surging by 16 per cent yesterday, Mr Balls said taking on apprentices was still important in the current climate and would help West Midland companies ensure they had the skills necessary to compete in the future.
“Even in more difficult times for the economy there are companies that are thinking about the future and taking on new employees,” he said. “It is important we have immediate action to support businesses through the downturn and help people get back into work but we have also got to plan for the future.
“Companies that invest in skills through the downturn have higher profits when the economy strengthens.”
Mr Balls said the number of completed apprenticeships in the West Midlands had doubled in the last few years, from 6,050 in 2003/04 to 13,070 in 2007/08, with the biggest rise in numbers in the Birmingham area.
The Birmingham apprenticeship event comes a day after a report by the Skills Commission found young people were failing to take up apprenticeships because they were not being given the right careers advice. The Commission’s report, Progression through Apprenticeships, said careers advisers have a lack of knowledge about the needs of local employers.
Mr Balls said that this was “not good enough” and the government was working to tackle this lack of knowledge.
“We are just at the moment passing the law in parliament to require every school in the country to tell young people about apprenticeships,” he said.
“Alan and I will be meeting with 30 or 40 employers and FE colleges to discuss what is happening here in the West Midlands. Too often young people say ‘I did an apprenticeship because I found out about it myself’. I will say that this is not good enough.”
The government has recruited Sir Alan, whose series The Apprentice returns to the BBC this month, to appear in a television advertisement highlighting the advantages for companies of taking on an apprentice.
