The Government boasts that in 2011, around 457,000 people
started an apprenticeship. This is a 63.5 per cent increase on the
previous year. They claim the Government’s Apprenticeship Programme is now the "gold
standard vocational qualification". However unemployment among 16 to
24-year-olds remains high at almost 21% .
To my mind, apprenticeships
have been seriously devalued. When I
left school any young person who secured an apprenticeship knew that he or she
would be given the opportunity to gain marketable skills that would stand them
in good stead for the rest of their working lives. More importantly, the
apprentice and the employer entered into an informal contract that bound them
together for the five years it took to graduate as a ‘journeyman’ tradesman.
There was an *unwritten agreement that in normal circumstances the apprentice’s
position was guaranteed. I know from
experience that when times were lean and men were ‘layed off’, the apprentice’s
job was secure. But times have changed.
The Government recently reclassified the official definition
of an apprenticeship to include training that extends as little as a year.
During 2011, 51.8%
of apprenticeships for 16 to 18- year-olds were completed in less than 12
months. The 12-month minimum change,
introduced from August this year, is likely to result in 65,000 extra apprenticeships
each year, or their reclassification as pre-apprenticeships.
Morrisons Supermarkets, for example
reclassified existing employees as apprentices.
It turns out that one in 10 of the apprenticeships created in England
last year was at Morrisons' supermarkets. Also most of the 52,000 apprentices
at the supermarket were existing employees who were over 25. These
apprenticeships last an average of 28 weeks.
* At one time, of course,
apprenticeships involved a written contract.
