Rising up

It was National Apprenticeship Week recently so the opportunity to wax lyrical about apprenticeships couldn’t be better timed.

Apprentices and apprenticeships are definitely ‘en vogue’ at the moment and I’m pleased about that. I can’t however help but reflect on the irony here of how a nation so steeped in engineering and manufacturing tradition somehow managed to ‘forget’ that we’re really rather good at making things and decide we’d better focus on becoming a service industry instead.

The fact that Governments, schools, colleges and a whole host of others decided to neglect manufacturing in this country for couple of decades still grates intensely with me and it always will. However, things are definitely moving in the right direction again and suddenly apprenticeships are everywhere. And not a moment too soon either – the skills gap in this country is a problem that we need to address urgently.

I received a press release recently with the eye-catching headline: ‘Engineering apprenticeships twice as popular as degrees’ and it literally stopped me in my tracks. According to the release – which emanated from the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) – more than double the number of young people are choosing engineering apprenticeships as degree courses. We’re finally getting somewhere it seems.

Don’t get me wrong though. Degrees are absolutely essential for certain careers and at the cutting edge of technology in manufacturing and engineering we need the best brains with the best qualifications to pioneer and innovate so that we remain a leading player on the global stage. We must continue to encourage and nurture in this regard.

Time for a disclaimer I feel. I’m absolutely not trying to discourage anyone from going to university to pursue a degree qualification but not everyone is academic and thank God they’re not. Many people are hugely practical, phenomenally artistic, insanely gifted with their hands or just downright entrepreneurial. The point here is that to succeed as a nation we need a balance of skills both practical and academic. Sadly, those vital ingredients have been neglected in recent years, but huge efforts are being made now to redress the balance. We really don’t need a nation full of boffins who don’t know one end of a screwdriver from the other. What we do need is a blend of academic excellence and practical expertise so that we get the best of both worlds.

And as Michelle Richmond, IET membership director and a former apprentice so eloquently affirms: “With a university degree costing £27,000 in fees alone and with no guarantee of a job at the end of the course, apprenticeships are more popular than ever with young people.”

You can read the press release in its entirety in the issue on page 12.