With the end of February in sight, is it too optimistic to say that there are things to look forward to? More daylight, spring arriving sometime surely, and at the risk of cursing it all, maybe even some relief for industry from our economy?
It also brings a key week-long event that is a big deal for our sector as we celebrate Scottish Apprenticeship Week. It is a chance for all of us who need and support the value of work-based learning to share successes, show the widest and warmest of welcomes, and maybe even influence the influencers of the young and not so young for whom an engineering apprenticeship would be an excellent career path.
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This year’s campaign theme is Skills Generation, underlining that apprenticeships are crucial in helping us generate a skilled workforce to meet the demands for now and the future.
The most recent figures for engineering and energy modern apprenticeships starts suggest we may be heading for another strong year for uptake - the just-release third-quarter statistics showing a 10% increase compared with the same quarter the previous year, and that is now two-and-a-half times more than the low point due to the pandemic in 2020. An encouraging trend that, honestly, we need to see continued through the year, and the next, and the next after that. I’ll share with anyone that will listen my frustration that our biggest challenge as a sector is that hardly anyone sees the brilliant, inspirational engineering that goes on day in, day out in our industrial parks up and down the country. What we manufacture and how we do that is evolving constantly, and so it is no surprise that apprenticeship frameworks are being reviewed and updated at the same rate to ensure they remain relevant and useful for both the individual and the company.
Whereas most of those changes are more evolution, the switch of model currently being rolled out reflects a more significant ambition for development that matches the rate of change for current and future ways of working. Following that rate requires an agile and responsive system, and critically one that places both the employer and their employees at the heart of apprenticeship development.
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A critical part of this is streamlining the pathways for engineering through apprenticeships from foundation to modern to graduate levels. The benefits of an easier-to-follow, less-cluttered landscape bring accessibility for individuals considering this career path, clarifying a great pathway to an engineering career from school to degree level. Industry will gain the rewards of a more efficient and effective system that delivers the right skills for employers, and crucially is designed to adapt to change. Following a less-is-more approach is one where we all recognise the benefits, but that does not make it any easier to do. The new model aligns occupational competence to job activity, reducing frameworks through consultation that are less commonly used, and delivering apprenticeships that align with their sectors and occupations - and the realities of the world of work.
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This is the first Scottish apprenticeship to include a discrete competence on “sustainable practice”, ensuring that Scottish engineers of the future will understand how they can develop sustainable practices and products. Adding this brings essential capability and competitiveness to the company the apprentice works within, and in a world where any sector must work hard to attract the dwindling numbers of young people, matching their priorities for sustainability is good business sense. A final change to highlight is the incorporation of transferable, high-value, human skills identified as “meta skills” - such as problem-solving, agility of thought or perspective-shifting. These make the core of four distinct layers, and are balanced by generic, specific and local skills that ensure a mix of specifically what one organisation needs whilst providing individuals with the capacity to adapt throughout their working lives.
These changes will be one of our themes for Scottish Apprenticeship Week, as we aim to help continue the conversation to ensure this is as smooth a transfer as possible, making sure that any feedback needed to ensure that is the case reaches the teams who can help.
Finally, to all the brilliant individuals and companies who are in the running for an award at the Scottish Apprenticeship Awards, I wish you all the best of luck at the event in Aberdeen on March 8. You are the very best advert for the value of work-based learning we could have.
Paul Sheerin is chief executive of Scottish Engineering
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