UK slashes red tape in apprenticeships scheme

£2.50??

Bloody hell!

Err...

...the way major fast-food companies operate is to de-skill people so they are basic automatons and will work for low-pay. What guarantees are in place to ensure that these £2.50 serfs do not get the boot once they become more expensive?

Quite why the government wants to help the fast-food industry when we are facing an obesity epidemic is quite beyond me; and that is before we even consider the methods of food production.

There again - I've never understood why the Olympics (and other sporting events) lower themselves to taking advertising from these purveyors of high-fat convenience.

In other words...

"improve your bottom line through motivated new talent"

We've taken away their benefits and right to a decent wage so they can either work for next to nothing or starve.

"funding is in place if businesses cannot afford to pay the new apprentices themselves"

If your business is so uneconomic that ou can't pay £2.50ph, the tax payer will subsidise you with free labour.

So what happens when the apprenticeship comes to an end? The business has to let them go as they are even less able to pay the going rate for a trained employee. Luckily, there's plenty more tax-payer funded apprentices to take advantage of. No money actually get saved, but the jobless figures look better.

I've never particularly like the scheme

because it is very low paid and the fields they are offering apprenticeships in often aren’t what you would traditionally think apprenticeships are for. They used to be skills such as electricians and chippys where you could pick up the basics quite quickly but it took several years to become competent and productive, especially if you wanted any form of independence in your work.

We were persuaded to take on two young lads on this scheme a couple of years ago. We didn't really need any more warehouse staff but decided that it was worth looking at. The lads were not only inexperienced in work, but also in how to behave at work and it took them a while to fit into the culture of a working environment, very different from school which is all they were accustomed to.

We weren't particularly comfortable with the level of pay, but that was the scheme. After a year the lads had developed personally and also were becoming productive for the business and are now both full time employees and earning a fair level of pay for their age and experience. Without this scheme we would not have employed them, we may have taken on someone with more experience at a later date.

I'm sure there will be employers who will abuse the scheme to get cheap drone labour, please don't tar everyone with that brush. I think the scheme is not perfect, but it does help get some people through the door into employment.

@Chris W

Actually its £4800pa to learn how to do a job instead of £0pa sitting in school getting bored - these are apprenticeships for 16-18 year-olds who, under changes to school leaving ages about to come in, are now expected to be in "education" until 18. For non-academic types this seems an excellent opportunity - better than the EMA "bribe" to go to school.

As for the avoiding £9000pa university fees ... that's the higher level apprenticeship schemes you start after A-Levels. My son did his "work experience" week last year at a major aero-engineering firm where at the end they were given a presentation on their apprenticeship schemes and he's totally sold on the idea of earning £10k rising to £20k pa while training and earning a part-time degree instead of paying £9k pa! Also heard on a radio business program of one of the London Accountancy firms who now hire a number of new employees post A-level rather than post-Uni - and they start at £25k pa which the person from the company described as "a very good deal for both sides"

Plenty of negativity here...

Blimey: the government cuts bureaucracy and helps to fund employment, and people act like it's a bad thing...

Admittedly, there's almost certainly an element of unemployment-number-fiddling going on here, but at the same time, it's giving a reasonable chunk of young adults a chance to earn a bit of cash (more than being on the dole, judging by how much my younger brother is getting, now he's out of Uni and searching for a job) and gain some skills and experience; even if they're booted out of the scheme once the subsidies stop, they'll still be in a better position than they were when they started...

The government has created 360,000 apprenticeships this year - what?

Apprentice tax collectors?

Apprentice social workers?

Apprentice "computer says no" people for the DWP?

Apprentice town planners.

Erm, no. I don't think the gov. created 360,000 apprenticeships. Some other people did, perhaps.

Fake apprenticeships

Meh this is just a way to circumvent the NMW..... check out jobcentre and fish4jobs there are tons of fake apprenticeships.

Apprentice cleaner

Apprentice sandwich artiste

Apprentice office admin.

Meh......

Or just another name for Youth Training Scheme

Tried and failed by the Tories already. Proper apprenticeships, with day release in the industries the country so desperately needs were abandoned in the early 80s in favour of YTS.

Look where we are now. What skilled people we had have either retired or emigrated. I am a genune time-served apprentice. Four years at Rolls Royce where I came out the other end as fully skilled design engineer

Pity the Government at the time, Thatchler's, was bringing British industry to its knees in pursuit of free markets and becoming a 'Financial Services' centre. What has that got us, Bankers, City Slickers and assorted other spivs who only take from us, rather than create.

Wrong target

It's small companies that need help not the big ones. Proportionally, the small ones have to jump through far more hoops, but are actually able to give a much better 1-2-1 training, and are usually very happy to do so.

... but then I forgot. Small companies usually actually make something or supply a needed service. Can't have that sort of think going on can we?

YTS Scheme renamed and reanimated.....

I remember being told my apprenticeship with Rumbellows as a service engineer twenty odd years ago was the only apprenticeship in the region. Everything else was YTS. Of course Rumbellows went tits up shortly after, but hey ho. My cousin took a YTS as a mechanic about the same time. He earned less than a quarter what I did. He also worked for the garage for about 5 years on repeated YTS schemes, never became a qualified mechanic, just did lots of services on cars.

The YTS scheme was/is responsible for a whole generation of kids thinking "Why bother?" if all you are going to be is cheap labour without any real prospects after it.

And yes, some do run proper training schemes, mine was one, it was part funded by YTS, but then again, it was the only one in the region.

This is just more of the same. I'm disgusted.