The Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) says more decisive action is needed from government to address failings with the current apprenticeship system.
The professional body for UK recruitment businesses was commenting after Rishi Sunak pledged to create up to 20,000 more apprenticeships with a series of reforms including fully funding training for young people and cutting red tape for small businesses.
In a speech to a conference for small businesses in Warwickshire, the Prime Minister announced the government will pay the full cost of apprenticeships for people aged 21 or under at small firms from 1 April.
To enable this, it is pledging £60m of new investment for next year.
Commenting on the apprenticeship announcements by the Prime Minister, REC Deputy Chief Executive Kate Shoesmith said:
"Cutting the cost of apprenticeships is useful to SMEs in a slow economy and when the volume of young people aged under 24 years old starting an apprenticeship has hardly increased for 20 years. But today's announcements are not the concerted reform of apprenticeships required to better contribute to overcoming labour shortages, shortages which risk costing the economy up to £39bn every year – just short of two entire Elizabeth Lines.
"The lack of bolder reform today means the lack of flexibility to the apprenticeship levy remains a massive contributor to the skills system not working. This is because the funds are only available to those who have the same employer for at least one year – which is the time it takes to complete an apprenticeship.
"Out of the one million temporary workers on assignment in the UK every day, we believe around 960,000 are ineligible for levy funding. This underlines the need for the levy money to pay for modular and shorter courses. Reforming the levy to provide more individuals with a route to skilled work will boost business growth and productivity at a critical time for the economy."
No comments:
Post a Comment