Trevanion
Old Oak
There's been a lot of rhetoric from the current government lately regarding apprenticeships and the construction industry, and how they are going to introduce 120,000 extra apprenticeships across all sectors, force home builders to build homes to schedules with penalties if they don't complete on time, cutting red tape and planning restrictions, etc...
Some of the policies are agreeable, but frankly, we can't build the houses that we are already trying to build. When you're constantly seeing and reading in the news about new build house "nightmares" where homeowners are stuck with a brand new house that is leaking, full of mould, dangerously constructed, and the general extremely low quality of the builds, it does leave you wondering if trying to force building firms to complete faster will simply make these problems significantly worse. You only have to watch a video from "New Home Quality Control" to see just how poorly put together these new builds are.
Now, I believe this is fundamentally a workforce issue. Decades of neglect in the education sector regarding apprenticeships and the trades has caused a massive skill shortage. Anybody who has had the misfortune to have an apprentice in recent years will know just how poor the quality of education in technical colleges is now, with the curriculum having been watered down to such a point where an infant could pass with flying colours, this is down to the fact the government has wanted "more boots on the ground" and the colleges wanting their £10,000 per head passed grant from the government, so naturally the quality of education has been reduced significantly to pass as many students as possible with no regard to whether they are competent for the work.
Currently, a student can spend three years in college pursuing a Level Three qualification in a trade, two of those years you usually don't even require an apprenticeship to attend so you can become a Level Two qualified tradesperson without ever having worked in the field, though you would need a NVQ qualification to work on some sites but this is very easily obtained as they have also reduced the bar massively to allow foreign workers to get the relevant CSCS cards. So the student could spend two years in college as the apprentice I had a while ago did, and then get an apprenticeship to get their Level Three qualification, the only issue was even after those two years in college the student did not know how to operate a cordless drill, one of the most basic and widely used tools across all trades.
I've heard from many employers that while they would like to train the "next generation", taking on apprentices is simply too expensive and time-consuming of an investment which can easily be lost if the apprentice decides to leave as soon as they gain their qualification. Employers do generally get a small grant towards the cost of an apprentice but it is simply a drop in the ocean compared to the cost of wages (£7.55 an hour, around half of that of a good on-the-books employee in most trades) including the day-release to study in college, the cost of mistakes and amendments, the extra insurances and so on... It's no wonder it's such an unattractive option for employers when it could all be for nothing.
I believe that a construction education and apprenticeship should last 7 years, as it was in times gone by. The first two years should exclusively be in the college doing an initial Construction qualification and cover a range of subjects within the industry, Carpentry and Joinery, Bricklaying and Masonry, Basic Electrics and Plumbing, etc... so that the students have a well-rounded basic knowledge of anything they might encounter, having a very basic understanding of electricity and plumbing would save a lot of accidents from occuring on building sites. Once the initial qualification is completed, the student would go onto a three-year apprenticeship in the dicipline they choose from the ones that they have already experienced, also by this time the students should be eighteen and most should have passed their driving tests which would make them much easier to employ than an immobile sixteen-year old. Once the three year apprenticeship was over, they should continue to work under the employer for another two years to gain a higher-level qualification which allows them to become a fully-qualified tradesperson which should set them aside from the unqualified. At present, the Level Three City and Guilds qualifications that are given out are completely worthless because they have been devalued by the sheer amount of people that have been able to aquire them without being competent, even some countries do not recognise the qualification as an assurance of competence, and in places like Germany you're not even allowed to start a construction business without a trade mastery certificate, however here in Britain you can basically start any business you like and "have a go".
Some of the policies are agreeable, but frankly, we can't build the houses that we are already trying to build. When you're constantly seeing and reading in the news about new build house "nightmares" where homeowners are stuck with a brand new house that is leaking, full of mould, dangerously constructed, and the general extremely low quality of the builds, it does leave you wondering if trying to force building firms to complete faster will simply make these problems significantly worse. You only have to watch a video from "New Home Quality Control" to see just how poorly put together these new builds are.
Now, I believe this is fundamentally a workforce issue. Decades of neglect in the education sector regarding apprenticeships and the trades has caused a massive skill shortage. Anybody who has had the misfortune to have an apprentice in recent years will know just how poor the quality of education in technical colleges is now, with the curriculum having been watered down to such a point where an infant could pass with flying colours, this is down to the fact the government has wanted "more boots on the ground" and the colleges wanting their £10,000 per head passed grant from the government, so naturally the quality of education has been reduced significantly to pass as many students as possible with no regard to whether they are competent for the work.
Currently, a student can spend three years in college pursuing a Level Three qualification in a trade, two of those years you usually don't even require an apprenticeship to attend so you can become a Level Two qualified tradesperson without ever having worked in the field, though you would need a NVQ qualification to work on some sites but this is very easily obtained as they have also reduced the bar massively to allow foreign workers to get the relevant CSCS cards. So the student could spend two years in college as the apprentice I had a while ago did, and then get an apprenticeship to get their Level Three qualification, the only issue was even after those two years in college the student did not know how to operate a cordless drill, one of the most basic and widely used tools across all trades.
I've heard from many employers that while they would like to train the "next generation", taking on apprentices is simply too expensive and time-consuming of an investment which can easily be lost if the apprentice decides to leave as soon as they gain their qualification. Employers do generally get a small grant towards the cost of an apprentice but it is simply a drop in the ocean compared to the cost of wages (£7.55 an hour, around half of that of a good on-the-books employee in most trades) including the day-release to study in college, the cost of mistakes and amendments, the extra insurances and so on... It's no wonder it's such an unattractive option for employers when it could all be for nothing.
I believe that a construction education and apprenticeship should last 7 years, as it was in times gone by. The first two years should exclusively be in the college doing an initial Construction qualification and cover a range of subjects within the industry, Carpentry and Joinery, Bricklaying and Masonry, Basic Electrics and Plumbing, etc... so that the students have a well-rounded basic knowledge of anything they might encounter, having a very basic understanding of electricity and plumbing would save a lot of accidents from occuring on building sites. Once the initial qualification is completed, the student would go onto a three-year apprenticeship in the dicipline they choose from the ones that they have already experienced, also by this time the students should be eighteen and most should have passed their driving tests which would make them much easier to employ than an immobile sixteen-year old. Once the three year apprenticeship was over, they should continue to work under the employer for another two years to gain a higher-level qualification which allows them to become a fully-qualified tradesperson which should set them aside from the unqualified. At present, the Level Three City and Guilds qualifications that are given out are completely worthless because they have been devalued by the sheer amount of people that have been able to aquire them without being competent, even some countries do not recognise the qualification as an assurance of competence, and in places like Germany you're not even allowed to start a construction business without a trade mastery certificate, however here in Britain you can basically start any business you like and "have a go".
