With both my daughters going through senior school at the time Tony Blair was encouraging as many of our young people as possible to attend university, they ignored my advice to ‘get a trade’ and went down the further education route, both gaining excellent degrees in subjects about which they were passionate and aligned to industries which – according to the Government press releases during those years – were about to receive huge and ongoing injections of funding. Apart from one successfully completing a brief internment with a consultancy that was at the time making people redundant, neither has been able to get onto the career ladder in a field that has anything to do with the subjects in which they specialised.

Survey results released today reveal that more than a third of UK employers are now engaging with local schools and colleges, to provide crucial access routes into their organisations. The data also revealed that, despite the increase in the number of access routes, too few employers were receiving applications from people aged 16 - 24. Indeed just under a quarter of employers did not receive a single application from a young person over the last year.

Apparently another recent survey has revealed that large numbers of the UK’s young people are now wishing to become celebrities rather than pursue a meaningful career… I do hope that everyone in the KBB industry takes note of both surveys, starts engaging with our nation’s youth as early as possible in their lives and encourages as many individuals as they can to take up a useful trade so that we no longer have to put up with second rate jobs completed by overpaid and poorly skilled trades people!

And if you’ve already signed up to the scheme reported in this week’s news – or something similar – or if you work in partnership with any of your local educational establishments to attract the most capable candidates to your apprenticeship schemes, I’d love to hear about it.

www.facebook.com/KBzine 

Yours,

Jan Hobbs