Lord Trefgarne
Main Page: Lord Trefgarne (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)Department Debates - View all Lord Trefgarne's debates with the Department for Education
(1 year, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberThe apprenticeship scheme has two important objectives. One, as the noble Lord touched on, is to give young people a choice of opportunities as they enter their career—training, work experience and so forth. The other is to give our employers the skills they need in their workforce. The scheme is currently balancing those two things.
My Lords, as a former chairman of the Engineering Training Authority I am clearly very conscious of the work in that particular sector. What is the position today? Is a sufficient number of young people coming forward for apprenticeships in the engineering sector?
Engineering and manufacturing technologies account for about 14% of all the apprenticeship starts. Last year that was about 49,000 apprentices.