Apprenticeships: Women

Baroness Corston Excerpts

Thursday 14th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, I have talked to my noble friend about craft apprenticeships. I do not have the actual number for them but I share his enthusiasm for ensuring that we have apprenticeships in those areas, and I think our new system will help with that. Apprenticeships now are all of a decent quality: they have to be paid jobs; they have to involve substantial training of the kind you need in, for example, filigree gold or artwork; they have to last 12 months, on top of school; and they have to lead to full competency in occupations. That is the kind of change we need in this country, building on the sort of experience that you see in Germany, Switzerland and so on, where apprenticeships have been more successful.

[Baroness Corston (Lab)]

My Lords, my father left school and did an apprenticeship of a duration of five years. The Social Mobility Select Committee of your Lordships’ House took evidence from young people who have completed apprenticeships in the last couple of years, who said that they were of a duration of six weeks in skills such as wrapping vegetables and arranging flowers into bunches. We also took evidence about the number of young people doing apprenticeships. The figure that the Minister gave us must include people over the age of 21. That used to be called “adult training”. I know that the apprenticeships of which she is talking are to be of a duration of one year, but can she assure us that they are to be in proper skills and for people leaving school?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

Thanks partly to work done in this House by a series of committees, we are moving in that direction. Of course, people stay at school for longer now, so you would not necessarily get apprenticeships that lasted for five years. However, often you need an apprenticeship of more than one year to pick up all the skills that you need. In the end, you need a proper qualification that allows you to take your portfolio elsewhere. That helps flexibility in our economy, which obviously does a lot better than many other economies because of that very strength.