Hospitals, police forces and government departments will be forced to take on 200,000 new apprentices in a bid to increase the number of trainees in the public sector, David Cameron will announce tomorrow.
Under new rules, which will come into force next year, more than one in 50 public sector workers will have to be an apprentice. At the moment 75 per cent of apprentices are employed in the private sector; only 16 per cent are on the Government’s payroll. Mr Cameron will also pledge to spend an extra £85m to help small businesses take on apprentices.
All this is designed to help the Government meet its 2015 manifesto commitment to take on three million apprentices over the next five years. But in a major speech tomorrow, the Prime Minister will criticise the limited opportunities available to youngsters to get an apprenticeship.
He will claim that 16- to 18-year-olds have “missed out” on the apprenticeship boom. Only 6 per cent of school-leavers take up such an opportunity.
Mr Cameron’s new goal is for every pupil leaving school to be offered either an apprenticeship, a job or a university place. But the rules place a new duty on public sector bodies to ensure that apprentices make up “at least 2.3 per cent of the workforce”, which applies to all public sector bodies employing more than 250 people.
Mr Cameron is expected to say: “In the three months after the election we delivered 115,000 more [apprentices] – in industries from law to fashion design, aerospace and more.
“And today, we’re going even further, with our ‘Apprenticeship 2020’ vision. We will make every part of the public sector – from Whitehall to local government, the NHS, to the police – ensure that apprentices form at least 2.3 per cent of their work force.”
A new Institute for Apprenticeships will also be set up to regulate the quality of the positions offered and to make sure employers are offering decent training and not just using them to get round the minimum wage.
“Apprenticeships and the skills they deliver will turbo-charge our country’s productivity,” said Sajid Javid, the Business Secretary.
