Inquiry to investigate need to grow engineering apprenticeships

Launched by former Labour and Conservative ministers Lord Knight and Lord Willetts, with support from charity EngineeringUK, the inquiry ‘Fit for the future: growing and sustaining engineering and technology apprenticeships for young people’ is hoping to identify solutions which could help to increase the number and diversity of young people taking up apprenticeships in the sector.

Employers, training providers, young people and those who work with them, are all being urged to get involved in the ‘call for evidence’ by submitting their views, evidence or ideas to improve this much-needed career pathway into the sector.  

Despite a modest uptick in numbers last year, engineering-related apprenticeship starts in England are still nine per cent lower than in 2014/15. What’s more, the uptake varies by subject with a worrying 34 per cent decline for engineering and manufacturing technologies.

Lord Willetts, inquiry co-chair and former Conservative Minister for Universities and Science, said: “Apprenticeships, especially in engineering and technology, enjoy enormous political and media support and are a crucial route into work for many people. Meanwhile the number of young people actually doing these apprenticeships is falling.