MATRIX Chair Bryan Keating has been talking to Wendy Austin about apprenticeships in Northern Ireland and how his new role as Chair of the Strategic Advisory Forum on Apprenticeships is helping to shape the workforce to meet current and future economic requirements.
A few years ago apprenticeships were in the decline, but now every political party has pledged to increase the numbers of apprentices. A new system will be introduced to Northern Ireland in 2016, driven forward by the advisory forum. The emphasis here will be on quality rather than quantity, in contrast to the English initiative.
Speaking on Radio Ulster’s Inside Business last month, Bryan said, “When we think of apprenticeships we tend to think of the shipyard, and traditional apprenticeships are still very valid. However, we are now looking to promote apprenticeships in knowledge based industries. We expect these new apprenticeships will have a massive impact on the workforce which supports the knowledge industries so vital to Northern Ireland.”
“In the past, apprenticeships have been driven by in the main by educators and trainers, but this time round the private sector is taking the lead. The current and future needs of industry are paramount. From the apprentice’s point of view, they want gainful employment along with the flexibility to acquire degrees, Masters or PhDs if they wish to do so. It is the ambition of Minister Farry and of our forum that apprenticeships should be driven and shaped by industry in partnership with FE colleges and Universities.”
Also on the panel was Tom Gray, CTO of Kainos and a MATRIX panel member. For several years now, Kainos has been running an innovative and highly effective recruitment initiative called “Earn as you Learn” in conjunction with Ulster University, driven by the need for a stream of high quality recruits.
“We consider apprentices as being fundamental to the growth of our talent pool over the next number of years” said Tom. “In Kainos we had a real challenge in getting the right number of the right quality of people, so we introduced an apprenticeship scheme 3 or 4 years ago. Our ability to take on apprentices was constrained not by our appetite, but by the number that were coming through the system. There are really talented people out there who could succeed in this environment if they were aware that it existed – if they had the opportunity.”
Wendy also spoke to one of the Kainos apprentices, Jordan Brown. Jordan graduated from Ulster University but after working for a year in his chosen field he decided to retrain as an infrastructure services engineer through the apprenticeship scheme. He was a finalist in this year’s Northern Ireland Apprentice of the Year Award.
Jordan said, “Kainos has a really great track record for giving new people the keys to the ignition and saying let’s see what you can do. From day one, I think I’d sat down for about five minutes when they gave me my first project to work on. I’ve travelled to London and Dublin and I’m heading to Gdańsk at the end of the year. No two days are the same and if there’s ever anything I want to try, Kainos is there to give me the opportunity.”
Asked about his future prospects now, he said, “I’m not 100% sure, but there’s no shortage of opportunities. Three years’ experience at Kainos and the technical qualifications I’ve got, it looks very good on my CV. Really with IT, the sky’s the limit for me at the minute.”
Wendy Austin next asked Bryan Keating whether he agreed with a point that Robin Swann MLA has made – that the people who really needed to be influenced were the parents.
“We all know that the parents quite often hold the view that children need to decide early on to be doctors, lawyers or accountants ”, said Bryan. “But you need to remember that less than 80 or 90 years ago the heroes were engineers and scientists: people with the skills and vision to build things and make products. So people aspired that, and it is only the last few years that that has gone away.
“We now see science, technology, building and making things, back on the agenda through either traditional or high level apprenticeships. Things are changing – there are more people taking A level Maths than any other A level subject.”
Turning again to Tom Gray, Wendy asked him about his concerns around funding for universities and higher education.
“I’m very concerned about any reduction in funding in universities, because Northern Ireland is competing with the rest of the world here”, he said. “The fact that we may have budgetary issues has no impact on what the rest of the world is doing – they don’t care. If we don’t invest – if we don’t move forward, then we’re going to just fall behind everybody else.”
“But I think we maybe need to shift a little bit away from the perception that a university degree, a university qualification is the only viable starting point to being productive in the knowledge economy.”
“Kainos is at the high end of the IT profession and we’re much more focused on skills and knowledge than we are on qualifications. Some universities are very good at bridging the gap between the two, some aren’t. Northern Ireland has a real strength that we should continue to invest in – all our IT courses have a mandatory placement year before the final year to allow students to put into practice what they’ve learnt in the previous two years before they do their final exams. That is mandatory here, and we take it for granted. In the rest of the UK it is not considered necessary and while a few forward thinking take that approach, by and large it’s not encouraged. So you have graduates coming out at the end of four years with no practical experience whatsoever and the employer is taking them from scratch.”
Bryan Keating added, “The Knowledge Index Report says that in Northern Ireland we have 35,000 professionals in the knowledge index industries, creating ?4.4bn of exports. To put this in context we have around 7,000 knowledge economy apprenticeships at the moment and we probably need another 27,000 professionals in the sector. Our universities simply can’t produce that number of graduates in the required subjects so apprenticeships could allow us to achieve the targets and drive the economy for the next 10, 15, 20 years. So that is part of the vision for Minister Farry and for DEL.
“Look at German industry, driven by a workforce that has the right learning options available to them – it’s going to take time to embed but it’s not a short term solution. To compete, you need to have human capital of the right quality – that’s a long term investment and that journey starts with apprenticeships.
“Youth training, which used to be quite separate from apprenticeships, has also been revamped so that 16-18 year olds will be able to train to get to Level 2 and allow them to move into apprenticeships. It’s very important that youth training is now aligned so there’s no disjoint and the Department of Education and DEL are working closely now to make that transition much more smooth and much more coherent for everyone.
“But it’s important to remember that while apprenticeships can be promoted by government, FE colleges and universities, ultimately they can really only be driven by what industry needs and what apprentices need and see of value to them in giving meaningful employment and rewarding careers.”