'Significant growth' in apprenticeships

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Ben Sweetman, head of apprenticeships at e-skills UK, discusses the importance of apprenticeships in the IT sector.

What are e-skills UK's views on apprenticeships? Why does e-skills UK consider them to be so important?

Technology is a critical sector and it is going to keep on growing over the coming years. There are large numbers of vacancies – the latest e-skills UK research shows that the industry needs 110,000 people to fill growth and replacement every year. In a sector that needs so many new people, apprenticeships are vital for getting people into entry level roles, and giving them high quality training.

Technology as an industry is clearly very highly skilled, so, for us, apprenticeships gives people a solid, well structured grounding in both technical and employability skills, rather than the alternative of starting a job and learning informally.

What message does e-skills UK hope that National Apprenticeship Week will convey?

The good thing about National Apprenticeship Week is that it gives apprenticeships a higher level of publicity, which helps to promote the scheme to potential apprentices and employers, particularly small businesses. After the week, it is important to get the more specific messages about what IT apprenticeships can involve and to then convert that into an increase in numbers.

Are apprenticeships becoming increasingly important as people seek to re-skill in the economic downturn?

There are two aspects to this question. From an employer's point of view, they are looking at how their wage bill can be more balanced. To do this, a company can employ experienced professionals, but also bring in people in entry-level roles. This is of particular relevance in an economic downturn, as employers can also prepare for their future staffing needs in a cost effective way.

The second aspect is from an individual's perspective. If a person loses a job due to the economic downturn, do they want to go into a sector where the downturn may hit them again, or go into a different, more secure sector- such as technology?

The technology sector, in all its guises, has great prospects over the next five to ten years. An economic downturn helps to give people the motivation to re-skill and seek more secure professions. Many people now can see technology as a pretty good bet.

Do you feel that the government has done enough to promote apprenticeships, both financially and educationally, as a career path?

Looking back over the last 10 years, there has been significant growth in the numbers of people doing apprenticeships. Apprenticeships, a decade or so ago, were a route that got little attention in the IT sector, but we've seen more employers take on apprentices in the past few years.

e-skills UK was particularly pleased to see in the skills strategy 'Skills for Growth', an increased focus on higher skilled sectors and priority sectors for the economy.

The fact that the government is now putting focus on advanced apprenticeships, for those aged 19 and above, is ideal for our sector. We are really interested in higher apprenticeships, in which an apprentice works towards a degree as part of their apprenticeship. This real change in emphasis is hugely important for a knowledge economy sector like information technology.

What work has e-skills UK undertaken to promote apprenticeships?

Apprenticeships are getting significant traction with some of the larger companies within the technology sector, but typically much less so with the smaller companies.

e-skills UK research showed that 64 per cent of the IT sector work in small and medium businesses, however only three per cent of apprentices are in these businesses. This is a huge disparity. To help address this, we have developed a partnership with Microsoft to help their Partner Network, which comprises 28,000 small and medium businesses.

Microsoft is communicating to these small companies and we are then working with them to group those small businesses together, so that they can recruit 15 or so apprentices in their local area. This scheme provides companies with an apprenticeship which is designed for their business needs and also helps to manage the process for them.

Are apprenticeships particularly useful in the information technology sector?

Apprenticeships have not been traditional in the sector, unlike construction or engineering. IT is still a relatively new sector and, as such, we are still building this up. In the IT sector there are currently 4,000 apprentices and we hope to see significant growth through our partnership with Microsoft.

Apprenticeships are going to be particularly important to allow the IT sector to grow as fast as it is capable of. Unless we find ways of getting new people into the sector, the industry will not be as productive as it could be. The opportunity for IT sector expansion is huge, and we need to attract new people in to achieve that potential

What forthcoming issues or campaigns are going to be of particular relevance to e-skills UK throughout 2010?

Alongside our work with Microsoft, we are particularly eager to help areas of the sector that have never really looked at apprenticeships before. We are focusing on software and web developers - an area where increasing numbers of the IT sector work - and also working with small companies who are keen for apprenticeships to support those in technical sales roles.