Is Weymouth entering a golden age for apprenticeships?
More employers are coming forward to train staff after a rocky couple of years.
Apprentices are being offered more opportunities at a diverse range of employers as Weymouth begins to bounce back from the pandemic.
Monday marked the start of National Apprenticeship Week and Weymouth College are celebrating as more employers sign up to train pupils.
In the last two years, lots of workplaces had to cancel their arrangements with the college and pupils.
Engineering apprentice Reef Butler had a job offer when he left school. He said:
“I applied for multiple companies the first year out of secondary school and I was told that I would have got the position, but they chose not to run the apprenticeship program because they couldn’t do it in their current situation.”
He's not the only one who was put in that position, some who were already in placements were made redundant.
This year, Reef was offered multiple apprenticeships as the economy began to speed up again.
Weymouth College Vice-Principal for Apprenticeships, Natalie Merry says there’s now a sliver of hope. She said:
“We’ve seen an increase over the last year, I think that’s supported by generous but supported government incentive grants or initiatives that try to support people to engage in apprenticeships.
“I think where we’ve seen nationally, and certainly locally, skill shortages and challenges with regards to movement in the employment market.
“People have decided to recruit through different means as well and actually reached out to us in the last few months.”
But, she says there are a lot of myths surrounding apprenticeships and wants to encourage people of all ages to consider them. She added:
“The idea that they’re just for school leavers and just for the age group of 16-18 is something that needs to be challenged. But equally that they’re just for skilled jobs or those people that aren’t academic students.
“Apprenticeships are available to people who want to start a career in a certain organisation or want to take a career change.”
Bethany Daulton started an apprenticeship aged 21, thinking she was too old to do one. She said:
“It’s the best thing I’ve done, I never expected to do an apprenticeship. Especially seeing as I was 21, I thought I was quite older.
“I was always going for job to job and I didn’t feel like I was progressing. anywhere so doing an apprenticeship was definitely the right thing for me.”