THE start of Apprenticeship Week is – and ought always to be – the opportunity to celebrate good-quality opportunities for young people in the region.

The majority of people who started their working life in an apprenticeship, and in this I include myself, look back to that period as a very formative and normative period, appreciating the opportunity to develop practical and useful skills. And also as a time when they learned about other disciplines of working life – getting to work on time, regularly; relating with respect to work colleagues, and valuing the dignity of work, too. Good-quality apprenticeships offer all that.

For a considerable period, apprenticeships have not been sufficiently well-promoted by government departments, and have been neglected by employers. Vocational training was de-prioritised in favour of academic qualifications, encouraging more young people to pursue university education. It seems the pendulum has swung back and apprenticeships are now one of the central ambitions of the current (and previous) government’s skills policy – encouraged by a rise in youth unemployment and skills shortages in key sectors of the economy.

It is encouraging, then, that the North East is able to report terrific growth rates in apprenticeships, up from 18,500 in 2009/10 to over 34,000 in the last financial year – growth far higher than the national rate.

Apprenticeship completions are up, too, an 11% increase on the previous year (and higher than the 5% national growth), which is significant as this mitigates one of the “risks” that some employers identify – the drop-out rate of, particularly, young people.

These apprenticeship numbers represent just 7.1 per 1000 employees, higher than some areas, but lower than the national average of 8.9. Employer engagement could also be much better – around only one in 10 employers started an apprentice last year. There is also a mismatch between priority sectors: those that offer the best potential for economic development, and apprenticeship growth. Finally, there has been debate about the quality of apprenticeships, with some providers offering short-term training courses and calling them apprenticeships, and not enough lead to level 3 and above qualification outcomes.

These are challenges for all partners – employers, training providers, the National Apprenticeship Service (NAS) and trade unions – to respond to. The quality of support from NAS has never been better and it’s difficult to identify a time when it has been easier for employers to take an apprentice on and the need to do so has never been more obvious.

:: Kevin Rowan is regional secretary of Northern TUC