Adult apprenticeships launched for food and drink industry

England's food and drink manufacturing industry is on course to benefit from a significant leap in apprentice numbers after the government this month scrapped the upper age limit on funding.

To date, employers have only been able to attract financial assistance for taking on apprentices between the ages of 16 and 24. After successful pilot schemes, adult apprenticeships are now being made available across all industries in England.

The news marks a significant victory for Improve, the food and drink sector skills council, which oversees the industry's apprenticeships and has long lobbied for the age limit to be abolished.

Jack Matthews, the chief executive of Improve, said: Our vision is to make the UK food and drink manufacturing industry the world leader by delivering world-class skills in the work place, and we feel apprenticeships are an essential ingredient in achieving that. But we all know that, for a variety of reasons, the re-launch of apprenticeships in the mid-1990s didn't take off as planned, and the age restriction was one of those reasons.

Our industry tends to attract older workers. More than half the industry's employees are aged 40 and over and the vast majority are over 25, so funding apprenticeships only up to the age of 24 is of very limited help to employers. School leavers alone will not meet the industry's skills needs, but in older workers we have an excellent resource just waiting to be developed.

More than 40 training providers who work in food and drink manufacturing, including the likes of Poultec, the University of Lincolnshire, North Lancs Training and Orient Gold, are now in the process of applying to the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) to run adult apprenticeship schemes. Employers will then be able to access schemes funded from a government pot worth more than 30 million.
The schemes are expected to be ready to run from late autumn, coinciding with the launch of the new, more flexible food and drink manufacturing apprenticeship framework, which Improve has drawn up to replace the current apprenticeships in bakery, meat and poultry processing and general food and drink manufacture.

Mr Matthews added: What we have done all along is try to deliver what employers ask for in training provision. They want flexible apprenticeship schemes they can adapt to their own specific areas of work, so we have drawn up a new framework based on the same system of bite-sized units of learning we are introducing for National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) and Scottish Vocational Qualifications (SVQs). It is up to them to pick and choose which parts they need and which they don't.

Employers also want to be able to offer training to new recruits and existing employees of all ages. Having access to funding for adult apprenticeships will further boost their ability to do this.