Skills Factory will help the ladder extend

Working closely with the Careers Hub team, local schools will benefit from a range of additional employer led apprenticeship activities to ensure that teachers, parents and young people are well informed about and have exposure to the world of apprenticeships.

Angela Moore, head of the Skills Factory, which is part of the Black Country Consortium, explained: “It is imperative to encourage Black Country businesses to consider creating apprenticeship vacancies that attract young people to their sector.

“The Skills Factory are pleased that, with the support of the Skills Factory, the Ladder in the Black Country can support local employers to access the initiatives available to them to enable them to take on a young person through an apprenticeship.”

The Brierley Hill-based Skills Factory is a Black Country Local Enterprise Partnership initiative aimed at addressing skills shortages in five transformational sectors including advanced manufacturing, transport technologies, construction, environmental technologies and business services.

Involvement in the Ladder will help with the organisation’s work on building on the Black Country’s long tradition of engineering and manufacturing excellence. It offers employers impartial and independent advice on training courses, apprenticeships and available funding opportunities.

The Skills Factory is not a training provider but works closely in conjunction with local colleges and a number of training providers to develop a programme of bite-size courses that are employer-led.

Rob Colbourne, vice-chairman of Ladder for the Black Country and managing director of Performance Through People, said that a pleasing number of businesses were coming forward to get involved.

The ladder campaign, which was originally run from 2014 and helped more than 1,000 into apprenticeships, was reactivated at the end of last month.