Express & Star comment: Apprentice levy needs rethinking
Apprenticeships are a more than viable option for young people leaving school.
This is particularly true when you consider the vast expense associated with going to university these days.
For evidence, you only have to look at the runaway success of the Express & Star's Ladder for the Black Country scheme, which created 1,400 apprenticeships over four years.
However, official figures showing take-ups since the Government launched its flagship apprenticeship levy last year are hugely disappointing.
For the first two quarters of the 2017/18 academic year, the number of new apprenticeships fell by a quarter compared to the same period the previous year.
How exactly this fits in with Theresa May's pledge to create three million apprenticeships by 2020 is anyone's guess.
Indeed, such a target is starting to look increasingly ludicrous.
For any business, taking on an apprentice should be a relatively straightforward process.
But as is so often the case with recent Conservative administrations, the bureaucrats have taken over.
And with that, a simple and user friendly system has become complex, time consuming and down right infuriating.
It means that far from encouraging businesses to get involved, many firms are being driven away.
The upshot, as Wolverhampton MP Emma Reynolds rightly points out, is that young people are missing out on the chance to learn new skills.
Meanwhile companies struggle to fill vacancies with skilled workers.
This is dreadful news for the West Midlands, where we already have serious problems filling skilled roles due to a lack of trained workers.
While small and medium sized businesses are beginning to flourish, we need to ensure we have a workforce that meets the required high standards of training.
Apprenticeships should be a major part of that, but the take-up rates are heading in the wrong direction.
The Government's claim that the levy has helped to raise the quality of training simply will not wash.
The apprenticeship levy could be a good initiative, but in its current form it is failing miserably.
Mrs May is certainly no stranger to policy u-turns and changes of tack.
When it comes to the apprenticeship levy, she could be forgiven for going back to the drawing board.
