Mather urges Argyll businesses: Invest in an Apprentice

Education and Lifelong Learning Secretary, Michael Russell, has announced the latest development of the Invest in an Apprentice scheme.

The Scottish Government has allocated £4 million this financial year to making available a grant of £1,000 for all employers who take on an apprentice, of any age, between 11th January and 26th March 2010.

Jim Mather, Argyll’s MSP, has welcomed the announcement and is advertising its advantages to Argyll businesses. He hopes tat the incentive: ‘will maintain the momentum required to help Scotland come through the recession with a vital trained workforce.  By broadening the scheme to cover all sectors and apprentices of all ages the Scottish Government is keeping in tune with what is required to ensure we maintain a competitive edge in a global market’.

Mr Mather is therefore urging businesses here – and across Scotland, of course, considering his Enterprise Minister brief – to take-up this opportunity to build on the skills base in Argyll and Bute.

Interested businesses should contact Skills Development Scotland:

• by phone on 0808 100 8095
• by visiting its website

For young people, there is a very real choice to be made now – as there is for businesses in effectively growing their own star employees, believing that what they themselves have to share is of real value.

Higher education – for many the alternative to today’s apprenticeships, has, for a considerable time, been in limbo. It has been caught between the values and sense of patronage of an earlier era and the more focused needs of a different and more democratic age to which it has not yet addressed itself.

Nor, nationwide, has it understood the different drivers which result from a fee paying system where students incur serious debt in the expectation that they can earn their way out of it in later employment which a degree – any degree, will somehow underpin. It hasn’t quite worked out that way.

This limbo has lasted for much longer than it should because neither the Government that introduced fee paying, nor the students who paid, understood – understand – quite what was being brought to birth.

There is a great deal to be said for modern apprenticeships – including for those who might otherwise take the autopilot route to university with no real idea of why. Lifelong learning enables access to university courses at a later stage and for very many people, that is a more rewarding approach -  bringing skills, life experience and independence to the business of learning and changing.

The entire Invest in an Apprentice initiative has a great deal to offer to potential apprentices and business sponsors alike.