IT’S the time of year when school pupils start on their various GCSE and A level courses, most with dreams of securing a coveted place at a top university. But, with the increasing expense of completing a degree course at university, the burden on years of clearing student debt and the uncertainty of getting a job after your three or four year course, should youngsters instead be looking to go down the earn as you learn apprenticeship route?

Award-winning UK electrical systems integrator Newport-based Industrial Automated Control Ltd recruits apprentices to its Queensway Meadows base every year. We asked IAC marketing and HR director Kath Lewis how the system works for them and how it can be improved:

Q: Why are apprenticeships of such importance for IAC, Wales and even the UK as a whole?

A: It is impossible to just go into the high street and pick up an engineer who could start work immediately on projects at IAC – we need to mould them ourselves so that they are correctly trained and skilled. Our entire commercial strategy is based on our apprentice scheme. We have ex-apprentices in almost every position within the company.

Q: What benefits do apprenticeships bring to businesses such as yours?

A: As above, we get employees who are loyal, properly trained and with the correct attitude. An apprenticeship can be considered a four year interview. In that time, they will have decided that this is the place for them, and we will have had the opportunity to make sure that are useful.

Q: Why do you think apprenticeships are more important for businesses in the wake of Brexit?

A: Brexit makes no difference, other than probably making it far harder to get export orders. The low pound does not help because we have little or no electrical manufacturing in the UK since the Thatcher years, and therefore we have to buy in equipment from Europe at a higher price.

Q: Is it harder to attract high calibre candidates for your apprenticeship vacancies?

A: I think it is fair to say that most schools do not fully understand the opportunities available for apprenticeships in the UK. Most schools push students into the university pool, without looking at the alternatives. Our apprentices become useful and fully qualified engineers at roughly the same time as those going through the university route. Our guys get experience in industry as they are learning. They get to Chartered Engineer status having been paid to train for the ten-year period. Graduates come out of university with very little idea of what industry is all about and they then look for a career which suits their qualification. Our guys are given the qualifications which suits their career at IAC. Much more focussed and far more efficient.

Q: What are the consequences of the austerity measures to the careers advice service over the past couple of years?

A: There were few people trying to get careers organised before, now there are even fewer. In addition, the first thing companies will cut is non-productive training. Apprentices are axed for a couple of years until the situation becomes critical, and then companies who do no training are poaching people from those who do and therefore escalating costs by inflating wages.

The reduction of services at Careers Wales has certainly had an effect in schools. We have seen a significant decline in the numbers applying for apprenticeships straight from school or sixth form and a lack of quality candidates. Five years ago we had a close relationship with Careers Wales, they would liaise directly with schools, making sure career and job opportunities were presented to students. Today, we have to liaise directly with the school and often you find the person who deals with careers has to balance this with a teaching post. Careers Wales personnel understood our industry and the high level of candidate needed for some of our apprenticeships. This is not so with many of the schools locally, mainly due to the pressure being put on teachers and lack of time to engage with local employers. This decline in candidates is evident in the recent Santander survey of 15 and 16 year olds where only eight per cent consider apprenticeships as an alternative to university.

Q: How are apprentices crucial to the continued growth of IAC?

A: Our whole strategy follows the apprentice scheme. It is an ethos within the organisation which galvanises and focuses people to help and assist others. It pervades an atmosphere of learning, making the collective a better place to be and giving massive job satisfaction to those who buy in.

Q: What measures would you like to see put in place by the Welsh Government to boost the funding and take up of apprenticeships?

A: Just cut the red tape. We work wholeheartedly with Newport and District Group Training Association which provides NVQ and academic courses for all our apprentices. They are a not-for-profit organisation and we are able to work together to make sure the training they give meets our requirements at a local level. They do a superb job and deserve more credit. They have to compete with the local colleges who seem to mop up all the government funding and produce courses which suit the college instead of the industry. The colleges do what is best and most cost effective for themselves. The student then has to look for a job which suits the qualification they have done – just the same as the University route, but with fewer opportunities. NDGTA will produce a tailored training scheme for the company and the individual.

Q: What do you believe should be done to encourage youngsters and firms to go down the apprenticeship route?

A: The schools need to be educated, and more money spent on promoting the advantages early on. We are seeing more and more kids applying for our scheme after AS and A level. They have been pushed into subjects they are not interested in so that the overall school pass rate is kept up. We are playing the numbers game with peoples’ futures. More joined-up thinking, working from the requirements back to the foundation would produce the people we need and not a group of part-educated kids who get disillusioned when they cannot find a job at the end of it.

Q: How can schools play their part in encouraging students to consider and apply for apprenticeships?

A: Come and see us. Work with us. Unfortunately, we have a limited resource and cannot fulfil the dreams of every potential electrical engineer. There are, however, many more companies out there who could be training and getting the engineers they require, but one size does not fit all and we probably need more NDGTA’s who can tailor the needs of other companies, but firstly we need those companies to realise what they are missing.

Q: What would you say to businesses looking to start can you say about the scheme?

A: We have battled the system for 30 years and we very early on realised that no-one else is going to do it for you. Get out there and organise yourself. You cannot plan a successful apprentice scheme around government funding. Governments tend to change every five years or so (although sometimes it is difficult to see the difference). They move so slowly that companies with ambition will find it difficult to follow them. We want action today, not another consultation and list of broken promises. If you want to get it done – do it yourself. There are fantastic partners out there, just like NDGTA, but you have to fight your own corner and make sure that your point of view prevails. In many cases, we have had to put training in place within the company, so that we can fill the gaps in the system. It’s no good waiting for the right course to come along, you have to make it work.

Industrial Automation & Control Ltd., which as well as its UK operations has interest in China and Africa, is the UK’s leading independent systems integrator of PLC systems, variable speed drives and Scada