Peter Brooks said:

Is this shortage of people willing to join these professions, due to fear of being zapped?

My personal suspicion is that it's more due to the shortage of medium / large companies that can cope with taking on apprentices. Despite the various initiatives to promote apprenticeships in recent years it's hard to see how they can succeed without large enough employers who can devote sufficient resources to supervising / training them.

Hello Andy:

I am missing something in your response.

Why does training in such thing as solar panel installation or heat pump operation and installation, require an apprenticeship with support from a medium sized employer?

Here in Florida we have community colleges that have educational courses for brewing beer, professional cooking, solar panel installation, AC/heat pump maintenance, how to create secure IT systems etc. One signs up for a course and pays a fairly small amount of money for 3 -6 moths of "hands on" training. 

Peter

I think this could be a discussion thread by itself!

One issue, is that there seems to be a perception that there are easier ways to make money, it used to be that everyone wanted to be a professional sportsperson or musician, but it seems to be everyone wants to be some form on influencer these days.

The other is having opportunities. Yes, we have colleges that offer a variety of courses at a fairly small amount of money (but consider perception here, for some people that small amount looks significant).

You can find courses as a bricklayer, plumber, electrician, etc. But there is no guarantee that you will find a job after completion. So its a little risky to sink your own money, especially if you don't have a lot. And lets be fair here, the richer families will generally send their children to university (no guarantee of a job after that either).

Apprenticeships are the better option, as they pay a wage and the training is paid for. In the UK, large companies have to pay a tax which funds apprenticeships, which smaller companies can draw on. So effectively the training is free to the company (but not quite).

And this leads to the other problem. Many companies simply don't want to pay for training. They complain incessantly that school leavers don't have the skills. But someone has to provide those skills and you can't expect it to be entirely the schools as they neither have the resources or experience.

As a parent, I spoke with the teacher at my childs first ever school, what did they expect of a 4 year old. They told me, they wanted a child that was open to learning. They didn't expect the child to be able to read or write (ok, they wanted the child potty trained as well).

Companies need to have the same attitude, they need school leavers that are ready to apply themselves and ready for the next phase of learning. That might include numeracy, communication skills and a grounding in other subjects as needed. But any specific work skills should be taught by industry.

UK apprenticeships are regulated to an extent, the company is expected to provide training as part of it if they want to be reimbursed. Therefore Andy's point, you need a volume of suitable apprenticeships to bring in the new blood. Because the rest of the industry is waiting for fully trained people, and they will be waiting a long time.

Hello Mark:

A couple of additional facts about the US:- Most States (including Florida) have 529 programs (pre-paid college education funds) which can be opened when the child in born. The parents (or grandparents) can contribute money each year into the fund, which grows with time tax free, until the they are 18 years old and need it for higher education (whatever that can mean).

Using a Community Colleges (living locally at home) one can also get an AA 2 year degree, with guaranteed access to a State run University for another 2 years, for ones BS. 

Children start regular school at least one year later than in the UK. The US also had "Head Start" programs to get the young children socialized before stating regular school.

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay  

Peter Brooks said:

Why does training in such thing as solar panel installation or heat pump operation and installation, require an apprenticeship with support from a medium sized employer?

Marks's covered quite a lot of the connection. Another I've always felt is that, without a company to sponsor / support / apprentice them, school leavers simply don't know (and never have known) what such jobs are about. I used to do a lot of STEM ambassador work in school, and something you find out very quickly is that vanishingly few school pupils, of any age, have a clue what any of the technical professions are - except games designer. And there's no reason why they would, they'll have come across teachers, doctors, nurses, shop assistants, hairdressers, ok maybe possibly car mechanics. But there's no reason in their day-to-day life why they would have any more than the vaguest awareness of what most technical roles involve. (Ditto for most adults!) Now when I left school in the 1970s this may have been less of an issue, for example near where I lived in London there was a whole road (the Great Cambridge Road) full of Thorn EMI factories. A school leaver may have had no idea what a job there actually entailed, but they knew you could "go there and get a job" - or maybe "go there and learn a trade", such places were big enough to vacuum up school leavers and work out what to do with them later. (Not this this was to last much longer as it turned out.) These days it feels like it's up to the school or college leaver to push into an employer by explaining why they will be an asset rather than a burden on them - when that school / college leaver is unlikely to know what the job is about in the first place.

So, together with Mark's points my belief is this is part of why you end up with issue - you can put on as many college courses as you like, but school leavers won't apply for them if they don't understand what they are, and they still won't help if those who do choose them can't get a job when they leave.

Which comes on to actually the main reason I wrote what I did. No college education alone qualifies you to actually work in any technical area, there's always on the job experience needed as well. Mark touches on the fact that employers want staff who are already skilled and experienced, and there's a really good reason for this - a typical (say) 3,4,5 person business often simply cannot afford to lose one of its staff supervising an apprentice (or trainee if you like), because they have the double whammy of paying the trainee who is not significantly delivering and their supervisor / trainer is now delivering less work. A medium / large company has a chance of covering this overhead, a small company is going to really struggle. And, of course, all kudos to those who do it anyway! 

So back to your original point Peter, my feeling is that pretty much any school leaver would be pretty horrified at the thought of working on something which could kill them if they touched it, and those that aren't probably shouldn't be allowed near it, but some will start a job where they will learn how to cope and even enjoy it (the job, not the electric shock!). The challenge is, who is going to give them that job? And how can we free up supervising staff to make more of those jobs available?

I don't think there's an easy answer to this in the UK at least, it's been a growing problem since the UK government decided to exit manufacturing in the late 70s / early 80s (and I'm neither criticising or defending that decision, it just was what it was). Personally I tend to feel that the most likely arrangement to work to start apprenticeships moving again on any sort of scale is that training (not just education) becomes much more college based, with students spending short duration placements across a number of local businesses, so that each business is not overly burdened with having to supervise them. But of course there has to be a short term payoff for the business for this to work. And there's still the challenge of attracting school leavers in the first place. 

Hello Andy:

I am well aware of the hollowing out of industry in the 1970's and the out-sourcing of (for example machine shops) functions to small "village" operations outside (example) Cambridge. One of my wife's family owned and operated such a one man village machine shop.

The hollowing out process is still going on with the Steel works in Wales, which will effectively eliminate the production of steel from iron ore and only uses "out sourced" pig iron.

I saw an article the other day that claimed if you remove assets created by "The City" the rest of the country becomes a 3rd rate country like Cuba. 

It is not a good view from here!

Peter 

Hello Andy:

I am well aware of the hollowing out of industry in the 1970's and the out-sourcing of (for example machine shops) functions to small "village" operations outside (example) Cambridge. One of my wife's family owned and operated such a one man village machine shop.

The hollowing out process is still going on with the Steel works in Wales, which will effectively eliminate the production of steel from iron ore and only uses "out sourced" pig iron.

I saw an article the other day that claimed if you remove assets created by "The City" the rest of the country becomes a 3rd rate country like Cuba. 

It is not a good view from here!

Peter