The North East LEP has been successful in securing funding to conduct research focused on 16-18 apprenticeships and have appointed Wave Hill Consulting to lead on this exciting project.
The aim being to gather some regional, current evidence on apprenticeship experiences across a range of stakeholders and produce practical recommendations which will benefit the promotion and take up of apprenticeships regionally.
The project is three-fold and tightly time bound, involving the following:
i)data analysis of the 16-18 unfilled apprenticeship vacancies across providers (GFE Colleges and Independent Training Providers) in the LEP area (looking at trends across times of year, local authority, level and sector) and comparing this with what those apprenticeships’ that flew off the shelves’ looked like
ii) deep dive with two Providers which involves working with learners for whom apprenticeships could be a progression route and having them appraise existing vacancy, followed by an employer encounter/site visit to then reflect on original vacancy and make suggestions for improving/appealing to the GEN Z cohorts – as part of this we will of course ask how of the young people had heard about or know where to find apprenticeships and will be seeking experiences of young people on apprenticeships too.
iii) as part of the deep dive we’ll be conducting employer site visits to understand their challenges of filling apprenticeships as well as gathering positive employer apprenticeship experiences
As a result the window for the data analysis is small and we are super keen to ensure we have experiences of the Independent Training Provider network represented to provide as accurate a regional picture as we can. With that in mind, if you are working with an Independent Training Provider offering 16-18 apprenticeships across the North East LEP area please could you share this research project with them and encourage them to contact [email protected] in the first instance who will be in touch and ideally by the end of June at the latest.
Should you have any questions in the interim please also feel free to contact Kim Smith – Regional Lead for Education and Enterprise, with a focus upon Technical Education, at [email protected]
