The pandemic quickly highlighted that tradespeople are essential to our day-to-day lives . They are the people who keep our homes warm , the lights on and the water running . Because of this , when the UK went into lockdown tradespeople were quickly one of the few professions to be labelled as key workers and were able to continue carrying out their day-to-day work , while understandably adhering to rules on social distancing and PPE .

Given this acknowledgement of how important vocational skills are to our everyday lives , it is hard to fathom why we have such a problem actively championing trade skills to young people during education .

Overlooking vocational training during education has led to a skills shortage that is crippling growth in key industries . For example , a lack of skilled workers has been chipping away at the construction industry for some time . This has resulted in long delays to building and infrastructure projects , not to mention prohibiting the UK from reaching annual housing targets . It was possible to overlook vocational skills as part of the European Union , because we could always source skilled workers from our European neighbours at a cheaper rate . But this short-term solution has now of course been closed . What ’ s more , the skills shortage looks set to spread to other industries , such as utilities , due to a lack of skilled heating and plumbing professionals coming through the pipeline .

While we have seen governments sporadically profess support for vocational skills , this is usually confined to apprenticeship drives and shallow initiatives resulting in missed targets . ¹ Even

recent proposals that promise support to help equip a new generation of workers so we can create a green economy have been noted as needing to be “ fleshed out ”. ² What we need now is more than empty words . And , given the recent attention , it is the perfect time to re-examine our attitude towards vocational training .

This starts by reappraising what success looks like for young people . The conventional opinion has been that ‘ successful ’ students go onto university after school . But , while university will no doubt be the correct path for a huge number of young people , championing university above all else overshadows those with skills and ambitions suited to vocational

training . We desperately need a status quo that offers this cohort the same level of support and respect as those proceeding to academic higher education .

Key to this shift , will be addressing the misconception that choosing a career grounded in a trade will lead to inferior financial reward . Trainee tradespeople typically earn on par with newly qualified graduates , and this is usually achieved without the fees that typically arise from studying degrees . Moreover , a trade can be practiced with flexibility and has an entrepreneurial paradigm that encourages people to start their own businesses .

This will require a difficult conversation about how the

current landscape is failing those who want to learn a trade for life and break out into the industry . We need to be looking at more targeted funding options and a change to apprenticeship schemes , so they offer realistic support to help people through training in order to fill the skills gap . We cannot allow ourselves to get into a situation where we do not have enough tradespeople to cover the most basic needs like heating and running water due to increasing callout wait times .

The demand is certainly out there . We have seen interest in vocational training increase by 11.5 % ³ as people realise that trades , such as plumbing and electrics , can offer well-paid , reliable careers

even in times of uncertainty . We now just need the support from the government that the industry deserves . With a little help , we can challenge misplaced attitudes towards vocational learning and equip the UK with the next generation of skilled tradespeople .

1 https :// www . peoplemanagement . co . uk / news / articles / government-admitsapprenticeship-target-will-missed # gref

2 https :// committees . parliament . uk / committee / 62 / environmental-auditcommittee / news / 160404 / details-yetto-be-fleshed-out-on-costly-greenjobs-ambitions-government-admits /

3

Access Training UK internal data on demand from 18-24 year olds 2019- ’ 20 figures vs 2020- ’ 21 figures

Jamie Jefferies Chief Executive Officer www . accesstraininguk . co . uk