Apprenticeships

Conscription? I actually thought Blair would be moving to introduce it had he gone for another term, I seem to think Francis Urquart did, and television has a horrible way of being about 10 years ahead of Government policy. I remember watching a few repeats of Yes Prime Minister a few years back and was struck by how much had subsequently come into policy even though it was supposed to be silly.

Mind you, I'm surprised that Dom isn't advocating deploying the idle layabouts as flood defence tonight. Conscription shows a distinct lack of imagination, think more laterally gal :D For a start they're all trained to maintain a prostrate position for hours on end, wear highly absorbant hooded clothing, and are flexible enough to adopt different positions?

Who needs sand bags
 
The country simply can't afford conscription and the armed forces don't want people who don't want to be there. As for HT's idea some way back that you can teach people trades in weeks; bollocks!
BTW I did a 5 year apprenticeship in engineering & 7 years on day release at various colleges, thanks to an old fashioned employer, who allowed me to carry on after I had finished the apprenticeship. 38 years designing special purpose machinery & now the only job I can find, & that was down to a friend pushing for me, is a building maintenance engineer. Most of my time is spent changing light bulbs and un-blocking bogs. The skilled men are there but the employers can't recognise them.
 
Originally posted by ovverbruv+Jul 23 2007, 10:19 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (ovverbruv @ Jul 23 2007, 10:19 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-PDJ@Jul 23 2007, 06:08 PM
Colin, there will always be an idle element in society but all of the people with whom I went to university have good jobs and none of them are in the situation where they are not paying back their loans. In order to avoid paying back your student loans, you need to be earning under £15,000.
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Wrong i'm afraid Paul, you need to be earning over 85% of the national average so at the moment you need to be earning 23k + [/b][/quote]
I got it from the student loans company website. Sorry.
 
I can confirm that PDJ is correct about the minimum earning - at least in my case. My first job after uni was a bit of a stop gap, and was £14,000 per annum which meant I didn't pay anything back. After 9 months I moved on and have moved several times since, but only once I was paid over £15,000 (start of 2006) did I start to pay anything back.

I'm still not earning £23,000 (I live in Northern Ireland where the wages are crap) and I am making monthly repayments.
 
Originally posted by walsworth@Jul 24 2007, 01:56 AM
As for HT's idea some way back that you can teach people trades in weeks; bollocks!
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Domestic house wiring and plumbing could be taught in a week.
 
Originally posted by Flagship uberalles@Jul 24 2007, 10:35 AM
I can confirm that PDJ is correct about the minimum earning - at least in my case. My first job after uni was a bit of a stop gap, and was £14,000 per annum which meant I didn't pay anything back. After 9 months I moved on and have moved several times since, but only once I was paid over £15,000 (start of 2006) did I start to pay anything back.

I'm still not earning £23,000 (I live in Northern Ireland where the wages are crap) and I am making monthly repayments.
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They are both right. The minimum earnings I have to make before I have to pay back my student loan has risen dramatically in the ensuing 14 years - from circa £12k p/a to circa £23k p/a. My guess is that the rules changed at some point between 1993 and when Flagship went to Uni.

I, incidentally, on the subject of paying it back, I have always taken the position that I won't pay it back until I absolutely have to, by which time, I reasoned, I would be able to afford to pay it back. Deferment time is fast approaching now though, and there is no way I'm going to be able to avoid it this year - can I afford to pay it back? Yes. If I could avoid paying it back, would I continue to do so? Yes.
 
Originally posted by Honest Tom+Jul 24 2007, 11:10 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Honest Tom @ Jul 24 2007, 11:10 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-walsworth@Jul 24 2007, 01:56 AM
As for HT's idea some way back that you can teach people trades in weeks; bollocks!
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Domestic house wiring and plumbing could be taught in a week. [/b][/quote]
No. Two weeks at least. It's one week for the callout and one week for the work.
 
Ah it can be taught in weeks but it takes 4 years to perfect the art of tea making.

A hint to those on apprenticeships or considering it - make the first cup of tea very badly and they'll never ask you again :)
 
Good lord, I am in a professional full time job and I earn £19k. Mind you the wages in Dorset are sh*te although the house prices and other living costs are extortionate, go figure. Looking at the local jobs paper, I would love to know how they calculated the average wage in the country and where to go to get this sort of money! (Yes, I guess London...)

As for apprenticeships, I completely agree that they should be available to young people, and I deplore the Government's suggestion that all should stay in education until 18. If you're not academic, it makes no sense to stay on. It would be far better to make more apprenticeships available to learn on the job.

My OH is 19 years old and has five excellent A levels in science subjects, English and computing. He has decided not to go to university and wants to go out to work. He has now been unemployed for a year, despite trying everything from admin work, trainee pharmacy technician, cleaning and shelf stacking in Tescos. He has applied for over 500 jobs. He is either told he doesn't have the required experience or is over qualified. He's been doing voluntary work for six months now in an attempt to get experience, but that doesn't pay the bills, does it. And as I earn over £15.5k he's not entitled to any jobseekers allowance, nor any of the support that comes with being on benefits. Frankly, this Government is not interested in getting people into work, it is interested in getting people off benefits. So I have to support two people on a wage lower than the so-called national average.

Is it any wonder I went bankrupt a couple of months ago?
 
That is a dreadful story, purr. It is very poor that there is no help available for you and him.

One thing I will say is that the Government didn't say all pupils should be in school until 18. They said they should be in education and that does include apprenticeships.
 
Ah well, so long as they have taken the non-academic into account I guess that's slightly better than I feared. They will need good careers counsellors though, that was something definitely lacking when I was at school.

I'm glad our relationship is staying strong through all the stress at the moment, it's really not an easy time.

The Jobcentre have all sorts of incentives - like arranging voluntary work experience at a company to see if the person fits and thus getting employment there at the end of it - but all of these extras are only available to people on benefits. So he gets no help whatsoever, financial or otherwise, and therefore almost has to join the back of the queue for jobs behind people who are on benefits. Hence being even less likely to find a job. He's literally prepared to do anything, but nothing is transpiring.

And all the while, in my job as a Trading Standards officer, I provide consumer advice to people on benefits who want to know what to do now their new Plasma TV has broken down. Then I go home and watch my tiny four year old Bush TV which I got for less than £100 in the January sales.

Kinda riles me up a little bit.
 
I speak from an Australia point of view, where apprenticeships seem to be coming a dying breed also.

About 10 years ago, the industries that thrived on the school leavers aged 1+6, are now heading to boiling point.

The Federal Government came up with an initiative to try and counteract the problem, have the courses which the apprenticeship jobs such as hairdressing, vet nursing, carpentary, mechanics, etc taught in the mainstream school system from the 10th Grade onwards. The student must also be prepared to work, at the apprentice's wage for ex amount of hours per week. The beauty of this system is that a student now is able to complete their high school diploma so they are fully educated to the secondary level which gives them far more options once they leave and enter the world, they have also completed a "tertiary" level qualification (in Australia known as vocational education) and walk away with a Diploma in a particular industry, they also have the work experience and usually only need to complete a further 12 months (if that) of being the slave before they are fully qualified.

One of my friends during high school was the first to go through this system here in my state of NSW, where only Early Childhood was first offered, when the idea was first brought in. She of course had to work a lot harder than most of us, because she was juggling year 12 with working about 20 hours a week, and also doing a diploma for child care work. Not to mention the girl suffered from cerebral pausy.
But she succeeded, and now is managing an early childhood centre, whilst completing her degree in Teaching whilst she works. Another beauty, she was able to put 7 credits towards a 24 credit degree. So it worked in her absolute favour.

I just wish at the time they had offered something else other than early childhood teaching, because I would definitely have looked into it as an option.
 
Purr so sorry to hear of your plight and how it contrasts with the fortune of those that play the system.

Though Dorset is not the most obvious place for your partner to utilise his qualifications surely there is demand in places like Swindon, Reading and Bristol? There again I may be totally out of touch.
 
Originally posted by Warbler@Jul 23 2007, 11:27 PM
Conscription? I actually thought Blair would be moving to introduce it had he gone for another term, I seem to think Francis Urquart did, and television has a horrible way of being about 10 years ahead of Government policy. I remember watching a few repeats of Yes Prime Minister a few years back and was struck by how much had subsequently come into policy even though it was supposed to be silly.

Mind you, I'm surprised that Dom isn't advocating deploying the idle layabouts as flood defence tonight. Conscription shows a distinct lack of imagination, think more laterally gal :D For a start they're all trained to maintain a prostrate position for hours on end, wear highly absorbant hooded clothing, and are flexible enough to adopt different positions?

Who needs sand bags
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Oh Oh Oh!!! Larfed out loud, and long

You may have meant this as a joke Warbs, but I was in two Suffolk pubs tonight where people were lamenting that the asylum seekers and and other net profiters from the benefits system weren't being put to clearing all the drainage ditches, culverts, and other watercourses, the blockage of which has led to the current flooding

PS I can think of some great chaps who'd make excellent sandbags - some couples even, inc the well-fed pair who've bought my local :what:

Purr, that is a really awful stgory but typical alas of the way we are governed these days - every law and directive and initiative seems to have the reverse effect from that which was intended. I suggest you at least write to or speak to your MP [try his/her constituency surgery] and aslo write to the local and national newspapers. It's essential people trapped in your financial double-bind speak out.

A final point - the racing industry must be the last bastion of apprenticeship! It's not by coincidence that rookie jockies are called by that name. They are actually indentured to their trainer - who takes most of their earnings. But the system works, and partly by a ruthless appplication of the rulebook, and the requirement tha tthe apprentices employ discipline and show respect at all times to their 'betters/superiors'.

It's old-fashioned, but none the worse for that. Racing and the hunting field - in fact equestrian & country sports in general - seem to be the last places on earth where kids are forced to learn how to behave.
 
I was in two Suffolk pubs tonight where people were lamenting that the asylum seekers and and other net profiters from the benefits system weren't being put to clearing all the drainage ditches, culverts, and other watercourses, the blockage of which has led to the current flooding
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Amazing. All that flooding and they still found time to moan about asylum seekers.
 
There's no flooding here in Suffolk Gareth!
But they are very old fashioned about lots of things, inc the ethic of working for a living
 
I agree with you Purr, i have 7 years experience in my job as a retail manager yet only earn £19.5k, where the heck they get the average wage from is anyones guess
 
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