Engineering diploma backed by BAE
Defence giant says qualification still has value in wake of government downgrade
- Published in News.
Nigel Whitehead said that BAE would still back the diploma
BAE Systems has defended the value of the engineering diploma in the wake of the government's controversial decision to downgrade it along with a raft of other vocational qualifications.
It transpired last week that the government planned to make the diploma count for just one GCSE instead of the previous five, sparking fears that schools will discourage youngsters from taking the qualification or fail to offer it altogether.
Speaking at at event organised by Semta, the sector skills council for manufacturing, to mark the start of National Apprenticeship Week, Nigel Whitehead, group managing director, BAE Systems, said that BAE would still back the diploma. He said: “I support it, our company supports it, and we believe that it has a future.”
Anecdotally, Terry Scuoler, chief executive of manufacturers' organisation the EEF, said that there was no evidence of a “great head of steam being built up” among members over the diploma downgrade. The engineering institutions including the IMechE and the Royal Academy of Engineering strongly condemned it last week, however.
Attendees at the Semta event, held at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, heard how apprenticeship levels had reached “record highs” since the establishment of the National Apprenticeship Service. There were concerns though over the value of short-duration apprenticeships and fears that apprenticeships were still not being promoted as effectively as they could be in schools.
Sir Roy Gardner, chairman of Compass Group, said that with one in five young people out of work, employers had a “collective responsibility to reduce that horrendously depressing statistic”.
Whitehead said that for BAE skills were now the single most important priority. “The reality is that BAE is a skills enterprise,” he said. “I can't find a manager for the Astute submarine programme on the market.”
BAE was training 300 new apprentices each year, Whitehead said, with 1,000 apprentices employed at any time. It took £90,000 to train an apprentice but this figure was typically paid off within a year of an apprentice completing the course.
Retention of apprentices within BAE was good, Whitehead added. The apprenticeships at the company were oversubscribed by a factor of ten, so the company was increasingly looking at factors such as work ethic and the ability to work well in a team when taking on apprentices as well as good GCSE results.