Debate contribution: Apprenticeships
Debate contribution by Dr Steve Aiken OBE on .
- MLA
- Dr Steve Aiken OBE
- Party at the time
- Ulster Unionist Party
- Date
- 5 March 2024
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Private Members' Business
- Heading
- Apprenticeships
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4252933
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I declare an interest as the chair of the all-party group on science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and also as I am forming an APG on aviation, defence and the space sector. Every time we talk to industry representatives, one of the key issues that they bring up is skills shortages. In northern Ireland 120-odd years ago, one of the big things that it had was its skilled labour and workforce. We did not have any natural resources, but what we did have was a commitment to the improvement of our workforce and, particularly, the addition of technical education. That is where the tradition of the apprenticeship came from, and it is one of the strong areas in which we need to reinvest in today's Northern Ireland. Members will be aware that we have a student cap in Northern Ireland. The fact that we are not able to bring enough students to Northern Ireland has had an effect across the entire sector. It affects further education and everything that we are trying to do. It is not helped by, as has already been mentioned, the fact that the apprenticeship levy is not used as it is in the rest of our nation, particularly for improvements to education and training for apprentices. Only here does it go into the pot and not to where it should, which is to help to fund the further education colleges. Many of our industries have a lot of complaints about that. They see themselves as being doubly hampered by the fact that they have a skills shortage and, although they pay in for an apprenticeship levy, they get nothing out of it. We also need to be able to support our traditional industries in Northern Ireland, such as aviation, shipbuilding, vehicle manufacturing and construction, as well as the new industries of fintech, life sciences and cyber. We need to do that by buying into the idea of the three ages. Most of us will work until we are 70. Indeed, some of us are a lot closer to that than others.
Behave. At each stage, we must be able to retrain and reskill. If we are going to have three ages of training, we need to have access to further education and upskilling. That has to be available to everybody across the sectors in Northern Ireland. As Mr Nesbitt said, our party will support the motion and the amendment. We have an opportunity in Northern Ireland. We could and should be doing something radical. First, we need to remove the student cap. We need to increase the numbers of people — our greatest natural resource is our own people — we keep in Northern Ireland and give them the opportunity to stay. We also have to make sure that the funding that is available for upskilling is used for upskilling. We need to make sure that we invest heavily in the interrelationships between our businesses, our industries and our further and higher education sectors. More importantly, we need to reach out to our people to say that these are valuable things to do. We should all be out there saying, "You need to upskill and reskill". It needs to be a process of continuous improvement. Some 125 years ago, we were the Everett — in case you do not know, that is where Boeing has its major manufacturing plant — the Toulouse, the Singapore or the Bangalore; that was here in Northern Ireland. The way for us to make it work again is to invest properly in our people and use the funding and resources that we have.
No, Jonathan, I am not that old.
610 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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