Brendan Smith: Calls for better rural access and supports for apprenticeships

Thank you, I welcome our witnesses and thank you for your presentations. I may have to leave because I have due to speak at the Chamber as well, so it's no disrespect to our witnesses if I leave before you respond. Could I say that you outline in each of the presentations the difficulties, the challenges that are there, but I think it's important as well that we recognise the comments each of you made in relation to, Mr Curley spoke about powerful opportunities with apprenticeships. I think Ms Rogers spoke about, and I quote, young people and adults are increasingly open to considering apprenticeship pathways. Guidance counsellors see this every day. And Mr Gillespie and his concluding remarks as well made about that apprenticeships can deliver immense societal and economic value. I think despite the challenges and despite what you outlined there as the difficulties facing young people taking on apprenticeship, that would send out the positive message as well. I think it's very, very important, and we need to see more people taking on apprenticeships across so many different areas, and that's apart from traditional craft apprentices. Just a few general queries. I know some schools engage very closely with local employers, and they come into the classroom, they meet up with students. Likewise, some schools bring back people who have gone through the apprenticeship system. I think it's oftentimes, rather than reading a document, if we listen to the person, listen to their experience, it can be more influential in informing young people, influencing them to take up a pathway. All of you referred as well to the difficulty in some people securing an employer. Some of that is based on people, the challenges particularly for people coming from what's regarded as a disadvantaged background. Is there also a geographical element to people not being able to get an employer? All of us represent rural, by and large most of us represent rural constituencies, where we have people very distant from the training centre. So we have. So can that be improved in any way? I know you can't have a training centre in every location. You have to have a critical mass, you have to have the standards delivered in a training centre. Is there a need for more training centres, in your knowledge, spread throughout particularly the more rural counties as well? I know I represent Kevin Monaghan. Young apprentices from my area may go to Sligo, they may go to Dundalk, and some of those people are quite distant if they have to travel, if they get accommodation, and the remuneration is not adequate. So in your engagement with SULLIS, with the Department of Further and Higher Education, is there any consideration being given to enhancing the network of training centres without diminishing in any way the standards that can be attained in training centres and ensure that standards are maintained, but also at the same time try to facilitate easier access for apprentices. Thank you, Acha Hirlig. Yeah. Obviously, we've met Solas, we meet ETBI regularly, Andy Ferris on this. You make a very valid point, but in the modern apprenticeships, especially take electrical and the systems and the way they have to train, there has to be a massive investment in training centres. I mean, I visited Waterford Training Centre recently. I mean, it's state-of-the-art. It has been massive investment, especially in the retrofitting and, let's say, putting in solar panels. That's very hard to replicate in small places. So where I believe the support is for students. Oftentimes, they're going into the colleges when they're closed or they're overlapping. They can't get accommodation. We've got to try and reimagine how we can make use of the accommodation that's available when the other students are there. But at the same time, we don't want to water down their college experience because they're only going for 22 weeks and 11 weeks and I believe they deserve a college experience, which is, again, parity of esteem. So one of the key problems here is being able to pay for accommodation, availability of accommodation, and the same problem that even all the students have. We need to look at the accommodation models to make sure they're also facilitated. I just don't think we have the capital money to replicate it at the standards that are going to be required for a lot of the modern apprenticeships because they are very high technological-based, even if you take some of them, just even the whole computerised standards they need. So I think it's like having centres of excellence. I think we will end up with centres of excellence, but then you need to support the students so that the cost of attending these centres of excellence is met by the state. Yeah, I would further add to that. As Michael said, you have 22 weeks and 11 weeks placement, and accommodation is a problem for every sector in the economy, but if you have a young person doing an apprenticeship with their employer, which is basically the seven phases in the four years, they'll have four of these phases on the job and they'll have three of them off the job for training. It can be costly. It can be very, very difficult for those people to get to the training centres. My personal experience is I'm a practical teacher, a construction studies teacher, in the second-level sector. My two brothers both have their sons are doing apprenticeships. Now, they're the craft. One is doing electrical and the other is doing plumbing. And access is very, very dependent on the family, on the actual unit. And what I'm advocating here today is that schools should play a more important role in terms of career guidance to direct people down to that. As it was said here, we're very much in second-level schools, CAO and university-orientated. There's a lot of people who want to learn through that. But the apprenticeship model itself, and Michael has spoken well about it, there must be supports because there is problems with the employer-led approach. How do you get an employer to take them on? And even, like, I've interviewed people and stuff, and I'll just give you this flavour. Sean was the name of the apprentice, and the parents told me, Sean is lucky. He has a very good employer who registered him. So I found out that the registration can be an issue as well, with solace, okay, on time. Releasing him when college placements comes up and takes him back when college placements are finished. He pays the correct rate. So, again, the minimum wage and the money is a big issue because you can have people at a training rate which is less than the minimum wage, maybe not be efficient at registering them with solace, and very often the parent finds out that they're actually not registered. Less than the minimum wage, maybe not be efficient at registering them with solace, and very often the parent finds out that they're actually not registered for the apprenticeship when it's time for the training. Some other employers are not so good. Now, this is witness statements. Some people are let go during their apprenticeships and have to go and find another employer who will take them on and allow them to finish their apprenticeships. So that's, you know, this is the inclusiveness. It's very, very, it's overly dependent on the family unit supporting the apprentice. And that's what the other speakers were alluding to here. And you started off with the rural. I also looked up Donegal, and I just looked up my own craft, wood and carpentry, no places offered. What I could see, there was two mechanical places. And if you look at the percentage on apprenticeships.ie, most are around Dublin. So certainly there is a rural issue and an urban issue here too. Thank you. Caira, could I just ask one question, if you don't mind? Mr Gresby in particular referred to the lack of teachers for practical subjects. Are enough teachers being trained in those particular subjects? Yeah, the research would say there's enough being trained. We're not retaining them. The problem is that we're, actually we're not even able to recruit them. What's happening is they're going, the first group, some of them are going to Australia, lifestyle, but they'll come back. Dubai, the problem is they're going for tax-free salaries and then they can't get incremental credit when they come back, so they decide to stay another five years. And then the third thing is, if you've got a construction teacher, he's absolutely a perfect fit for, I won't name some of the companies that go in and recruit them and says, we'll train you up as a quantity surveyor. It's nine to five. We'll give you flexible working. It's more attractive now than teaching with the modern way of working. So we have people now who are trained teachers with transferable skills being, and it's not just them now as language teachers and all, being actually, I would say, recruited straight out of the classroom into the private sector. So we are training enough. It's just we're not able to retain them. Now, there's all sorts of issues. There are workload issues, the bureaucracy around teaching and whatever, and the lack of teacher autonomy is coming into all that. But we are training enough. We're just not retaining them. Thank you.