The Government’s targeted apprenticeship funding will enable Taradale-based EIT to offer free studies and retraining across a range of sectors including the trades, primary industries, and health and wellbeing.
The free qualification training will save apprentices and learners between $2,500 and $6,500 over a year, giving EIT a chance to increase its role in supporting local businesses and gearing people up for skilled jobs.
“It gives us the opportunity to increase capacity and broaden programmes to meet the developing needs of our regional economies,” says EIT’s acting CEO Bill Kimberley.
The Targeted Training and Apprenticeships Fund (TTAF) focusses on industries where the demand for skilled workers is likely to grow during the Covid-19 recovery period.
This includes primary industries, construction, community support, community health, manufacturing and mechanical engineering and technology, electrical engineering and road transport.
Kimberley says EIT currently offers a number of successful programmes that fall in the targeted areas in both Hawke’s Bay and Tairāwhiti regions, and dropping the fees removes one of the barriers to study for new learners and those looking to retrain.
“It will also relieve some of the burden on employers who in the past covered some of their apprentices’ study fees.”
I can understand EIT’s need to attract customers for survival but please, please, they should not be handling apprenticeships. These should be provided by the workplace employers. As a long retired Home Economics Teacher in Secondary Schools, this was a battle we regularly had to fight even at Secondary Level. It is impossible for an institution to provide the specific training needed in specific trades and workplaces. For example in the building sector at EIT the tutors taught aspects of building, but not concreting, electrical work or plumbing. While I can see the need for additional specialist training in the last two, surely mixing and laying a concrete pad is basic to building.
Similarly, Clothing and Textile teachers could not hope to provide the commercial machine skills needed in each commercial garment making factory. Home Economics teachers used to teach a wide range of home making skills such as nutrition, budget development, laundry management, parenting and some cooking skills. Of course the curriculum changed and Hospitality became the ‘catchword’. We now have many young folk who can make a passable cup of coffee but don’t really know how to feed a family and care for their well being. Please leave the apprentice training to the workplaces. They should never have been removed and given to ITO’s or other independent providers divorced from the trade.