Employer Training Pilots (ETPs) are to be extended to the whole of the UK, Chancellor Gordon brown announced in his Pre-Budget Report.
The pilots, launched in 2002, aim to help low-skilled people in work gain basic skills or their first level 2 qualification (equivalent to GCSE grades A-C).
Currently available in 18 areas of England, ETPs offer low skilled employees paid time off work to train, wage compensation for employers for giving this time off work and free or subsidised training.
The Chancellor said that 30% of employees have low or no skills – the highest proportion in Europe. This group are also four times less likely to get training in work than the highly skilled.
An Institute for Employment Studies report, published last year, judged ETPs to have been ‘successful in getting substantial numbers of employers involved in training their low-skilled employees to qualifications’.
The IES study found that at the end of the first year, over 3,000 employers and 14,000 employees were involved in the scheme, with a drop out rate of just 4%.
Over 70% of employers taking part had fewer than 50 employees and 40% had no previous contact with a government agency, suggesting that ETPs are reaching workplaces where training has not been a high priority in the past.
One Response
Clarification – National Employer Training Programme not til 200
Please do remember that Gordon Brown was specific that the extention of the Employer training Pilots into a national offer will not occur until 2006 into 2007
Mike Allen
Head of Workforce Development
LSC Somerset