Lord Sugar should look in West Lindsey for his next apprentice
and live on Freeview channel 276
And new figures suggest he could do worse than search in West Lindsey.
According to the Department for Education (DfE), West Lindsey can boast of 480 people starting on genuine apprenticeship schemes in the nine months to Apri.
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Hide AdAnd forget the brash, sometimes larger-than-life claims of Lord Sugar’s confident candidates - 280 people in West Lindsey actually achieved an apprenticeship qualification over the same period.
Just like Lord Sugar’s hopefuls, it seems the apprentices of West Lindsey also harbour ambitions to conquer the business world.
The most popular subject area chosen by the apprentices was business, administration and law.
The next most in demand subjects were health, public services and care, and engineering and manufacturing technologies.
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Hide AdAnne Milton MP, Minister for Apprenticeship and Skills, said apprenticeships could be a ‘passport into a range of exciting industries’, such as nuclear, food science, law, engineering, digital technology, nursing and planning.
The Government says it will be focusing on improving apprenticeships in the 65 most deprived local authorities over the next two years.
Far from being a quick route to the top, as Lord Sugar’s candidates are hoping for, apprenticeships in reality can take anywhere between one and five years to complete.
An apprentice will typically spend one day a week studying at a college or training organisation, while spending the rest training on the job under the guidance of experienced employees.
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Hide AdWhile popular wisdom might have you believe that apprenticeships are a route mainly for school leavers, this is not the case in West Lindsey.
Those aged 25 and over made up 33 per cent of all apprenticeships taken up in West Lindsey in the nine months to April, while 35 per cent were aged 19-24 and 31 per cent were 16-18.
The DfE publishes figures on three kinds of apprenticeships - intermediate, advanced, and higher.
In West Lindsey, 220 people began intermediate apprenticeships - the equivalent to GCSEs - last year, while 190 started advanced ones, the equivalent of A levels.
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Hide AdThe remaining 70 embarked on competitive higher apprenticeships, which are on a par with foundation degrees or above.
Across England, around 290,500 workers began new apprenticeships over the nine months to April, and more than 181,600 successfully finished one during the same period.
However, this was 156,400 fewer than during the same nine month period in the 2016-17 academic year.
The plunging numbers have been blamed on the introduction of the new Apprenticeship Levy - a tax that some larger employers pay towards a national fund for the training of apprentices - in April 2017.
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Hide AdCritics say the change has caused confusion for employers, and put them off taking on apprentices.
Mrs Milton continued: “New, high-quality apprenticeships are being developed at all levels, all the time.
“We have a range of measures in place to help people from all backgrounds to take up an apprenticeship, and we give extra funding to providers training apprentices in the most disadvantaged areas.
“You can find out all about the apprenticeships available near you by visiting the government’s Find an Apprenticeship website – so take a look and consider doing an apprenticeship today.”