Courses advertised as fast-track routes to becoming an electrician could be preventing budding professionals from progressing into the sector.<\/p>\n
Experts from the Electrical Contractors\u2019 Association (ECA) said that college-run, classroom-based courses for potential electricians were a \u201cwaste of money\u201d and were being \u201cmis-sold\u201d.<\/p>\n
Talking to Construction News, <\/em>ECA chief operating officer Andrew Eldred and head of external affairs Jane Dawson said the government-funded courses could be pushing potential electricians away and deepening the skills gap. The ECA has had meetings with the construction minister Sarah Jones to raise the issue and discuss how the money could better be used.<\/p>\n The college courses are meant to lead to apprenticeships. However, fewer than one in ten of the 23,000 people a year who enrol on the courses progress to apprenticeships, Eldred said.<\/p>\n \u201cIn every part of the country, pretty much, the numbers on the classroom-based courses far outweigh the numbers starting the apprenticeships,\u201d he said. Nationally, the ratio of classroom-based enrolments to apprenticeship starts is about 3:1, but that rises to about 8:1 in London and 6:1 in Birmingham.<\/p>\n According to Eldred, around 8 per cent of the course graduates progress into apprenticeships nationally, <\/span>Eldred put the low apprenticeship numbers down to the courses being \u201cmis-sold\u201d as a direct route into being an electrician.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you go on any college website, they will present it as: \u2018This is your route to progressing into becoming an electrician\u2019. So to a significant degree, I think there is scope to say this is being mis-sold,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He added that both the course funders and the students were being mis-sold.<\/p>\n Eldred estimated that taxpayers funded the classroom-based electrical courses to the tune of \u00a370m in 2022\/23.<\/p>\n \u201cHow is that spending justified?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Mis-selling the courses, he added, was also driving people away from doing an electrician apprenticeship as they do not want to spend more time studying.<\/p>\n \u201cQuite a lot of people end up disappointed \u2013 they had a higher expectation of what\u2019s going to happen next,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n He called for the money spent on the college courses to instead go towards other parts of the training industry, such as the apprenticeship standard. The money could be used to pay tutors and assessors on the course closer to an electrician\u2019s rate of pay, for example.<\/p>\n The money could also go towards other training routes such as Adult National Vocational Qualifications (NVQ) \u2013 most of which are self-funded.<\/p>\n