50% of our higher education students should be pursuing degree apprenticeships – Robert Halfon MP
Robert Halfon MP and Alan Mak MP spoke at the Apprenticeships Forum Reception last night at Conservative party conference.
“This event to me is important, because it is the first rung of the ladder of boosting the prestige of apprenticeships,” said Chair of the Education Select Committee Robert Halfon.
The MP addressed the attendees of the Apprenticeships Forum reception along with the co-chair of the Apprenticeship APPG, Alan Mak. The event was sponsored by a host of organisations, including KPMG and the Chartered Insurance Institute.
Mr Mak said there were some tremendous gains in the number of apprenticeships since 2010, tripling to over 900,000.
He said one of the most important steps in encouraging more apprenticeships was to dispel the myth that they are ‘second class’.
Mr Halfon warned that with the eminent "march of the robots" on the horizon, in some years to come "a lot of unskilled jobs are not going to be there".
“We are already lagging behind in terms of skills and technological advancements and apprenticeship skills and technical education are incredibly essential," he said.
“In order to meet our skills gap, to ensure that we have people climbing up the ladder of opportunity, we need to massively increase our degree apprenticeships and I would love to see 50% of our higher education students actually doing degree apprenticeships as well as traditional degrees because it would meet our skills deficit, students would be earning as they learn, they would have no debt, and they are guaranteed to get good quality jobs at the end of it.”
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