From time to time I go to events that are truly inspirational. Last week I went to the Worcestershire Apprentice Awards at the West Midlands Safari Park. This celebrated the achievements of apprentices across the county and it was fantastic to see how they had achieved so much.
The government re- introduced apprentices in 2010 and since then around 2 million people have been given the opportunity to train. I was a little sceptical at first but I have now been utterly reassured that these are very sensible, worthwhile training schemes. I met, at an event in the House of Commons recently, an apprentice at Vodaphone. This was not a picture of a 1950s apprentice, in a boiler suit passing a spanner to his boss; this was a young lad on £30,000 a year training to be a mobile communication technician. It is a serious job with serious training and importantly, serious opportunities.
For the future, I feel that we need to establish a way that qualified apprentices are treated with the respect and status they deserve. For example, if you go to university, when you leave, you are a graduate. When you finish an apprenticeship, you are simply a qualified apprentice. In Germany, you have the title of, I believe, technician. Bestowing a recognised title on qualified apprentices is important because they should never be seen, as they sometimes are, as second class qualifications. People who train through apprenticeships do everything from prepare accounts and legal documents, through working in traditional building trades, to building hi tech communication satellites.
So whilst there has been 2 million new apprenticeships since 2010, there have been 4,000 in Wyre Forest and it is because of successes like this that we are able to attract companies like Amtec to the district, creating 500 more jobs in the automotive supply chain. These are supported by local training from both Birmingham Metropolitan College and Kidderminster College, now part of Newcastle College.
It is through this type of training that we will ensure that we can bring more jobs to the district. Businesses need qualified staff and we can train them locally. But this type of training means we will create far better pay and opportunities here in Wyre Forest, securing a sound economic outlook for the area and filling the gap left as a result of the tragic decline of our carpet industry