From: Chris Dowling, Director,
Cairngorm Group
In Scotland we are currently seeing a big push by Government in Holyrood to hit a target of 30,000 new apprentices by the end of the current parliament. This is being made up of modern apprentices (carried out in the work place), foundation apprenticeships (carried out in the school class room and on organised work placements) as well as the traditional craft apprenticeships most of us will be familiar with.
The opportunities and varieties of vocational qualifications have never been greater and within Cairngorm we are running with about 10% of our work force working their way through some sort of apprenticeship varying from joinery to health & safety.
While all this sounds great (and it really is), the one area we are really struggling with is traditional glazing. There is only one college in Scotland that offers the Scottish Vocational Qualification (SVQ) in glazing, East Kilbride, which is not ideal with it being 187 miles from our headquarters!
But that is not the biggest problem, the main challenge is that for the second year running they are not running the course due to lack of interest. While there is no doubt that these days most glazing work is into PVC or aluminium frames and most glass is cut on automatic cutting tables, as an industry we are in real danger of losing the some of the core traditional skills.
I find it really surprising that across the whole of Scotland and even North of England there is not enough demand for formal glazing apprenticeships. This leads me to a couple of conclusions, firstly that people don’t know there is a SVQ available (not to mention a fair bit of funding for things like travel and accommodation) or companies don’t see the value in it, both conclusions are equally concerning.
Succession planning is a hot topic within many companies at the moment and for anyone reading this I’d really encourage you to consider, when your most experienced glaziers retire in the next 5, 10 or even 15 years, who is going to replace them?
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