NTfW Newsletter – November 2014

Posted on by karen.smith










Success for Wales at The Skills Show

The UK’s most talented apprentices and learners have been celebrated at this year’s The Skills Show following their success in the WorldSkills UK Skills Competitions with Wales coming home with a total of 39 medals – 2 gold, 12 silver, 12 bronze and 13 highly commended.

Sixty five learners were competing from Wales with Macauley Jordan from Grŵp Llandrillo Menai for Games Development (Advanced) and Samantha Adams from Coleg Cambria for Beauty Therapy (Intermediate) both bringing home gold medals. Coleg Cambria topped the Welsh tables by bringing home a total of 12 medals.

Follow the link below for the full list of Welsh medal winners.

Welsh Medal Winners for WorldSkills UK Competitions 2014

If you have a learner that you would like to enter into a competition or just want more information about the competitions please contact Paul Evans the ‘Inspiring Wales in Excellence’ Project Coordinator to find out more.
Email: paul2.evans@colegsirgar.ac.uk
Phone: 01554 748344

Over 75,000 people attended The Skills Show and watched 588 apprentices and learners battle it out in 64 skills competitions, ranging from Forensic Science to Floristry, with the aim of being named ‘UK Champion’ in their chosen skill. Visitors to The Skills Show were also able to ‘Have a Go’ at different skills and meet with employers and National Careers Service advisors to receive the latest information on apprenticeships and other training opportunities. worldskillsuk.org

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Best in Wales celebrated at apprenticeship awards ceremony

Directors of a Cardiff-based special effects company, who are more used to working behind the scenes on popular television series including Dr Who and Casualty, enjoyed their moment in the spotlight at the prestigious Apprenticeship Awards Cymru.

Carmela and Danny Hargreaves, from Real SFX, collected the Small Employer of the Year award at the ceremony, held at the Celtic Manor Resort, Newport, which brought together the cream of learners, employers and training providers across Wales. Read more …

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Welsh employers to be asked to co-invest in apprenticeships

A work-based learning landscape influenced by diminishing Welsh Government funding support for post 25 apprenticeships and a need for co-investment by employers was painted at the National Training Federation for Wales’ annual conference – Building Sustainable Futures for All.

Deputy Minister for Skills and Technology Julie James told delegates at the at the Celtic Manor Resort, Newport that the current level of government support for apprenticeships was unsustainable given that the Welsh Government’s budget has been cut by 10 per cent in real terms since 2010. Read more …

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Skills Cymru

SkillsCymru 2014 was a huge success with 10,000 people benefitting from the two events in Cardiff and Llandudno.

Young people and students were thrilled by the interactive features, hands-on demos, challenging activities and prize-winning competitions. Visitors learned about the huge range of careers, training and advice available in Wales today and the careers and opportunities that will be available in the future.

Over 100 companies and organisations enjoyed meeting and influencing the next generation of Wales’ leaders and workers. Face to face they inspired and motivated young people into careers they may have never considered, benefiting the Welsh economy, the companies and industries they represented and young people as individuals. Activities designed to inspire the visitors included handling owls, burger making, 3d printing, an omelette making challenge, blood pressure measuring, climbing a 20m wall, presenting the weather, designing a virtual reality game, making hors d’oeuvres, designing a wind turbine and so much more.

Ian Menzies, Senior Director of General Dynamics UK and chair of ESTnet, the network representing Wales’ technology businesses exhibited at the event and said, “Events like SkillsCymru are crucial for young people looking to make important decisions regarding their future career pathways. With rising skills shortages, especially in the STEM sector, it is becoming increasingly important for young people to understand what qualifications, skills and experience an employer requires in order for them to be able to follow their chosen career pathway.”

Julie James, Deputy Minister for Skills and Technology added “Against a backdrop of falling unemployment rates, SkillsCymru provides the perfect platform for a cross section of organisations to come together to enthuse and engage learners.

“It is important that we take every opportunity we can to highlight the variety of career opportunities available to school pupils, college students, job seekers and adult learners. We also need to help them to not only understand how their knowledge of certain subjects, particularly science and maths, where there are huge skills shortages, are relevant to the real world, but also how they can utilise these skills to secure employment.”

SkillsCymru will be back in 2015.
7 & 8 October 2015, Venue Cymru, Llandudno
21 & 22 October 2015, Motorpoint Arena, Cardiff

Any companies or visitors wanting to get involved in 2015 can email gabrielle.mcevans@prospects.co.uk or call 01823 362800.

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Nominations for the Inspire! Adult Learning Awards 2015 are now open!

Now in their 24th year, The Inspire! Awards celebrate the achievements of exceptional learners, tutors & employers who have shown outstanding passion, commitment and drive for adult learning, often in the face of difficult circumstances.

The Inspire! Awards ceremony will take place just before Adult Learners’ Week 2015, the largest celebration of adult learning in Europe, with over 1000 events taking place across Wales. It is a partnership involving NIACE Cymru, Welsh Government and a whole range of organisations.
To nominate, please go to Inspire! Adult Learning Awards 2015

The closing date for entries is February 6th 2015. Entries received after the deadline will not be acknowledged.

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Pencampwyr Cymraeg

The Bilingual Champion has set up two groups of Welsh Champions called ‘Pencampwyr Cymraeg’, which are made up of representatives from each of the commissioned contract holders to discuss matters relating to Welsh medium/bilingual provision across work based learning in Wales. It is the perfect forum to roll out initiatives and improve the provision across Wales. The first North Group meeting was held on 10 November 2014, and the South meeting was held on 20 November 2014.

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Online Bilingualism in WBL Good Practice Document

We have been collating the examples of good practice within the provision of Welsh-medium/bilingual provision within work based learning. It is intended to launch the good practice document in early 2015; so please contact Ryan Evans the Bilingual Champion with any examples of good practice or any case studies that you have.
Email: ryan.evans@ntfw.org
Mobile: 07425 621710

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ESDGC – Global Citizenship

The events listed below are celebrations and awareness days; each of the events includes details of websites and support materials to help plan activities for learners.

1 December 2014 World Aids Day was the first ever global health day and has continued to be marked since 1988. It is your opportunity to join people worldwide in the fight against HIV, showing support for people living with HIV and commemorating people who have died.
Read more …

10 December 2014 Human Rights Day – The date was chosen to honour the United Nations General Assembly’s adoption and proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) on 10 December 1948 – the first global enunciation of human rights.

The Human Rights Day was formally established at the General Assembly on 4 December 1950, when all member states and any other interested organisations were invited to celebrate the day as they saw fit. Read more …

Follow the link below for more resources to support learning related to celebrations, awareness days and action weeks throughout the year. www.educationscotland.gov.uk

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Training providers invited to “step forward, crank up innovation and collaborate in developing skills for new way of working”.

Wales’ young people need to be prepared, confident and trained in the essential skills that will shape ways of working that are positive for community, nature and economy.

TYF’s Founder Director, Andy Middleton, tells Wales’ leading apprentice training providers to “step forward, crank up innovation and collaborate in developing skills for new ways of working”.

It’s not so long ago that business leaders, managers and strategists thought nature’s bounty was an unlimited treasure trove of riches to be tapped into freely for the food, water, timber, minerals and air that they needed to build our ever-growing economies. Paradoxically, they did this whilst using the less-noticed areas of that trove as waste tips for broken, unused or spent things they no longer needed. For many years most of that waste was unthinkingly mixed up before being dumped – broken appliances, CO2, chemicals, building rubble, food waste, nappies and old furniture all piled into the ground in one inconvenient and hazardous heap.

Businesses are now applying for licenses to mine these waste tips for precious resources once thought worthless. In the last 10 years, many leaders have become wiser to the flaws in the selfish old ways of working. These heroes are working flat out to make radical changes to the way they work to build resilience. New concepts including ‘Cradle to Cradle’, circular economy, crowd funding, big data and open source describe a shift towards more open, collaborative approaches to resource-efficient manufacture and services where everything has value. There’s a lot of optimism in the air, but that’s tempered by a recent Institute of Directors (IoD) survey showing that 40% of IoD members thought young people were unprepared for the world of work. They lacked the resilience to deal with issues of climate change, biodiversity loss, ageing, obesity, health, inequality and resource constraints.

Like never before, Wales’ young people need to be prepared, confident and trained in the essential skills that will shape ways of working that are positive for community, nature and economy. The organisations that train the workforce of the future have a big slice of responsibility for growing and sharing the necessary knowledge and know-how. At NTFW’s 2014 Annual Conference, TYF’s Founder Director, Andy Middleton, invited Wales’ leading apprentice training providers to “step forward, crank up innovation and collaborate in developing skills for new ways of working”.

Young makers and doers are already shaping a fresh set of skills to make products, systems and workplaces fit for a different future with the help of the new suite of training resources from Pembrokeshire-based learning innovators, TYF Group; providers across Wales can tap into new resources in the collaboration. The new programme modules were designed using the insights from TYF’s guides and instructors, as they have helped 150,000 learners to study and grow in nature’s wild spaces, as well as from TYF’s consulting team’s experience of working internationally with
Government and business clients on strategy and operational efficiency:

  • Adventure Intelligence: a set of six capabilities that signals of danger or opportunity are noticed, processed and acted on in ways that optimise good outcomes at times of change, keeping nature and the people connected to it safe from harm.
  • EduCat: hands-on learning in the ‘stretch zone’ that gives young employees, trainees and students opportunity to understand and solve real business issues set as challenges by the businesses that could or will employ them.
  • What It Takes: online and face to face learning that helps trainees, apprentices and students figure out the connections between evidence of climate, demographics, resources, biodiversity, population and wellbeing, and the impact that they can make from day one.

TYF’s work clearly shows that ambition pays dividends – as a direct result of their commitment to preparing school pupils for changing worlds of work, Alastair Sawday, a Bristol-based publisher, donated £140,000 worth of sustainability books to share with learners, and attendees at the NTFW were able to access a collection of books as a resource for their organisations. The first 10 NTFW members that step forward to collaborate and accelerate change will each be given an additional 100 books to share with their trainees.

Employers or training managers who appreciate how much change is needed are asked to contact Sam Swift at TYF on 01437 720879 or email sam.s@tyf.com to explore ways that they might get involved.

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News from the Regions

Linesmen Apprenticeships at Coleg Menai’s Llangefni Campus

Linesmen Apprenticeships continue at Coleg Menai’s Llangefni campus, with learners from all over the North West coming there to complete their specialised training on the overhead cables and specialist industry standard equipment. Linesmen Apprentices could be seen balancing up on the cables, working on the specialised equipment. Apprentices of the companies ‘Freedom’ and ‘Enterprise’ were hard at work on Coleg Menai’s equipment, which is located in a real-life setting with poles, cables and equipment positioned in rural fields – complete with sheep and lambs -overlooking the Snowdonia mountain range.

Apprentice Daniel Hughes of ‘Freedom’ said: “I am doing a NVQ level 2 in Electrical Engineering, specialising in Overhead Lines. We love bad weather because that is when we are called out most often.”

Fellow Apprentice Ben Humphreys, also of ‘Freedom’, said: “I love this type of work and working at height doesn’t bother me. When you are up there on the cables, it is physically demanding and you have to really have your wits about you.”

Sean Hamilton who is also on the level 2 NVQ course in Electrical Engineering specialising in Overhead Cables, said: “As part of our Apprenticeship, we come to Coleg Menai to learn and practise new aspects of our work in a safe but real-life setting. We can be called out anywhere in the North West including North Wales, Cheshire and the Liverpool area.”

This Linesmen training programme was developed at Coleg Menai in Llangefni as a result of an initiative between Scottish Power, CIET and Coleg Menai following an identification of a major skills gap in this area. This is an excellent example of effective tripartite collaboration between the college, a local employer and a major national utilities company.

The start of the apprenticeship programme includes an intensive 16 week block delivered in college covering both the practical training and theory. Initially the apprentices are instructed in Health & Safety and progress quickly to learning to climb to the top of 15M high wooden poles using industry standard equipment.

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Caerphilly Patisserie creates recipe for business success thanks to the rise and rise of the traineeship

A Caerphilly patisserie has found the perfect recipe for business success after employers in the locality helped prove the benefits of an initiative aimed at getting more young people into the workplace.

Learners and businesses across Wales are feeling the positive effects of a rise in profile for traineeships, which were introduced as a pre-cursor to the more traditional apprenticeship in 2013 and are proving especially popular with employers in Caerphilly County, among other areas.

Now Wales’ largest training provider ACT Training is calling on more businesses in Wales to show their support for the scheme amid general concerns that not enough employers are aware of the benefits traineeships can offer both the learner and the company concerned.

In Caerphilly this success has been demonstrated by Blackwood trainee Jason Shuck and his new employer Terry’s Patisserie in Aberbargoed, which has just taken Jason on full time after he proved his worth during a traineeship placement organised by ACT and subsequently went on to complete an apprenticeship with the catering business.

Jason, 20, said: “It’s great to be out in the world of work so soon after finishing school, and learning the tricks of the baking trade with help from the staff at Terry’s. Completing my traineeship helped me to realise that catering was what I really wanted to do, so having the support of the patisserie in coming to this decision was amazing in that respect.” Read more …

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Dates for your diary

9-13 March 2015
Apprenticeship Week
Click here for more information

12 March 2015
IT’S TIME to talk Apprenticeships – venue to be confirmed
Click here for more information

10 June 2015
VQ Day 2015 – venue to be confirmed
Click here for more information

7-8 October 2015
Skills Cymru – Venue Cymru, Llandudno
For more information email: gabrielle.mcevans@prospects.co.uk

21-22 October 2014
Skills Cymru – Motorpoint Arena, Cardiff
For more information email: gabrielle.mcevans@prospects.co.uk

19-21 November 2015
The Skills Show at the NEC, Birmingham
Click here for more information

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