Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
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Work experience provides employment opportunities
Young people in the UK are being encouraged to participate in work experience schemes in order to boost their chances of employment.
As part of the National Skills Show 2013 young people can find out about all the opportunities available to them to guide them into employment or training – this includes apprenticeships, traineeships and work experience.
The free-to-attend show features colleges, training providers and employers from across the country who can provide advice and support on the best route into a chosen career.
Work experience, a key component of the traineeship scheme, provides employers with a cohort of work-ready young people who have the skills and knowledge required to begin employment.
Skills and Enterprise Minister Matthew Hancock said:
Employers want young people with great experience as well as necessary qualifications. Worthwhile experience within a business gives young people the helping hand they need to secure employment or an apprenticeship.
Work experience, whether paid or unpaid, can be hugely valuable to young people and evidence shows it works and helps people get jobs. So we support all businesses that offer work experience, and are making it as easy as possible to give young people these opportunities.
The traineeship scheme was launched in August 2013 and provides 16 to 23 year olds with the skills, experience and confidence to compete in the labour market – helping them secure apprenticeships or other jobs. Traineeships last a maximum of 6 months and provide work preparation training such as interview preparation and CV writing, support to improve English and maths skills and a high-quality work experience placement.
The National Skills Show arrives at the NEC in Birmingham from Thursday 14 November to Saturday 16 November. For more information on the Skills Show, visit www.theskillsshow.com
Notes to Editors:
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Traineeships are an education and training programme with work experience, providing 16 to 23 year olds with skills and vital experience that employers are looking for. Employers are at the heart of traineeships, running the programme or offering high quality work experience in partnership with a training provider. The Framework for Delivery for Traineeships was published in July 2013 and is available at ‘Traineeships: framework for delivery’.
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Traineeships are a joint BIS-DfE programme. All young people undertaking a traineeship will be required to study English and maths unless they have achieved a GCSE A-C in those subjects or, for those aged 19 and above, a GCSE A-C or a Functional Skills qualification at Level 2.
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Young people who want to find out about Traineeships can contact 0800 100 900
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The government’s economic policy objective is to achieve ‘strong, sustainable and balanced growth that is more evenly shared across the country and between industries’. It set 4 ambitions in the ‘Plan for Growth’, published at Budget 2011:
- to create the most competitive tax system in the G20
- to make the UK the best place in Europe to start, finance and grow a business
- to encourage investment and exports as a route to a more balanced economy
- to create a more educated workforce that is the most flexible in Europe
Work is underway across government to achieve these ambitions, including progress on more than 250 measures as part of the Growth Review. Developing an Industrial Strategy gives new impetus to this work by providing businesses, investors and the public with more clarity about the long-term direction in which the government wants the economy to travel.
