CITB chairman James Wates has called on employers to step up their activity in schools after a damning report revealed that careers advice on construction is largely unfavourable, outdated and ill-informed.
The Educating the Educators survey, carried out for CITB by Pye Tait Consulting, is based on more than 800 responses from a range of “careers influencers”, including school teachers responsible for careers advice, careers advisers and careers experts at 10 focus groups in England, Scotland and Wales.
More than a third of respondents (35%) rated the industry below five on a scale of one to 10 in terms of its attractiveness as a career opportunity, saying the profession “typically involves dirty hard work”.
The industry’s attractiveness reduced the further south respondents were in the country, even though London and the south east is where construction activity and job opportunities are typically more plentiful.
In addition, 44% of teachers admitted to having offered ill-informed careers advice to students, while more than 60% of careers advisers in schools offered no information on job prospects based on available work.
The report stated: “The views of careers advisers and influencers about construction are most often based on their knowledge of craft and trade roles. Traditional perceptions of the industry as hard work for low pay are common.”
Emma Bull from Willmott Dixon talking to students from St Telio’s High School in Cardiff. James Wates says the industry needs to do more in schools
Many careers advisers in England were desperate for more help from construction companies to provide information and materials, the report said, particularly in schools, which are already struggling with legal requirements to extend careers advice to both younger and older pupils.
James Wates commented: “Our industry has to compete with many others for future talent. That means that we must be in the thoughts and choices of pupils making decisions at school, not as they’re about to leave or have already left. We can’t leave this to existing careers advice because we need to reach teachers in order to reach pupils. Teachers need to be made aware of what training and careers construction has to offer their pupils in order to get our message across."
He added: “I’m asking employers to be part of setting out our stall. I’d like to see 50 employers visit 50 schools in 2014 to do just this. That sends a powerful message about our industry and about the opportunities that exist within it.”
In response to the report’s findings, the CITB careers team is offering to help construction companies step up their engagement with schools and arrange events, talks, field trips, mentoring programmes or work experience with schools.
In addition, the organisation said it will step up support for the CITB Construction Ambassador Programmes to train industry role models to provide information on construction careers in schools. It will also join forces with supply chains, federations, training groups and professional institutions to support local careers events.
“But on its own this will not be enough,” a spokesman told CM. “Our hope is that employers will increasingly want to work with us to attract talent into our industry. They are ideally placed to inspire and recruit the next generation of apprentices by getting into schools and setting out the stall for teachers and pupils.”
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When thinking about enthusing young people to come into our industry let’s not forget that the best time to interest youngsters is prior to the comprehensive sector. Primary schools also need the information about the industry, there are after all many ways of incorporating construction and design into the modern primary curriculum and building enthusiasm for the industry early will open new avenues for, and widen access to new working opportunities, among the young who can aspire to a career in the construction and related industry sectors.
My work in school maintenance brings me into contact with teaching staff. A recent overheard comment from a teacher to a misbehaving pupil was “stop messing about you do not want to end up as a brick layer”. As I was the only person present and the comment slightly barbed, asked the teacher how many degrees or equivalent did he have, one was the reply. I politely stated I have one and nearly finished my second. The silence was stunning. But its shows sadly teacher bias against skills in which they believe “you get your hands dirty” This is not he first time I have observed this.
For a masterclass in how to engage with students, staff and schools and inspire young people to join our industry – check this out…Class of Your Own…..simply brilliant workshops …http://designengineerconstruct.com
These guys are streets ahead!
Working in the construction industry can be a hugely fulfilling and rewarding: Being able to look round at the end of the day knowing that you built that – or helped build it – can be incredibly satisfying.
I trained as a CITB Construction Ambassador back in 2005 specifically because I wanted to encourage young people to come and share this pleasure.
I cannot help but be concerned however that I would be short changing anyone enticed into the construction industry right now: Training schemes for tradesmen are poor, with many of the participating employers in it for the grant money rather than any earnest desire to share skills. The Richard Review of Apprenticeships highlighted the poor quality of today’s apprenticeships in general with particular reference to the incremental box-ticking approach to qualification: current construction apprenticeships fully reflect this criticism. The result is that very few construction workers qualifying today can hold up their heads and consider themselves rounded tradesmen – the poor quality of workmanship widespread on site bears testimony to this. (Though I would also argue that commercial pressure and preoccupation with programme contribute significantly to this).
There is a further issue that many of the ‘trades’ dominating today’s construction industry do not have trade level qualifications at all: concrete occupations, ground-works (pipe-laying) and timber framing all stop at NVQ2 level. This means that for many trades there is no infrastructure to drive aspiration and success.
To conclude, if we want to attract young talent into the construction industry, we need to offer a little more in return: We need to take on board the conclusions reached by the Richard Review: We need employers to engage not only in recruitment but also in design and implementation of training. We need to raise the quality of training to a level parallel to that witnessed in Germany and Switzerland: We need construction apprenticeships to be regarded as a career path equal to that of university education – something to be aspired to and not just something to drift into. Then, and only then, we will be able to complain about careers advisors whose attitudes to construction are somewhat half-hearted…