Following the recent announcements made by the Skills Funding Agency
concerning apprenticeship and in particular the requirement for all
apprenticeships to have a one year minimum duration, we have been working hard
with our employers and college partners to develop new models which we will be
implementing over the next few months


Look for detail in our web sites, NITP, AAP and Bloom for more
detail.


Whilst we remain of the belief that short apprenticeships do have a
place for motivated and bright young people, and we will be lobbying about this
when appropriate, our new models, developed with employers are exciting and have
received great feedback.


Our aim remains to deliver 2012 jobs in 2012 and to grow our
Apprenticeship Academies significantly over the next two years

Following the launch of our 2012/2012 campaign, we are pleased to provide an
update.


Over 900 jobs have been created since the launch of our campaign. We welcome
many new employers, including many large employers such as Santander. We are
particularly delighted that many SME’s have embraced our models and continue to
provide opportunities by employing Apprentices as a first step on their
careers.

We are actively recruiting ambitious young people onto all of our programmes
across the country. Please contact us if you want a career in either IT, Estate
Agency or Accountancy.

Watch this space for new academy openings in Nottingham and Liverpool over the
next three months

We are delighted to announce that one of our long term employers, NFT have
committed to the development and launch of an Apprenticeship programme for young
people. We have been working with NFT for over 18 months on this development
which has widespread application into other logistics operations. NFT have
committed to take over 40 Apprentices per annum, with our first groups planned
to commence this July.


If you are interested in applying, please contact us on 07979857438. Location
will be Northampton. If you are an employer looking to develop Apprenticeship
programmes, contact us on the same number

We are delighted to have been able to support an OFSTED visit by two
inspectors to our Academies in Milton Keynes, Letchworth and Bedford on the 9th
May. The inspectors were looking at sub contracting arrangements. We found the
visit extremly helpful and positive to our future developments. Most
importantly, the inspectors saw real value in the partnerships we have jointly
created with our College partners.


Peter Marples commented ‘ the inspectors were thorough in their review. They
identified many good features of our existing Apprenticeship models, spoke to
both learners and employers and were able to fully understand our planned
developments. We also picked up some useful tips from them in terms of how we
continue to develop our Quality assurance processes and enhance the experiences
of the Apprentices, particularly when with their employers. Whilst an OFSTED
visit is always a challenges and stressful, we all gained real value from the
visit’