Floorlayer Apprenticeships Scotland - City of Glasgow College update
In Mid-May CFA were made aware of the following situation at City of Glasgow College regarding their announcement to cut up to 100 jobs in a bid to tackle a £6m deficit. This is on top of the college also freezing vacancies and implementing a voluntary severance scheme that will see 76 workers leave.
Concerns over the risk of Floorlaying being removed from delivery at City of Glasgow were then confirmed during a webinar CFA held with CITB on May 18 2023. The recording of that webinar is available in the member's area of the CFA website for anyone that wants to listen back to what was discussed.
During the webinar, it was highlighted by CITB that the college had made them aware that it is highly likely that there will be no more delivery of the Floor layer apprenticeship at Glasgow College by College staff by the end of the summer this year and any agreement CITB and the college had in place regarding additional funding to subside the cost of training for the next 3 cohort intakes is now likely ‘off the table’. The College will be making 75 mandatory redundancies by the end of the Scottish school year (a fifth of the workforce)
There are currently 74 apprentices on programme at the College with another 42 on a waiting list that should have been all but completely reduced with the intakes planned for August 2023, September 2023 and January 2024. Many of these apprentices are ‘named’ as in already working for the company or recruited ready to begin with the company. College funding across the board has been cut meaning they have less credits to assign to apprenticeships. Scottish Government are clawing back £26m that had been promised to the college.
Having engaged with CITB over the past week there is strong commitment from Tim Balcon, CEO of CITB that situation needs resolving. The priority is the continuation of training for existing apprentices with strong commitment from the National Construction College (NCC) in Inchinnan to pick up delivery should it be required with one senior manager having been involved in previously in setting up floor covering provision. CITB will continue to look at all options regarding existing and future provision and explore various partnership agreements that can share the task of developing and delivering a suitable training programme, this will include discussions around the location of training and explore opportunities to offer parts if not all the training programme in areas other than a centralised location.
CITB have has several meetings with Glasgow College for an update and potential future arrangements or exit strategy. They have met with SQA and their senior EV for flooring to ask for support in setting up alternative training facility should it be required. They held a meeting with Scottish funding council (SFC) to discuss impact on current apprentices and potential options to support.
Next week CITB have meetings with NCC to discuss logistics of moving course delivery to Glasgow site should it be required and an internal meeting to discuss a review of the required training programme and ensure a joined up CITB approach.
All of the above sits alongside CFA/CITB collaborations to agree potential support for apprentices on site assessments, input on what mew training facilities will look like if needed, support from wider industry and how the waiting list of apprentices will be managed and possible solutions.
Hopefully, this update reiterates the CFA management team’s commitment to support Scottish members at this time of uncertainty around apprenticeship delivery and please if there are any further questions on the above feel free to make contact.