Funding Crisis - Supporting the Continuation of Flooring Apprenticeship Delivery in Scotland

In the summer of 2022, CFA, through its dedicated Scottish Committee approached the City of Glasgow College to discuss the opportunity of increasing the provision of delivery to allow more apprentices to be trained. We were disappointed to find out that the Floorlaying apprenticeship was underfunded, and the college were making a loss on every course delivered and had considered whether it could continue to deliver the apprenticeship in the future. CFA and its Scottish committee could not knowingly allow this to happen and so began lobbying the college and CITB to come together and establish a solution to ensure the apprenticeship remained.

After several meetings, I am delighted to say that through that lobbying, CITB have committed to offset the financial deficit for the City of Glasgow college running the Floorlaying course for the next 3 classes in its current delivery form.

This covers the January class that is now underway, as well as those currently on a backlog list believed to be around 28 candidates. This has now been provisionally agreed with the college to ensure they are not running these courses at a loss and CITB will cover the shortfall in costs as an immediate support package. City of Glasgow will confirm future course start dates from the college training aspect, but this is provisionally pencilled for Sep 2023.

With short-term additional funding secured for the college CFA will now continue to look at helping the college, CITB and relevant awarding bodies and funding agencies review the current apprenticeship and increase the current Government funding supplied to the college for Floorcovering apprenticeship delivery in the longer term. For this, we ask CFA Scottish members to lend their support when the time comes to help the college with a review of the course delivery in line with the completion of other working groups currently taking place.

Finally, CFA are also working with CITB, the College and SQA to find ways that onsite evidence can be more effectively gathered to support apprentices building a portfolio. Collecting this evidence is a key part of the apprenticeship and has to be completed before the apprentice can be certificated. This has become a further barrier to ongoing delivery for the college and a task that added stress to resources and funding. We hope to assist with new ways to approach this and have already provided some input. We are awaiting feedback from SQA.

If you would like to support the funding review to help secure the long-term future of Floorcovering Apprenticeships in Scotland or want to know more about the progress CFA have made in this area, please do not hesitate to contact me directly.

Shaun Wadsworth 
CFA Training Manager 
shaun@cfa.org.uk / 0115 941 1126