Multi-disciplinary engineering firm adi Groups original approach to addressing the UK skills gap bore fruit last Friday 8th June, when they celebrated the flying colour graduation of all 10 students on their unique Pre-Apprentice Scheme at a special ceremony at its Birmingham headquarters.
Students from North Bromsgrove High School close to adis Kings Norton HQ had spent half a day per week over two years learning new, in-demand hands on skills from adis own in-house mentors, while completing GCSE modules, earning themselves an EAL qualification and making significant headway towards their Level 2 achievement.
The evening ceremony, attended by the students in university-style graduate gowns, their proud parents, senior adi Group management and Birmingham Northfield MP, Richard Burden, as well as a number of senior figures from elsewhere in the community and the West Midlands Combined Authority, was used to officially award the ten youngsters their EAL qualification certificates.
To underline the boys and girls sterling achievements and the inspirational value of the scheme, it was also announced on the night that four of the ten who had applied for a full-time apprenticeship at adi Group had been accepted on to the programme, with a fifth applicant needing to complete a few more details before progressing his application.
Alan Bate, Senior Project Engineer at adi Electrical said of the ceremony, This was a really satisfying occasion for us all. The students have really applied themselves throughout the course and deserve all the plaudits they get. Some of our pre-apprentices, like Abbey Beaver and Oliver Shenton, even played a very mature and professional role in promoting the scheme at a KPMG conference in central Birmingham, so to see that was fantastic.
Weve managed to uncover some real talent and were fortunate to be welcoming four (and maybe five) of them back in the autumn. If we can inspire young people into engineering, we can go some way to filling the engineering jobs the UK desperately needs going forward, and, in the process, give some of them a leg-up into what is a highly skilled and well-paid career.
Launched in 2016, the UK-first pre-apprenticeship course was specifically designed by adi to give 14-16 year olds the opportunity to gain hands-on mechanical and electrical engineering skills and experience in a real world environment and aims to show youngsters how rewarding and diverse an engineering career can be.
That the students have already made progress towards their NVQ Level 2, along with the continuity involved in returning to adi for the next stage in their learning, means the four/five students accepted for full-time apprenticeships are expected to hit the ground running when they begin in September.
With another 12 pre-apprenticeship opportunities available for this September, adi is well on course to meet its goal of delivering 96 individual courses by 2020.
If youd like to find out more about the adi Group Pre-Apprenticeship programme, weve put together a guide on the scheme and how it can be applied in your business. Download a copy here: https://goo.gl/vZVzvB