Schools selling us short, manufacturers warn

Businesseses accussed the government of manufacturing short in the education system at a WM round table event. Schools either ignored manufacturing completely or actively put children off the sector, bosses at manufacturers claimed. There was also a lack of equipment and facilities where youngsters could sample engineering jobs, experts claimed. Richard Brown, operations director at Hi-Tech Mouldings said: "You've got to have the people coming in to go forward. We get a lot of people coming to us straight from school and they've not had the opportunity to develop the key skills for manufacturing or the school has turned them off the sector." Neil Partridge, HR director at Vaillant Group, added: "What I'd really love is for the government to get rid of initiatives and have one streamlined view but provide us with school leavers that have the core skills that have got access to the right equipment and technology." The comments came as a WM round table met to discuss the key challenges for manufacturers in 2011. Panelists voted skills shortages the top concern for many firms and demanded more practical support from Westminster. Karl Douglas, general manager at Smith & Nephew Extruded Films said: "People going to university now are going to find it tough coming out. Why not let some learn in industry and go to university on day release? Supporting these things is an area where the government could make a massive difference." Many SME manufacturers simply werne't aware of how to access existing government funding for apprenticeships, panellists stressed. Peter Bennet, md at Grovely Precision Engineering said: "I'm lucky I can find out where grants are and access them. As an SME a lot of people in my sector don't have that information." See the full coverage of WM's roundtable in our January issue