The Improvement Of Postgraduate Experiences For Workers In UK Higher Education

There are many examples of how well the Employee Training Pilot (ETP) scheme is working in the United Kingdom. One of the anecdotes that experts at the Learning and Skills Council use to prove this point is the use of ETP programmes to help Indian workers at Ashfield, a small textile manufacturing firm. The company’s 26 employees are largely Indian-borne and knew little English five years ago when they arrived to work for the company. However, under the ETP programme, almost all of the employees have learned English and gained qualifications in textile manufacturing that makes the company more appealing to clients. All of this training was offered free by the British government to improve small business success.

The ETP programme has gone by the wayside and a new programme, Train To Gain (T2G), has taken its place. T2G has used the framework of ETP in order to provide training to small business employees who would otherwise not be able to access to important educational opportunities. Language courses, professional development seminars, and specific skills courses are offered through T2G to employees in a wide variety of industries. The best part for participating companies, in addition to an informed personnel group, is that they receive assistance from the government due to lost wages during business hours.

The numbers for the new T2G programme throughout the United Kingdom are staggering and proof that small businesses are looking to advance in the region through qualified employees. The sponsoring Learning and Skills Council says that nearly 20% of the 25,000 small- and medium-sized firms in the UK are participating in T2G, an impressive amount after only a few years. Nearly 21,000 participants in the former ETP programme have participated in Train To Grow, a demonstration of its staying power among business people. In all, the T2G programme helps nearly 80,000 employees throughout UK industry improve their lot and help them establish confidence in their jobs.

This programme may sound ideal but there are critics of both the old ETP programme and the new T2G format. One of the biggest criticisms of this job training method is that it offers training to employees who may be trained by small businesses if there wasn’t a crutch like the ETP. In other words, these critics feel that small businesses would pay for training if they didn’t have the ETP or T2G option. As well, fiscally conservative critics are concerned about the amount of money spent on the T2G programme and the difficulty in measuring its benefit to the general economy.