Traineeships aren’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination — as our recent stories exposing their success rate failings to apprenticeships demonstrated.
But they still appear to have the full support of the government, which is prepared to invest large sums to boost starts.
The findings from our freedom of information request suggest a distinct reluctance on the part of colleges to take advantage of this.
It worries me that colleges have again been shown to be slow to evolve their provision to suit government priorities.
This all comes on the back of our report last November that uncovered really low levels of apprenticeship delivery at many colleges.
The Association of Employment and Learning Providers’ then revealed two weeks ago that most of the apprentices colleges do deliver are subcontracted to the independent providers.
We all have our own views on what other areas of FE provision needs to be fought for — and don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to have to rename our paper Apprenticeships/ Traineeships Week one day.
But we all have to move with the times and colleges surely need to be more flexible.
Your thoughts