Starter Kit. Idea 322 of 500. Cluster 16
Apprenticeship brokers who match a firm to a student and handle the paperwork, for a fee from the firm
The mechanism, from the book
177,000 qualify every year and 45,000 get a place. The other 130,000 are a market that nobody has built for, and the polytechnic is not a second choice when it leads to a job.
The first step
Go to three medium-sized firms, a garage, a printer and a builder, and ask whether they would take an apprentice if someone found the student and handled the paperwork, and what they would pay for that. Then find students who missed a university place through a school or tuition class. One placement with a fee paid is the proof.
- Who pays first
- A small firm owner who would take an apprentice but has no time to recruit or do the paperwork, and pays a fee per placement.
- What leaves today
- Of the 130,000 who miss a university place each year, few find a trade, and firms lose workers they could have trained.
Ask first
- Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission. Ask whether an apprenticeship arranged privately can lead to a recognised qualification.
Check before you spend
What a written apprenticeship agreement must cover, whether a broker taking fees needs a licence, and who insures the apprentice at the workplace.
Find out these three numbers
- What would a firm pay for a found and placed apprentice?
- What wage would the firm pay the apprentice?
- How many firms in one town would take one?
A comparison from the book
Switzerland. Chapter Fourteen
"The apprentice signs a contract with a real company, works and earns 3 or 4 days a week"
The contract with a real firm is the heart of it; the broker makes that contract easy to sign.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.