MTC Training and OAS sign partnership with Next Gen Makers

Engineering apprenticeship training provider MTC Training has signed a partnership agreement with Next Gen Makers in a move that will help engineering firms to better future proof skills.

MTC Training – with state-of-the-art training centres in Coventry. Liverpool, and Culham’s OAS – recently signed the strategic partnership, becoming an ‘Educational Partner’ of Next Gen Makers.

MTC Training’s mission is to create the next generation of engineering talent whilst upskilling and reskilling existing workforces, ensuring UK manufacturing businesses have the skilled employees they need to continue to make the country’s manufacturing industry globally competitive.

The apprenticeship training provider is part of the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC), a member of the UK’s High Value Manufacturing Catapult that was established in 2010 to accelerate innovation in manufacturing processes and technologies in partnership with industry and academia.

Next Gen Makers helps UK manufacturing and engineering firms to become more successful at attracting and retaining talent within their apprenticeship schemes; via benchmarking and best practice sharing as part of their Engineering Apprenticeships: Best Practice Programme and community.

The company also recognises exemplar employers for engineering apprenticeships via its national ‘Engineering Apprenticeships: Employer Accreditation’ backed by leading manufacturing organisation Make UK.

Such employers feature within the Next Gen Makers ‘Engineering Apprenticeships: Excellent Employers’ school platform, which enables schools across England to better inform, inspire and signpost students towards starting an engineering career with the best employers.

The newly signed educational partnership will see all three MTC Training centres and Next Gen Makers working in close collaboration to enable engineering firms to benefit from accessing the Engineering Apprenticeships: Best Practice Programme and employer Accreditation – thus enabling them to add more structure

to their apprenticeship schemes, deliver the best possible apprentice experience and become more attractive employers for aspiring engineers.

The partnership will also see Next Gen Makers’ community of employer members benefit from MTC’s commercial training to upskill existing workforces and bootcamps to improve manufacturing productivity.

MSC Industrial Supply Co. UK, business partners of Next Gen Makers, will also assist MTC Training with reducing the cost of training the next generation of engineers within their workshops via exclusive discounts off industrial consumables.

On the partnership, Paul Smith, senior business development manager at MTC Training comments: “For apprenticeships to work for businesses, it’s essential to collaborate with a training provider who ensures that the needs of both learner and employer are being met. Having a well-designed ‘on-the-job’ structure that dovetails with a tailored learning journey within the training centre plays a key role in making this happen, enabling both parties get the most out of apprenticeships.

“As an organisation committed to arming companies with a skilled workforce to thrive, we look forward to working with Next Gen Makers’ community of engineering firms to share our experience of training and retaining the next generation of talent.”

Adam Tipper, Managing Director at Next Gen Makers adds: “We are delighted to announce MTC Training including OAS as our latest educational partner and we now focus on developing a close working relationship with the MTC Training team, collaborating to ultimately benefit the engineering & manufacturing firms that both organisations serve.

“The UK engineering skills shortage is well known, and the sector is also being adversely affected by apprentice retention issues. This is a result of apprentices feeling unsatisfied with the quality of their experience within the apprenticeship scheme at their employer.

“However, engineering firms within our Engineering Apprenticeships: Best Practice Programme are bucking this trend via benchmarking and best practice sharing, learning from the successes of other engineering apprenticeship schemes across the UK, and improving their own as a result. Through this partnership, we aim to help more manufacturers to benefit from this knowledge sharing and get recognised as employers of choice for engineering apprenticeships”.