BMet College has signed a first of a kind educational partnership with Next Gen Makers in an initiative that is set to help to future proof skills within engineering firms across the UK.
BMet offer a variety of engineering apprenticeship courses from their James Watt College in Great Barr, West Midlands – training the next generation of engineers for a wide range of engineering employers across sectors including food and drink, automotive, aerospace, and rail.
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. The company also recognises exemplar employers for engineering apprenticeships via a national employer Kitemark accreditation backed by leading manufacturing organisation Make UK.
The newly signed educational partnership will see BMet and Next Gen Makers working in close collaboration to enable engineering firms that engage with BMet to benefit from accessing the Engineering Apprenticeships: Best Practice Programme and employer Kitemark – 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 assist BMet with reducing the cost of training the next generation of engineers within their workshops via exclusive discounts off industrial consumables through their business partner MSC Industrial Supply Co.UK. BMet will also tap into the vast engineering expertise of the MSC engineering team and Technology Centre, ensuring the knowledge of BMet engineering tutors remains contemporary and in line with industry standards.
Mike Townsend, Business Development Manager for Apprenticeships at BMet comments: “Our partnership with Next Gen Makers has grown and developed over the last four years and we are really excited by this new element of our relationship.
“We know from our own research with employers, both large and small, that being able to knowledge share to develop best practice in terms of apprenticeship recruitment, experience and retention is a key priority for them, and we are looking forward to supporting our employers through our partnership with Next Gen Makers”
Adam Tipper, Managing Director at Next Gen Makers adds: “We are very pleased to announce BMet as our first ever educational partner and look forward to developing a close working relationship with the engineering and apprenticeship teams at the college. Our focus is firmly set on proactively collaborating to benefit to the engineering firms that choose BMet as their engineering apprenticeship training provider.
“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 the partnership with BMet, we aim to help more manufacturers to benefit from this knowledge sharing”.