APM shortlisted to develop Higher Apprenticeships in project management

The Association for Project Management have made it through to the final stage of their bid to develop Higher Apprenticeships in project management. APM, in conjunction with the Council for Administration (CfA), will deliver a presentation and answer questions in relation to the bid on Tuesday 1st November. The final decision will be announced by the end of November by the Skills Funding Agency and the National Apprenticeship Service.

APM and CfA’s proposal is one of only a few shortlisted for the final round seeing off over 130 organisations during the initial stage of the bidding process, which took place in September. APM and CfA have put a bid in to develop Higher Apprenticeships at levels 4 and 5 in project management, which has been widely supported by over 40 corporate organisations from across the profession including BAE Systems, Thales and Yorkshire Water. These organisations, along with others, will eventually deliver the ‘on the job’ development schemes and, together with APM, will look to help create 775 apprenticeship places by March 2016. This will go a long way to bolstering a skills shortage in project management skills and capability identified by 13 separate Sector Skills Councils’ Skills Assessment and Cluster reports.

APM and CfA conducted a survey in August to find out from organisations if there was a need for Higher Apprenticeships in project management. Overwhelmingly, 88.9% of employers agreed that project management Higher Apprenticeships would meet business needs and support their organisation’s development. These training schemes, aimed primarily at 17 to 24 year olds, could be one answer to the high rate of unemployment in the youth market as 91% of those surveyed believe that being a successful apprentice would significantly increase their employability in project management.

Higher Apprenticeships are development packages combining knowledge and competence based learning. Schemes in project management would likely to take between two and three years to complete. The apprenticeship would either have to contain a single vocational qualification covering the knowledge and competence elements, or two separate qualifications, one covering knowledge and one covering competences. These qualifications would be provided by APM.

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