Our Ambitions for Apprenticeships
The Labour Welsh Government’s decisions on Apprenticeships in its last budget was a backwards step, significantly cutting the apprenticeship budget. With a number of sectors in Wales highlighting the availability of skills as being a significant barrier, a skills strategy and industrial strategy is sorely needed.
As a step towards that, Plaid Cymru would seek to map out our skills needs by sector, identifying what is needed to fulfil those needs and create an environment where learners are incentivised to remain on apprentice courses by addressing student poverty.
This would be done by implementing an apprenticeship living wage and supporting colleges to deliver projects that reduce the financial burden on students such as free travel and free meals.