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DELTA (2017-1-UK01-KA202-036810) Collaborative Apprenticeships Case Study

Name/Identifier: Shared Apprentice Limited Date: February 2019

Researcher: L. Scragg Country: Scotland, UK

Case Study

Dundee and Angus College (D&A) are a large regional college in the north east of
Scotland, with two campuses in the city of Dundee, one in the town of Arbroath
in the county of Angus and outreach centres in the rural area of Angus in
Montrose and Forfar. The college employs around 1,000 staff and has up to
16,000 students enrolled. Due to the nature of the learning it provides, D&A
provides apprenticeships across numerous areas of learning.

The majority of businesses in the UK are classed as SME’s, many in certain sectors
such as construction are self-employed persons or businesses with under 10
employees. For such companies, the commitment required to take on an
apprentice for four years can be quite prohibitive given the sometimes cyclical
work nature of the sector.

In order to provide more apprenticeships and especially to appeal to these
smaller companies, D&A along with two local authorities in both Dundee and
Angus and representatives from the local construction sector setup a non-profit
limited liability company called Shared Apprentice Ltd (SAL) to facilitate
collaborative or ‘shared’ apprenticeships.

In the UK, apprentices are employees of a company who are then released for
their college studies - they are employees primarily and students secondarily
which is one cause of the issues for small and micro businesses. With this in
mind, SAL becomes the employer of the apprentice and sub-contracts the
apprentice to various smaller businesses as part of their work based learning
which is delivered by the hosting company. The hosting company therefore
doesn’t have the long term commitment requirement of a ‘traditional’
apprentice although during the period they have the apprentice working with
them, they are charged at a rate of the apprentices wages + 20% to SAL
overheads.

This system provides many benefits for the employer / hosting company:

- There is no long term commitment
- There are no social salary costs (such as National Insurance contributions
in the UK) as these are covered by SAL
- They do not have to provide holiday pay (provided by SAL)
- They do not have to pay their apprentice whilst they are at college
- They have no pension contribution costs (which are a legal requirement
for most business in the UK, but which are covered by SAL)
- There are no PPE costs

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