Internship and apprenticeship support from the RSC
This month, Naomi Smith and Richard Holliday describe the support and funding available for interns apprentices from our voucher and training programmes. How the RSC is supporting internships in SMEsRSC Internship Grants provide up to £4,000 to SMEs, to host a graduate or career-break returner intern for 3 or 6 months, to work on a Chemistry R&D project. The scheme helps to incentivise SMEs to take on interns, promote the benefits of working in SMEs to recent graduates and offer an alternative route to recruitment for SMEs. We currently award 45 internship grants per year. The Analytical Chemistry Trust Fund generously fund 10 of these, which are for internships that focus on analytical research and development projects. So far over 80% of interns funded by the scheme have been retained in chemical industries; over 70% of these staying on in the SME where they completed their internship. Applications for RSC Internship grants are open to SMEs, who are current or prospective members of our free-to-join EnterprisePlus network (subject to eligibility). Please feel free to share information about our internship scheme with Chemical SMEs in your networks. If you would like to know more about our support for internships, please contact enterpriseplus@rsc.org.How the RSC is supporting ApprenticeshipsIn the 2017/18 academic year over 375,000 people began an apprenticeship, but less than 700 of these were in laboratory based apprenticeships. With the increasing popularity of apprenticeships and increasing technical skills shortages within the sector, it is important that we encourage employers to realise the benefits that apprenticeships have to offer. Apprenticeships can provide a valuable way to increase competence, recruit the next generation of leaders into the sector and provide a valuable entry route into the sector for individuals that prefer to learn in an applied manner.The RSC supports SMEs to employ apprentices, by providing free impartial guidance and grant incentives of up to £5000 towards the set-up costs of hosting a new apprentice. In the apprenticeships policy arena, we are involved in the apprenticeships trailblazer groups that design and formally review the apprenticeships. We are also seeking to protect standards within apprenticeships by exploring the delivery of external quality assurance in partnership with Ofqual and where possible we have integrated RSciTech, RSci and CChem standards into the apprenticeships.
If you would like to know more about our support for apprenticeships, please contact our apprenticeships specialist Richard Holiday.
