The Oldham branch of the Liberal Democrats have been communicating how their political coalition has brought 10,000 apprenticeships to Oldham since 2010. The other side to this coin is that apprenticeships which have more in common with 1980’s YTS schemes than traditional apprenticeships may pay as little as £2.73 an hour & since 2010/2011 3,890 of the these 10,000 Oldham apprenticeships have been given to people over 25 years old. This has lead to accusations that the scheme is being used to play a numbers game that both hides the true level of unemployment & allows employers to pay very low wages whilst being subsidised with training grants for training they would have carried out with staff regardless.
