In August, more than 330,000 18-year-olds will leave school – some will go to universities, but most will be looking for jobs. The latter will find themselves competing with the 250,000 graduates who will have finished their university courses.

This year, however, companies coming out of lockdown will not be looking for many new employees.

There’s no doubt about it: this will lead to a tsunami of youth unemployment. 

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We faced a similar problem in 1982 when I was the minister for information technology in Margaret Thatcher’s government. I was one of the ministers who was charged with bringing forward schemes to provide work for the unemployed.

We need these schemes again – and I hope we will hear about the government’s proposals soon. 

Coronavirus: Funding for upskilling 

The news on apprenticeships is not good. The government has already reported a 50 per cent drop in starts and I know from conversations I’ve had that apprenticeships offered earlier this year by companies like Bentley, JCB, Rolls-Royce, Netflix and Warner Bros to students leaving university technical colleges (UTCs) this summer have been cancelled. It doesn’t surprise me when you consider that the salaries offered to higher-level apprentices aged 18 are around £20,000 per year.

We cannot stand idly by and let our young people sign on to claim Universal Credit at £4,113 a year. The government must encourage them to take one-year training courses to gain level 4 qualifications like the Higher National Certificate (HNC), which will then help them to find a better job next year. The skills covered could be ones like engineering, life sciences, computer science, agriculture, social care and hospitality management.  

FE colleges can offer now HNCs in these technical courses, but currently students must pay £5,750 to complete them. Whether they pay this outright or get a loan, it’s utterly unacceptable to leave them with this kind of debt. Instead, the government should pay the cost of the training course directly to FE colleges and UTCs, which have the space, equipment and teaching staff. If the course is paid directly by the Treasury then, when compared with the unemployment credit a student could receive, the extra cost would be only £1,600. The other alternative is to pay it directly from the £2.5 billion apprenticeship levy, which will be massively underspent this year.

Recruit industry experts

Of course, great education requires great teachers. We have a great opportunity now to recruit many excellent engineers, who have been laid-off as a consequence of the Covid-19 crisis, into the teaching profession. I am already hearing from UTCs that this is the first year in which there is no shortage of interest in teaching engineering-related subjects. However, the tax-free bursaries available for design and technology training courses, the subject of choice for engineering teachers, are about half of those offered for other science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) subjects. 

We have a once-in-a-decade chance to bring engineering talent into education, but this opportunity will be closed to many if the bursaries stay at current levels. I, therefore, encourage the government to increase the D&T bursaries to bring them into line with those of other Stem subjects.

These two initiatives, both of which are vital to the Stem capabilities of our country, will yield a high return on investment for the government in years to come. I urge the government to take action with both as soon as possible.

Lord Baker of Dorking is a former education secretary. He is writing in a personal capacity.