Hair and barber council react to apprenticeship funding cut

As we know there is an apprenticeship crisis in the hairdressing industry, with less young people seeing hair as a viable career option. With organisations like Choose Hair the industry is rallying together to raise awareness for the abundance of career options available within the hair business, but recently this has been undercut by the Government, reports The Hair and Barber Council. The Council has criticised the Government’s recent decision to cut funding for hairdressing apprenticeship training by 20%. The decision has been described as an example of how undervalued the industry is and proof of the need for regulation. This cut means that the funding paid for apprenticeship training has been reduced from £9000 per student, to just £7000. The fact that this decision comes at a time when the industry is already struggling to find trainees to take the industry into the future means the news has been met with understandable negativity by those offering apprenticeships. On the decision leading hairdressing training provider Edward Hemmings lamented, "We created a better apprenticeship programme. We created a longer and better thought-out scheme. We’ve created something really great and guess what, the Government has cut our funding by 20%." Hair and Barber Council CEO Keith Conniford told HJ exclusively, "Young people coming into the industry, together with their parents and guardians want to know that the highest quality of training and standards can be expected as the norm. In addition, they want choice of provision, and the knowledge that the industry they are entering offers amazing career opportunities, which hairdressing and barbering does!" He continued, "Without adequate funding, training providers will struggle to meet these exacting standards, and the quality of provision will suffer, which in turn will damage the image of the hair and barber industry. The Ofsted inspection regime grades training organisations on many aspects of provision, where ‘outstanding’ is what providers are striving for. This cannot be achieved with continual changes in the funding mechanisms and the reduction in rates paid for an apprenticeship. Many training providers have shut up shop over the past few years, as what is required of them in terms of quality and how to deliver it, just cannot be achieved unless the rates of funding equate to the quality that is demanded of them.”