19 February 2019

BPIF continue to champion industry training and development

We here at the BPIF understand the importance of developing and training the current and future generations of our industry. That is why we continue to lobby to government on important issues and organise events that bring apprentices together to showcase the amazing opportunities print apprenticeships can offer.

Bluetree Group Visit - National Apprenticeship Week

Calling all BPIF apprentices join us at Bluetree Group this National Apprenticeship Week.

We at the BPIF will be kicking things off on Monday 4 March by taking a group of our apprentices to visit Bluetree Group in Rotherham. Bluetree Group is an award winning market leader in online print, made up of two customer facing brands; Instantprint and Route 1 Print. Bluetree has a customer centric approach, segmenting the print market into trade customers who are serviced via Route 1 Print and end users who are serviced by instantprint.

The event will run from 10.30am to 4.30pm, and to start things off apprentices will hear from inspirational speakers in the industry, such as Jon Bailey, from ProCo, and Kelly O'Sullivan, from Sainsbury's/Argos. In addition, Chris Pinborough and Billy Gibbs O'Riordan will speak about their apprentice journeys at Precision Printing.

Apprentices will also receive a tour of the innovative manufacturing facility. The day will end with a round table discussion led by PrintWeek on the ‘future of apprenticeships' and ‘apprenticeships role in print.'

The Printing Charity has also kindly agreed to pay for all reasonable travel expenses.

It's set to be an inspiring and informative day, however places are limited, so if you have an apprentice or are an apprentice that would like to attend please email Sophie Chater at [email protected]

Print trailblazer development at the final hurdle

On 6 February 2019 the Print Trailblazer Consortium submitted the assessment plan for the print trailblazer to the Institute for Apprenticeships (IfA), part of the Department for Education. This is the final stage in securing approval from Government to start the delivery of the new programmes. This has been a long and sometimes challenging battle to get to this point.

Through many focused meetings, the consortium produced a standard which was approved by the Government Trailblazer Panel but it was approved subject to certain conditions being met. The condition applied by the panel was that the options were combined, so that there would be a single standard and an apprentice would need to master all three areas i.e. pre-press, press and post-press before they would be able to pass their apprenticeship. Thanks to support from across the industry we were successful in overturning the Government's decision and approval for the full core with options standard was achieved in March 2018.

This has been a challenging process and has required considerable input from the consortium but especially from our Chair James Buffoni and our Vice Chair Ian Wilton. We appreciate the support of the consortium and would like to thank the companies involved, BCQ Group, BPIF, CDi, CDS, De La Rue, GQA, Learn2Print, Leeds City College, PageBros, Reach Plc, Ryedale Group, The Printing Charity, Unite the Union and Westrock - MPS.

We would like to thank all of our consortium for their support and help. We expect to hear from Government at the beginning of April.