SAFEGUARD AN APPRENTICE
Safeguard an Apprentice was announced in 2009 and is intended to boost recruitment in particular sectors as well as supporting employers in the sectors worst affected by the economic downturn. Safeguard an Apprentice provides a wage subsidy of £75 per week to employers in the construction, manufacturing and engineering sectors who are at risk of making their apprentices redundant. This scheme will continue in 2010/11.
CHANGES TO INDIVIDUAL LEARNING ACCOUNTS
Eligibility to Individual Learning Accounts (ILA) has been extended so that they can now be accessed by 16-17 year olds. Through our ILA200 offer, for which we provide £34 million over 3 years, people can take part in short, flexible pieces of work-focused training. By increasing the income threshold to £22,000 eligibility for ILA support has been extended to an extra 250,000 people - covering nearly half the adult workforce.
We have made higher education at college and university more accessible to people on low incomes by introducing ILA500 at a cost of £38 million over 3 years. This provides a grant of £500 per year towards study. In addition, we have extended financial support to taught postgraduate study to part-time learners enabling people in work to participate in higher level study. Scotland is unique in the UK in providing such discretionary, grant-based funding for taught post-graduate study.