Primary ITO's chief executive, Nigel Philpott, explains how the Government's new training scheme could work for you.
Tēnā koe
Nigel Philpott
You may already have heard about the new government support available for apprenticeships and other industry training.
There will never be a better time to train with Primary ITO. I hope you will look closely at the significant amount of new financial support available for training for you and your team.
The Government’s new 'Free Trades Training' package will pay the fees of all Primary ITO apprenticeships, and training across the vast majority of our other programmes.
Additionally, the Government has announced an 'Apprenticeship Boost', which promises to pay employers up to $16,000 to either employ or retain apprentices across two years.
The Free Trades Training is open from now until the end of 2022. All in all, you can see why we are saying there will never be a better time to train.
All of Primary ITO’s broad sectors are covered – agriculture, horticulture, primary services and others.
At Primary ITO we recognise that the most valuable thing you can invest in your people is your time – and Free Trades Training can make doing that a bit easier.
For a long time, our industries have been crying out for skilled people. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to bring in those people and train them with the most up to the minute skills, without having to pay fees. At a time when we all want to see people transitioning from other industries to primary sector careers, this should be an enormous incentive.
How Free Trades Training will work is that where you or your staff are enrolled in one of our programmes, the Government will pay any training and assessment fees that you would have previously have had to pay Primary ITO. This may also cover situations where you’ve already paid for training that started as far back as July 2019 – Free Trades Training will pay for the part of the programme that takes place after 1 July this year.
If you’re an employer, we are strongly encouraging you to take advantage of Free Trades Training, and also to look into how you can access money from Work and Income for the 'Apprenticeship Boost'. That will pay employers $1,000/month for first-year apprentices and $500/month for apprentices for most of their second year.
Please do consider the opportunity of Free Trades Training and get in touch with the team at Primary ITO. Call us on 0800 20 80 20, or email info@primaryito.ac.nz.
Nāku noa, nā
Nigel Philpott
Chief executive
Primary ITO