Kwes Kent Woodland Employment Scheme

KWES Kent Woodland Employment Scheme is a charity established in 2012 to offer employment (in the form of apprenticeships) to people seeking forestry employment, but having difficulty finding it. Those difficulties stemmed most often from lack of skills and experience, but were worse for those entering the jobs market from an institutionalised life, for instance in the armed forces or prison. KWES’s interest was mainly in mixed broadleaf woodlands – “boots on the ground” forestry in woods managed on a commercial basis. KWES has never been involved in arboriculture, (tree surgery or working at height), nor with hobby or recreational forestry. The word “apprenticeship” signifies a three-way contract, involving the apprentice, an employer and a training organisation. The government’s “trailblazer” apprenticeship scheme set up in 2017 runs (and provides a small level of funds) under rules administered by the Department for Education. It envisages two-year apprenticeships, with the apprentice typically working four days a week in the employer’s business, and being released for one day each week to be taught more theoretical knowledge in the trainer’s accommodation. Looking at this from the employer’s point of view, it gets the services, (part time and part subsidised), of a worker who starts with no skills or experience, but can be expected to gain these over the two year period. “Employing” him/her is thus a pure burden at first for the employer, but its apprentice should be more or less paying his/her way at the end of a couple of years, especially if s/he is still quite young. However, the real value to the employer is that its former apprentice, to be fully “employable” after qualification, needs in most industries another, say, two years of experience – and s/he can realistically only gain this in that same employer’s business, (which explains how the government can say that apprenticeships “lead to a continuing job”). It is the wage-rate that the employer pays his ex-apprentice during this period which gives the employer real value from the whole operation.