Internship scheme to help unemployed graduates
By politics.co.uk staff
The government is looking to launch a national internship scheme in order to boost the skills of unemployed graduates.
Skills secretary John Denham told the Daily Telegraph the programme would enable out of work students to improve their skills in three-month placements with employers.
He added that the government was speaking to major graduate recruiters such as Microsoft and Barclays about the internship scheme.
Speaking about the purpose of the plan, Mr Denham told the paper: “At the end, they [graduates] will be more employable, and some of them will get jobs. Employers won’t want to let good people go. The graduate situation is not as bad as some people say, but it is challenging.”
He added that interns would be paid and that the government was hoping to ensure students could support themselves while gaining new skills.
Mr Denham said: “At the end, they will be more employable, and some of them will get jobs. Employers won’t want to let good people go.
“These are the children of the baby-boomers. They will be a very big group. What do we do with them? We can’t just leave people to fend for themselves.”
The government is set to launch the New Opportunities initiative next Tuesday that will offer homemakers incentives to rejoin the workforce and will announce the launch of a scheme to help carers assisting the aged.
