Forth Valley College and NHS Forth Valley promoted the benefits of the Modern Apprenticeship (MA) programme at a special event celebrating their partnership.

The College’s Stirling Campus was the venue for the event on Friday 4 March – part of the Scottish MA Week 2016 – where staff members from both organisations extolled the virtues of the MA programme and encouraged other organisations to look at how a similar model could work for them.

Since September 2015, Forth Valley College has been delivering training to 14 Business and Administration MAs who are employed by NHS Forth Valley for the year long programme. Guests also had the opportunity to meet with some of the young apprentices and hear more about their experiences.

The link up has been so successful that NHS Forth Valley is planning to recruit a new intake of Business and Administration MAs this year and is also exploring opportunities to develop a new programme with FVC for Engineering and Joinery apprentices.

Forth Valley College Principal Dr Ken Thomson, said: “We are delighted to be working so closely with NHS Forth Valley and providing training for their Business and Administration MAs. We all know what a wonderful job the NHS does and we are proud the partnership has been such a success and that we are helping to train their MAs so that they can go on to have a long and productive career within the organisation.

“It was also great to welcome representatives from other organisations along to our celebration event in order to show how we could provide a similar MA delivery service to them. We hope they see the benefits in what we can offer and are excited at the prospect of working them in the future.”

Helen Kelly, NHS Forth Valley’s Director of Human Resources, said: “Supporting young people into employment is one of the Health Board’s key priorities. This important new partnership is helping young people from across Forth Valley gain valuable skills and work experience and providing valuable administrative support to a wide range of departments across the organisation.”

“I am delighted that one of our apprentices has already gained permanent full-time employment within our Health Records Department and I hope that the training and work experience provided will help all of the apprentices secure jobs over the coming months.”