No GCSEs, no job? Construction Manager reports on why construction could be making a huge mistake
At 15, Nigel Pearce wasn't thinking very seriously about his career. Who does at that age? He thought vaguely about pursuing some sort of office job because the money seemed better than manual work. At his Catholic boys' school he messed around at first with his GCSEs but then knuckled down and achieved three Cs, two Ds and two Es.

Then he learned that his girlfriend was pregnant.

"I was shocked. Very shocked," he says, sitting on the balcony of his flat in a south-east London tower block. "I kept thinking about what my parents would think, about what other people would think, not about my own feelings."

His own feelings are pretty clear as he and his girlfriend Suzanne fuss adoringly over their five-week-old daughter Destiny.

"People kept telling me how hard it was going to be. But I love it. It's hard work, definitely, but I love her to pieces."

Nigel has landed on his feet. His dad, a bus driver, urged him to learn a trade because he now had a family to support. A schoolmate who'd begun a plumbing apprenticeship told him about the Construction Industry Trust for Youth (CITY), a charity that helps place young people with employers. He got a lift to the interview.

He's now working for a local firm four days a week doing general building work and spends one day a week at college pursuing a painting and decorating NVQ. He and Suzanne are installed in a clean, spacious flat. Their families help out where they can and they seem happy.

Nigel's boss is happy as well. Edward Matthews, whose company Matthews & Associates specialises in refurbishments and turns over half a million a year, pays Nigel £165 per week (after tax).

That's more, in crude market terms, than Nigel is worth to an employer as an unqualified, 16-year-old labourer. But Matthews doesn't see it like that.

"He pulls his weight like a man in his 20s. He can take the stick and the banter. He's got a good manner. He's clean, tidy, polite and trustworthy."

In fact, Matthews has plans for Nigel. He wants to extend the business into major domestic refurbishment. He needs a decent finishing craftsman and someone to handle customers. He can see Nigel at 21 with a fair amount of responsibility, perhaps even as a foreman.

It's risky and Matthews knows it. In 18 years Nigel is the sixth young man he has employed from programmes that give youth a helping hand.

It doesn’t have to mean the construction industry is dredging the bottom for talent

The success rate is about 50/50 for the lads themselves. The benefit to his company is hard to calculate, but at 46 he needs help taking the business forward.

Nigel seems a good bet – perhaps, he admits, because Nigel has heavy responsibilities and is not yet tuned in to the realities of the free-moving skills market.

"The biggest problem in the industry is trust and loyalty. I'm paying over the odds for Nigel because he's worth it. I'm out of pocket but I'm hoping it comes back to me," says Matthews.

Nigel and other young people featured here represent a challenge but also an opportunity. At a time when three-quarters of employers in the construction industry have trouble recruiting staff and when construction courses are emptying, these young people raise the question: Does the industry recognise the resource in front of its eyes?

The broken home of Europe
The UK can be called the dysfunctional home of Europe. The government's Social Exclusion Unit (www.cabinet-office.gov.uk/seu) reports alarming statistics: the UK has the highest percentage of children living below the poverty line, the highest proportion of households with children in which no adult works, the highest teen pregnancy rate, a below-average participation in learning among 18-year-olds, and rising numbers of school exclusions.

These are the numerical indicators of what's visible on streets: kids with no direction, no motivation except perhaps to drift into criminality and ever further from growing up. This isn't much of a danger for Nigel and his girlfriend, thanks to supportive families. But many people don't have that support and need help along the route to adulthood.

It's not an easy job. People who help socially excluded young people to get a foothold in the industry report hair-raising circumstances. Peer pressure is all but irresistible, and comes from unexpected quarters.

"Imagine," says Jim Lister, project manager for the Paisley Partnership, a programme in Scotland that helps young people with difficult backgrounds get into construction. "A young man's living at home, gets up to be on site at 7.45, works a long, hard week and comes home with £55 training allowance. His dad, who maybe has never held down a job, is just as likely to say 'Are you mad?'"

In Bristol one youth worker says kids are relieved to be tagged by the police because at last it gives them a cast-iron excuse not to go out with their mates and cause trouble.

"These are kids who, when they leave school for good, you can hear champagne corks pop in the staff rooms, the ones the careers service just can't engage," says Lister, a long-term veteran of community economic development.

The Paisley Partnership provides a group of a dozen or so 18- to 24-year-olds with a year-long stint with employers, mixing on-the-job training with general life skills such as driving, literacy and addiction counselling. At the end of the year they may be offered permanent positions with the contractors or their subcontractors. Or they may not.

You can hear the champagne corks pop in the staff room when some kids leave school for good

Such may be the extent of their problems that even after one year they are 80% "job-ready" but not all the way there.

But Lister says it's worth it all the same. Particularly gratifying is the one-on-one mentoring that sometimes occurs spontaneously.

"For some of the young people this is the first adult male trust and communication they've ever experienced."

A number of programmes like this are going on all over the country, using varying methods and funding mechanisms but with the same goal in mind.

At the Youthbuild Doorstep project in Grimsby, Tim Kirkby runs the training programme.

"We take the square pegs," says Kirkby. "People who can't make the CITB's national grading, or who can't get a conventional apprenticeship."

Twenty-three young people are now in various stages of the three-year work-and-learn programme designed to result in an NVQ Level 3 in collaboration with Grimsby College.

Doorstep is also a housing charity, so in some cases the young people are actually working on building or refurbishing homes they'll move into. Kirkby says at least 50% have some combination of drug, alcohol, family or emotional problems and Doorstep provides help on this front as well.

A joiner by trade, whose father got him into the industry in the 1960s by walking around hawking him as an apprentice to every builder in the area, Kirkby says Doorstep is an alternative marketplace for up-and-coming craft workers.

"Some lads aren't clever enough for the CITB entry level," he said. "But it doesn't mean they won't be good tradesmen. With us they work for peanuts [the trainees are often on the dole or in the New Deal scheme and Doorstep provides a bit extra: £40 a week in the first year]. They've got to be motivated and turn up rain or shine."

Quite a few local people appear to be motivated. The scheme can handle 30 entrants at any one time. Kirkby has to turn away 10 referrals each month.

A young man works a long, hard week for £55. His dad, who may have never held down a job, is just as likely to say ‘Are you mad?’

Doorstep acts a bit like a shop front. Local contractors can watch the young men work and decide whether or not to take them on. One happy client is Mick Quickfall, of builders JGA Quickfall & Sons, who has employed five such young people over the years.

The firm needs all the labour it can get. With 65 craft and other staff, Quickfall says demand would let him double that number if the labour were available.

"It's a bit of a utopia," he says. "They are a tested product. They've been through the muck and bullets. They need some extra polishing but the fact is we've got them working on responsible jobs and they're okay."

The Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) is starting to target young people who fall between the cracks as a potential seam to mine. It recently earmarked funds to establish local collaborative partnerships around the country to attract young people who may not feel able to achieve a construction qualification. By the end of this year the CITB hopes to recruit 200 young people into employment from these schemes.

It's not a big number, but Frazer Clement, head of business planning and partnerships at the CITB, says it's a reasonable starting point.

"It should be higher in coming years," he says. "We don't think it's enough but it's pointless setting ridiculously high targets."

The idea of reaching out to young offenders, school drop-outs and others who are at risk of never playing a positive role in their communities may run contrary to a feeling in the industry that construction needs to raise its profile and esteem to the broader public.

But Penny Jones, who manages Onsite Bristol, which connects local youth to local businesses, encourages a pragmatic view: we need them and they need us.

Onsite Bristol recently committed to stop discriminating against youth who have been in trouble with the law and discovered that only a couple of its 70 or so client companies cared about a criminal record anyway.

"It doesn't have to mean the industry is dredging the bottom for talent," she says. "It's about saying, 'Look, we're looking for people. If you really want to do it, maybe we can give you some help overcoming the hurdles you face.'"

Some young people just won't grow up in a timescale that suits a construction firm. Matthews recalls finding in a works van drugs and other shenanigans of youth still torn between having a laugh and getting on. But evidence shows that young people on the edge may be a valuable resource if handled properly.

Sitting on his balcony, Nigel's advice for others who may be in his position reflects the hidden value.

The joyrider’s tale

John Brown, 21, is on probation after spending four months in a young offenders institution for stealing a car. He sat the CITB assessment, scored well, and now needs an employer to give him a chance. The CITB’s Equal Opportunity office supports him. “I left school in the third year [aged 14]. I got suspended for truancy a couple of times and the last time they didn’t let me back. School was okay. I liked some of it. I was good with maths and science and I got on with the other stuff okay. Some of the teachers just thought I was bad so they picked on me a bit. Once you’ve done one thing wrong they think you can’t do anything right. “I got known to the police for petty things like breaking windows. Then when I was about 15 or 16 I started to take cars. First, it was just for driving them around and then it was a way of making money, by selling them on to people who changed their identity and resold them. I got caught and did community service. “I ended up in prison because I was messing about with my mates and someone was saying they thought I couldn’t rob a car. We were all drunk and I said I could, so I did. I broke into a car and started it and then somebody else drove it. We were all drunk and the police saw us and followed us. Some of us in the car wanted to just stop but the driver didn’t. We had a crash in the end and the police were there so we all got arrested. I got sent down because of the stuff I’d done before. I went to Stoke Heath [a young offenders unit in Shropshire] and did four months. “When I got out, I volunteered to go on a probation course. I want to get a job and stop messing around. I just want to get myself sorted out, get a job, somewhere decent to live and buy my own car. “I think construction is great. I’ve done labouring before, but I love being on site. I worked on the Reebok Stadium in Bolton and it was great knowing I’d helped build it – a good buzz. I remember sitting in the stand at dinner time thinking this is great. I’ve done partitioning and ceilings and stuff like that, and I want to do joinery too. I want to get back to a regular job, get sorted out and I know I like construction. “When I get a job through this probation scheme, I’ll be earning my own money, keeping busy and I’d like to get myself a car. I still like cars, but I just want one of my own now. I want a house, a mortgage, maybe even to work for myself and have my own business. I just need one company to give me a chance to prove myself, I know I can do it. It’s all I want to do. I’ve got the commitment. I just want to be given one chance.”

Escape from the dole queue

Finding it difficult to hold down a regular job, 22-year-old Paul Matthews joined Youthbuild, the year-long course run by the Paisley Partnership in Scotland designed to get the long-term young unemployed work in the construction industry. “I heard about Youthbuild from my New Deal advisor. I’ve had a few jobs since I left school but nothing that paid well enough for me to keep up the rent on my house. “School was all right but all I was really interested in was photography. When I left at 16, I moved to Newcastle with my dad and started a photography course at college. But after three months I had to move back to Scotland and there weren’t really the opportunities to get back into photography here, so I worked in factories on and off. The longest I’ve had a job since I left school is eight months. “Working in factories is soul destroying: you’re like a robot. In construction there’s variety and a chance to work your way up. I’d like to get into joinery if I could. “I had some interest in construction before I did this course and I’ve done days on and off on housing refurbishments, but didn’t have access to any training or an employer that would give me a chance. “Youthbuild isn’t like other courses I’ve been sent on from the job centre, where you’re no better off at the end. There is also support provided to help with problems outside work. They helped me sort out my finances so I didn’t get further into debt. “I hope to be in construction in five years’ time. Hopefully I’ll get an apprenticeship out of this scheme.” Ian Wiley, 23, also came to Youthbuild from the New Deal, after being unemployed for 18 months, due to lack of qualifications. “I’ve always been interested in how houses are put together, but I didn’t really know what I wanted to do when I left school. I still don’t really know, but I like brickwork and joinery. “I got kicked out of school for misbehaving and went to a special school but didn’t do any exams. I liked sport and science, but I wasn’t ready to learn and couldn’t settle at school. “I was a milk boy for two years after leaving school at 16. I worked in factories on and off and went on training courses from the job centre, but it’s a vicious circle. “I live with my nan in Johnston [two miles from Paisley] at the moment because I don’t get on with my mum’s new partner, but my family are very supportive. I wouldn’t be here if they weren’t. I did have my own house when I was 16 but I lost it because I couldn’t afford to keep it up, though I may be getting one of the flats we are working on here through Youthbuild. “I hope to be in steady employment in the construction industry or something similar in five years. I just need someone to give me a chance and train me.”