Blog: Where are all the Brits?
The Maritime Masters final proved again this year to be a
great showcase for young talent across the maritime industry – but where are
the Brits? Just one of the nine was a British student. I’m delighted to welcome
talented people to our shores, but I’d like to see more British talent
challenging them for the top slots. We’re missing out.
As a Commissioner with the Maritime Skills Commission I have volunteered to
take the lead on our seventh objective, to “increase exports of maritime
education and training”. Amongst the Maritime Masters finalists there were
students from China and Greece, India and Malta, Chile and Mauritius. I think
that’s wonderful. I am enormously proud to be British, and delighted that so
many talented young people from across the world have chosen to come to my
country to study.
I hope they made friends here, and participated in a rich exchange of ideas,
and leave with warm memories of their time in Britain. At one stage I chaired
the board of a large college of further education, the first to win a Queen’s
Award for its international work. I was very pleased that the able woman in
charge of our international team was as keen to tell us about the educational
value to home students of mixing with others from overseas, as she was to talk
about how much we earned from them. Learning is about opening doors, and it was
clear from listening to those Maritime Masters finalists that they had relished
every moment of their opportunity.
That’s really good. But are our own students as keen to grab those
opportunities? Or their employers to offer them?
As a participant in an EU-funded study trip to Gothenburg in 2015 I was very
struck by a comment made by our colleague Christian from Bavaria. He was
disappointed that “only 4%” of Bavarian apprentices have a spell in another
country as part of their apprenticeship. I’m pretty familiar with the British
apprenticeship scene and I have never seen any stats about overseas
opportunities; I expect that beyond some intra-company transfers in the big
international firms, numbers are close to zero. Again, we’re missing an
opportunity.
In “Catching the Wave”, their report on the UK’s maritime professional services
sector published a year ago for Maritime London, PWC said this about the
universities they praised:
“At the same time, there is also a need to encourage more UK students to
undertake maritime business education. Currently most students enrolled in
these courses are international students”.
We should take up that challenge. We should go out of our way to promote our top class academic opportunities to our own top students as well as to those from overseas. We should be exposing talented young Brits early on to the best of the best. We are the most international of sectors and need to be more energetic in cultivating our top talent.
Ian Mackinnon is Secretary to Maritime UK's People and Skills Forum and a Maritime Skills Commissioner