To round off a fantastic Rail Week, we're delighed to have Michelle Nolan-McSweeney, Network Rail's Head of Training Strategy, as a guest blogger - to explain more about the organisation's apprenticeship plans.

These are exciting times for Network Rail - we're set to double the number of apprenticeships we offer nationwide, including fantastic new opportunities in cyber security and digital railway, as we seek to future-proof the skills needed to enable the British public to make over 4 million journeys a day.

We've recently recruited over 150 apprentices to join our award-winning advanced apprenticeship scheme from September 2017 – which delivers the front-line engineers vital to keeping the rail network running. Trainees specialise in one of five disciplines: track, signalling, overhead lines, electrical and plant, and telecom – and other opportunities exist nationwide as we seek to attract further intakes.

To celebrate Rail Week, we have a guest blog from Nichola Wright, a former apprentice (and EAL learner) who is now a Signalling Technician for Network Rail.  Here Nichola describes her career journey and why she loves working in the industry.

Earlier this year, I completed my advanced apprenticeship (which included EAL qualifications) with Network Rail, which has given me the opportunity to pursue the job I currently have and began my railway career.

Before leaving school, like most people, I knew very little about the railway and had a limited knowledge of any apprenticeships that were available to me. I found out about the Network Rail apprenticeship through a family member, and was unsure about my feelings towards attending university at the time and so decided to apply. I was very fortunate to gain a place on the scheme with my first application, and in the September after my A-Levels I travelled down to Portsmouth to attend my 9 month residential training course.

We are delighted to introduce a guest blog by Heidi Catlin, IAC Member and Policy Advisor Infrastructure Skills at the Department for Transport.

We're all aware of the skills gap in the engineering industry, and know that women play a key role in solving it.

But here's the thing: We cannot tackle the gender gap in engineering if we don't build a more inclusive and diverse apprenticeship system. While the proportion of engineering degrees taken up by women is low at 16%, it's still comfortably higher than the 3% of engineering apprenticeships which are started by women.

It's been a great couple of weeks for those of us who value qualifications in engineering and related sectors, as a glut of new research has shown just how much they are valued by both learners and employers.

Firstly, the Industry Apprentice Council report, supported by Semta Group and published last month, shows that out of 1,200 apprentices drawn from engineering and related sectors, 90% valued the formal qualification embedded within their apprenticeships. The report says that apprentices like qualifications as a measure of "the specific competencies an apprentice has learned" and for the transferability they offer.

To celebrate National Women in Engineering Day, we've a guest blog from Ann Watson, Chief Executive of Semta

This time last year, my rallying cry was to “keep up this momentum so that, in a year's time, we have even more women in engineering to celebrate”. It is, once again, International Women in Engineering Day today – and although we remain stuck at just nine per cent of the sector’s workforce being female, there is nonetheless reason to remain upbeat and hopeful.

We all, as a sector, know we need to boost the numbers of women in engineering if we’re to beat the upcoming skills crisis. We cannot hope to draw the estimated 1.8 million new entrants to the sector from an exclusively male talent pool, and nor should we want to do so either, as to do so would be to miss out on not just the talent of the women who could go on to become great engineers, but also their perspectives on the sector. The engineering sector is reaching out to girls and women – we have the social media-based Nine Percent Is Not Enough campaign, individual employers are doing what they can to build a more diverse and inclusive sector (e.g. Rolls-Royce’s 50:50 gender balance for work experience programmes), and today Semta, the ICE and the WISE campaign launch a diversity toolkit for STEM apprenticeships.

The apprenticeship levy is finally here.

Employers with a payroll of over £3m will pay 0.5% of that payroll out in levy, and will then get it back (plus 10%) to spend on apprenticeships training, certification and – where included within a framework or standard – qualifications. They will be able to spend their apprenticeship vouchers with any training provider that’s on the Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers.

The government wants 3 million apprenticeships during the lifetime of this Parliament (2015-20), and the levy is one tool being used to encourage employers who don’t take on many (if any) apprentices at the moment to increase their numbers. As we drive towards 3 million starts we must take care not to dilute the quality of apprenticeships. Although they’re not required, many of the newly developed apprenticeship standards include recognised qualifications, which employers have pushed for as they give apprentices real evidence of their transferable skills and competences.