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The issue of the painful state of training in the industry is one that simply won’t go away. While everyone agrees that something needs to be done, precious few companies seem to be interested in actually getting their hands dirty and doing something about it.

In Bernard Rutter’s comment piece he reveals some pretty damning statistics about print training, specifically the pitiful amount that has been requested by print firms: £23,400. To put this in context, it is less than one hundredth of the amount of funding that has been requested by sister Proskills industry, extractives, even though print is the largest sector the body caters for.

I’m not sure if this illustrates the fact that as industry training is so low on our priority list that companies simply can’t be bothered to apply for funding or if it’s indicative of the hoops that companies have to jump through to obtain support for relevant courses. I hope the latter, but suspect the former.

Of course, I know it’s easy for me in my ivory tower, as opposed to being at the coal face of challenges that many of you face on a daily basis, to bang on about how the industry must show more of an interest in training, but how else are we going to attract the workforce of tomorrow?

On another sombre note, the Wallis column below will be the last we publish, as his seemingly endless supply of articles has, well, come to an end. I thought it fitting that we republish a column that was on the subject closest to the great man’s heart.

Over his 10 plus years of writing for PrintWeek, Lawrence wrote 52 columns on the subject of training. They varied in theme from his view on a statutory training levy, something he was strongly in favour of, the need for a single body to oversee the industry’s training provisions, well before the days of Proskills, or his own experience of being an apprentice and later a tutor.

So, I’ve picked a column on the subject that, even though it was written 10 years ago, rings as true today as it did then.

Darryl Danielli is editor of PrintWeek.