A TEENAGER calling for more girls to start apprenticeships voiced her opinion at a Cabinet meeting in 10 Downing Street.
Mechanical manufacture engineering apprentice Paige McConville, from East Hagbourne, near Didcot, was invited by Business Secretary Vince Cable to offer her thoughts as part of the Government’s National Apprenticeship Week 2015.
The Abingdon and Witney College student addressed the whole cabinet when asked how more youngsters could get in to apprenticeships, girls in particular.
It followed a visit Mr Cable made to the sixth form college in December last year to celebrate the student becoming the two millionth apprentice in September under the coalition Government.
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The former Didcot Girls’ School pupil said she told Prime Minister David Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg the stigma associated with girls in engineering should be tackled.
Apprentices Paige McConville and Pallavi Boppana get a round of applause.
Miss McConville added she was asked to talk about what life was like as an apprentice and how it could be advertised to inspire students. The 16-year-old said: “I think women are stereotyped away from apprenticeship.
“People say to me you are an engineer but you are a women and I think it is really unfair and it should not matter that I am a woman.
Apprenticeships were not sold to me at school and I think that is wrong, and that it what I told David Cameron. They wanted an overview of how I thought more people could get in to apprenticeships.
I said they should show people that females can work and it is not just the males.
“I said going in to schools would help a lot – they took it on board and I think it was quite positive.
“I was so nervous but it was but it was a really great experience.”
Miss McConville was joined by fellow apprentice Pallavi Boppana, 20, who is about to finish her software engineering apprenticeship and go into her second year at Aston University in Birmingham.
Following the cabinet meeting last week Dr Cable said: “These two young apprentices made an impressive and powerful case to cabinet about the attractions of an apprenticeship over an academic route into employment.
“They were highly articulate and real ambassadors for women.”
Miss McConville began her apprenticeship with engineering firm FMB Oxford in August.
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