E&S Comment: Black Country apprentices will make us great once more

It can and will be again.

The Duke of York's rallying call for apprenticeships and his backing for the pioneering Ladder for the Black Country shows that a new generation of talented workers, learning the trades of the many and varied businesses of this industrial heartland will carry it through the 21st century and beyond.

More than 100 apprenticeships have been created in a week. And this is just the beginning.

What Prince Andrew has rightly recognised is that there must be a local solution to a national problem.

Youth unemployment is not unique to our part of the world but its effects are severe and it is up to all of us to cure it or risk failing a generation of young people.

This is a coming together of the Black Country - not just of the Express & Star, Black Country Chamber of Commerce, Vine Trust and Performance Through People - but across generations.

Prince Andrew's visit was a picture of common sense and inspiration.

The Black Country was built on labour, on toil and on factory furnaces shaping liquid hot metal into the things the rest of the world could not do without, but ultimately took for granted.

In the 21st century, there are Black Country businesses leading the way in research and development.

Manufacturing is not the dirty business it once was. But there is no abundant employment for unskilled workers.

Instead, it is up to the employers themselves to drag this great region up by its bootstraps.

Ready, willing and waiting are a generation of keen, eager young people brimming with ideas and with their fingertips at the touch screens and tablets of the latest developments in technology.

Skills, experience and knowledge are passed down to a younger generation. And they could teach us all a thing or two as well.

It is a scandal that so many are left queuing up at the Job Centre and believing that there is nothing here for them.

The responsibility to change this lies in part with the education system, which must prepare school pupils for the world of work and not just concentrate on getting them to achieve academic qualifications.

There must be instilled in every child the work ethic that built the Black Country and made it great in the first place.

Just because someone may not be academically gifted it does not mean they do not have a valuable contribution to make.

What is required is support, structure, and encouragement to be the very best they can be.

There is no shame in not going to university.

Apprenticeships offer a wage, skills and even the potential to get the same level of education without the £30,000 worth of debt that comes from higher education.

They became less trendy in certain circles, particularly among a political elite that saw a drive to get more people into university as a way to artificially reduce the youth unemployment figures and find a way of making families fund the education that for Prime Ministers and opposition leaders had always been free.

But apprenticeships are back, better than before, and they are a credible alternative to higher education.

The Duke of York also made a plea to parents that they play a large and pivotal role in the decision making process.

One of the many great things about the Black Country is the sense of family ties.

We are a people who aspire to give our children a better life than the ones we had.

We are surrounded by history, heritage and greatness. But as an area the Black Country has always just got on with the job rather than shouting loudly how proud it is of what it has achieved.

The time has come to stop hiding our light under a bushel.

The brilliance and eagerness of a new generation of apprentices will remind the world that Made In Britain means even more when it's Made in the Black Country.

Let's get to work.