North West Skills Academy in Manchester began safely delivering British Gypsum’s Site Ready Skimming Course again last month.

The Academy, which has reported a 22% increase in enquiries and a 13% increase in enrolment numbers versus this time last year has worked closely with British Gyspum to implement safety meaures that enable the students to continue learning at pace, while keeping the safety of students and tutors firmly at the forefront.

Designed to support individual plastering learners as well as contractors seeking to upskill their drylining tapers, plastering and general labourers, the free course teaches ‘students’ with basic skills the necessary trowel technicques needed to be able to skim plasterboard on site.

Plastering large areas to represent commercial projects is a key area covered on the course with learners stretched and challenged to complete the work to deadlines.

The course also covers the correct use of the latest plastering tools and methods as well as identifying bad practice.

At the end of the course, all participants complete a final assessment to test the skills they have developed over the six-week period and demonstrate they are able to produce a volume of finished work in a day.

Samuel Riley, CEO at North West Skills Academy said: “We’re so pleased that we are now back up and running and able to offer our training courses again.

“We have a group of seven students taking part in the current Site Ready Skimming Course, with 2 further courses also booked up in the coming months. Feedback from students has been excellent and they are pleased with the safety precautions we have in place to help protect them from COVID-19.

“We’ve seen a real increase in the number of enquiries and sign ups we’ve had since lockdown was imposed in March which will hopefully give the construction industry a real boost interms of the skilled labour available.”

Dave Hall, Training Partnerships Director at British Gypsum, said: “The safety of tutors and students remains our priority but we are really pleased that our training partners are now able to start delivering our Site Ready Skimming Course again.

“We are passionate about supporting the construction industry to address and resolve the huge skills gap it faces and the delivery of this particular Course will help us improve the skills set of our labourforce.

“The Course focuses on improving the skills of learners with exisiting trowel experience to a standard where they can competently skim good volumes of plasterboard on site.  This will not only give businesses a more able and flexible workforce, but will also provide our learners with additional job opportunities.”