Birmingham-based Katie Bard has launched an earn-as-you-learn scheme to help students fund their studies, reduce their debt and to provide them with commercial skills which will help them secure a foot on the career ladder on graduation.

The scheme will be rolled out in October to other recruitment consultancy businesses within the Angela Mortimer group. It will also be offered to the company’s UK clients.

Earn-as-you-learn is the brainchild of Katie Bard’s divisional leader Chris Knowles, who had seen an increasing number of students graduating with huge amounts of debt and a lack of skills or work experience.

Knowles says: “If employers are going to expect graduates to have relevant commercial and communication skills, then they need to proactively provide this experience. This means opening their doors to students and offering them relevant employment opportunities while they are still at university.

“Earn-as-you-learn provides the answer to the graduate skills gap but equally provides financial support that students desperately need to pay for their tuition fees. “Businesses benefit too – they have bright, motivated staff to support them and they have the opportunity to train and hopefully retain top talent by offering students trainees full time employment on graduation,” Knowles adds.