A SKILLS academy launch at Northfleet is expected to attract more students into the construction industry.

The National Skills Academy for Construction was unveiled at Northfleet School for Girls.

The £600m Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme, which will transform 10 secondary schools across the county, will boost the chances of jobs, apprenticeships and work placements for young people.

The academy, the second in Kent after Ashford, is not a building but an agreement by construction firms to provide as many training opportunities as possible for local people.

Julie Wilson, head of Northfleet School, which has business and enterprise status, welcomed the scheme as an encouragement for more girls to consider construction as a career. At the moment, only 10,000 women were involved in the sector, compared to 166,000 men.

“We’ve seen the possibilities for all of our students of being able to take advantage of training within the construction industry which is much broader than we anticipated,” she said. “Clearly, we want our girls to reach up to these type of occupations.”

Jean Christie, chair of governors at Northfleet School, said: “This is very important because this is a business school and if we can get girls into construction, it would be absolutely wonderful.”

Roger Maycock, managing director of Provian Construction, one of the four Kent-based firms - the others are Willmott Dixon, Kier and Verry Construction - involved in BSF and backing the academy, said: “We employ quite a lot of girls and it is very important as far as our organisation is concerned to have a reasonable balance between male and female.”