Proposals launched by Ed Balls, the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, may have implications for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), according to an industry analyst.

Under the suggested scheme, people under 18 would have to be either in education or be undertaking a training scheme in their job.

While there may be benefits for workers, Simon Briault of the Federation of Small Businesses said that having to send an employee away for training could cause problems for SMEs.

"For a small employer who employs four or five people, having somebody away from work for more than one day a week – that's a quarter of the workforce. So it does affect small employers disproportionately.

"We think what might happen is that a lot of employers might want to get the training that they already do accredited so that they can keep their employee on site and get them learning on the job."

However, Mr Briault cautioned that gaining accreditation for training courses might not be as straightforward as SMEs might hope.

"The process of getting the training you provide accredited can be very bureaucratic. So there is a worry there," he said.

However, SMEs may be able to gain more time to train young people by outsourcing their IT support, freeing up time for the firm to develop successful training schemes and use IT resources to help them educate their younger employees.

In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were 'guaranteed response times' and 'allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues'.