Have apprenticeships finally come of age in the UK?

Tens of thou­sands of A‑level stu­dents missed out on their first-choice uni­ver­si­ty cours­es this year. Com­pe­ti­tion for places in the clear­ing sys­tem was tougher than it has been in liv­ing mem­o­ry, while even high achiev­ers had their dreams of study­ing med­i­cine and den­tistry crushed, as only 16% of appli­ca­tions for these pop­u­lar cours­es were accept­ed. 

While employ­ers view some degrees to be of lim­it­ed val­ue in the work­place, the bur­den of under­grad­u­ate debt keeps grow­ing. The gov­ern­ment has esti­mat­ed that uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents in last year’s intake will bor­row about £45,800 each on aver­age before they grad­u­ate. 

It’s hard­ly sur­pris­ing that the received wis­dom in the UK that uni­ver­si­ty is the nat­ur­al edu­ca­tion­al pro­gres­sion for most able stu­dents is being chal­lenged. 

Ris­ing to fill the void are appren­tice­ships. Once wide­ly dis­missed by stu­dents, par­ents and many employ­ers as infe­ri­or to degree cours­es, work-based voca­tion­al learn­ing pro­grammes that cul­mi­nate in degree-lev­el qual­i­fi­ca­tions are becom­ing increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar. Could the nation final­ly be los­ing some of its aca­d­e­m­ic snob­bery?

Employ­ers are cer­tain­ly com­ing to view appren­tice­ships as an effec­tive way to meet the evolv­ing skills needs of their fast-chang­ing work­places, espe­cial­ly if they can get involved in design­ing such schemes. They include For­mu­la One team McLaren Rac­ing. 

“Appren­tice­ships are being devel­oped by indus­try to ensure that they are rel­e­vant to its cur­rent tech­nol­o­gy and prac­tice, and much more aligned with its future skills require­ments,” says McLaren’s head of diver­si­ty, ear­ly careers and devel­op­ment, Kate O’Hara-Hatchley.  “Com­pa­nies can cre­ate unique appren­tice­ship pro­grammes that, in com­bi­na­tion with the appren­tice­ship stan­dard, will build true home-grown tal­ent.” 

A variety of schemes

Many com­pa­nies offer appren­tice­ship schemes run­ning from lev­el 3, which is equiv­a­lent to two A‑level pass­es, through to lev­el 7, which is con­sid­ered com­pa­ra­ble to a master’s degree in dis­ci­plines such as account­ing.

They also sup­port a learn­ing path that leads to the many accred­i­ta­tions required by cer­tain sec­tors. Tak­ing insur­ance as an exam­ple, Lloyd’s of Lon­don offers a lev­el 4 pro­fes­sion­al appren­tice­ship, which is an impor­tant step towards the Char­tered Insur­ance Insti­tute diplo­ma qual­i­fi­ca­tion. It also offers a lev­el 6 dig­i­tal and tech­nol­o­gy solu­tions pro­fes­sion­al stan­dard, which incor­po­rates a BSc hon­ours degree. 

Mean­while, Voda­fone offers qual­i­fi­ca­tions at lev­els 3, 4 and 6 in fields includ­ing soft­ware engi­neer­ing, data ana­lyt­ics and net­work engi­neer­ing. These pro­grammes also cov­er HR and project man­age­ment. 

Lead­ing Voda­fone UK’s appren­tice­ship schemes is its tal­ent and capa­bil­i­ty man­ag­er, Asha Jaga­tia. These schemes, she says, are “fun­da­men­tal”, giv­en that the com­pa­ny often finds it hard to recruit peo­ple with “busi­ness-crit­i­cal skills” in a com­pet­i­tive employ­ment mar­ket. 

“Our pro­grammes are key to bring­ing in diverse tal­ent. They result in appren­tices who are ful­ly fledged mem­bers of their teams and have real respon­si­bil­i­ty,” Jaga­tia says.

The idea that appren­tice­ships pro­duce employ­ees who tend to have a lit­tle more ini­tia­tive than the aver­age grad­u­ate recruit, who will have spent years steeped in acad­e­mia, is wide­ly accept­ed among employ­ers that take on appren­tices. 

“The great ben­e­fit of appren­tice­ships is that par­tic­i­pants don’t just learn tech­ni­cal skills. They build pro­fes­sion­al skills and work-readi­ness at the same time, cre­at­ing well-round­ed tal­ent,” O’Hara-Hatchley says.

Apprentices bring new perspectives

Sara Gomez, chief peo­ple offi­cer at Lloyd’s of Lon­don, agrees. “Most of our appren­tices are from gen Z. They’re gen­er­al­ly more inter­est­ed in, and informed about, sociopo­lit­i­cal, tech­no­log­i­cal and envi­ron­men­tal issues than pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions were at their age. That means they want to start mak­ing a tan­gi­ble impact as soon as pos­si­ble.”

Enabling appren­tices to sam­ple acad­e­mia (many schemes require them to attend col­lege or uni­ver­si­ty one or two days a week) while also earn­ing a salary is a key ben­e­fit of such pro­grammes. Employ­ers report that par­tic­i­pants view estab­lish­ing some finan­cial secu­ri­ty rather than run­ning up debt on a full-time degree course as a big plus. But the abil­i­ty to estab­lish their own ‘employ­ee brand’ ear­ly on is anoth­er major attrac­tion to appren­tices, which gives them much of their dri­ve to suc­ceed. 

Ian Levers, tech­ni­cal excel­lence port­fo­lio man­ag­er at engi­neer­ing con­sul­tan­cy Mott Mac­Don­ald, describes how one of his appren­tices has grasped the oppor­tu­ni­ty. “Appren­tice­ships real­ly are what you make of them,” he says. “Our appren­tice has done exact­ly this, tak­ing on new chal­lenges, devel­op­ing her­self and rais­ing her pro­file on LinkedIn to grow her inter­nal and exter­nal net­works. She was named Appren­tice of the Year 2021 by the Roy­al Insti­tu­tion of Char­tered Sur­vey­ors – clear evi­dence of what’s achiev­able with a growth and learn­ing mind­set.” 

Levers adds that appren­tices are also impor­tant in bring­ing new per­spec­tives to the busi­ness, which can learn from them. “They add sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits to their teams through fresh, inno­v­a­tive ideas that may chal­lenge indus­try norms.”

While there has been a sig­nif­i­cant increase in the num­ber of stu­dents explor­ing this route who would typ­i­cal­ly have expect­ed to go to uni­ver­si­ty, it is wide­ly agreed that appren­tice­ships are prov­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful in both attract­ing peo­ple who have tra­di­tion­al­ly been exclud­ed from high­er edu­ca­tion and diver­si­fy­ing the tal­ent pool gen­er­al­ly. 

“Giv­en that uni­ver­si­ty isn’t an option for every­one owing to the cost, appren­tice­ships are an inclu­sive route,” O’Hara-Hatchley says. 

Her com­pa­ny runs a diver­si­ty, equi­ty and inclu­sion pro­gramme called McLaren Rac­ing Engage. This is an alliance with the Women’s Engi­neer­ing Soci­ety, EqualEngi­neers, Cre­ative Access and The Small­pe­ice Trust to attract peo­ple from under-rep­re­sent­ed groups into the motor­sport indus­try through long-term invest­ments in grass-roots ini­tia­tives and schemes such as men­tor­ing pro­grammes. 

Gomez reveals that 30% of Lloyd’s intake this Sep­tem­ber will be peo­ple from eth­nic minori­ties (“above the mar­ket aver­age”) while 27% will be appli­cants from dis­ad­van­taged back­grounds. This is not pure altru­ism, she stress­es, adding: “We need curi­ous minds from diverse back­grounds, so we’re look­ing for peo­ple with fresh per­spec­tives and the con­fi­dence to share them.”

Making the apprenticeship levy work

There is a range of gov­ern­ment sup­port pack­ages on offer for employ­ers seek­ing to pro­vide appren­tice­ships. The most notable of these is the appren­tice­ship levy, which is fund­ed by a 0.5% tax on the wage bills of all com­pa­nies with annu­al pay­rolls exceed­ing £3m. 

The levy has dis­rupt­ed how HR func­tions “deploy their tal­ent strate­gies”, accord­ing to Gomez. “It can be used to attract and retain tal­ent, pro­vid­ing a breadth of oppor­tu­ni­ties across a range of domains. It can be used for entry-lev­el tal­ent to devel­op both soft and tech­ni­cal skills, while also increas­ing the func­tion-spe­cif­ic exper­tise and future man­age­ment capa­bil­i­ties of exist­ing staff.”

But, as with many gov­ern­ment schemes, the sys­tem does not yet work as smooth­ly as it should. Crit­ics com­plain that its com­plex­i­ty is deter­ring employ­ers from par­tic­i­pat­ing. More than £3.3bn in levy fund­ing has been returned unused to the Trea­sury since 2019, for instance.

And what of all the dis­ap­point­ed would-be stu­dents of med­i­cine and den­tistry? Sure­ly appren­tice­ship schemes have their lim­its when com­pet­ing with uni­ver­si­ty cours­es? Not so. In July, Health Edu­ca­tion Eng­land announced that stu­dents would be able to pur­sue a med­ical doc­tor degree appren­tice­ship offer­ing the same stan­dard of edu­ca­tion as that pro­vid­ed by a tra­di­tion­al uni­ver­si­ty course. 

Wel­com­ing the devel­op­ment, Jen­nifer Cou­p­land, CEO of the Insti­tute for Appren­tice­ships and Tech­ni­cal Edu­ca­tion, neat­ly summed up the advance of appren­tice­ships in recent years. 

“For many, see­ing that an appren­tice can become a med­ical doc­tor will be a big sur­prise, but employ­ers are dri­ving a change in the way we think about skills in this coun­try,” she said. “Not everyone’s jour­ney to career suc­cess has to be the same.”