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Don't think university is right for you but want to be a 'professional'? Gary Flood explores the resurgence in apprenticeships and the government's attempts to modernise them

On the job

‘Apprentice’ is a word from our industrial past – summoning up an image of a nervous adolescent in blue overalls, covered in machine oil, learning some arcane but precise manufacturing skill in one of our lost industries.

Indeed apprentices have disappeared – along with many of the factories and sectors that nurtured them. Killed off by Thatcher in the long dark night of the 1980s, they belong to a vanished world.

But if you still think young people’s only option is university, the dole, or the dreaded emptiness of Youth Training Schemes, think again.

For today many youngsters between 16 and 24 have a new alternative. They can become Modern Apprentices (MAs), gaining a carefully-structured recognised qualification.

And instead of sadly vanished industries they can use their apprenticeships to establish themselves in modern areas like IT, telecoms, science and engineering, as well as a host of others all the way from hairdressing to catering.

A case in point is young Richard Hooper, who finished his MA in 2000 through mobile telephone operating company Orange and is now an engineer for the company out of its Bristol regional office.

“I was always a hands-on guy, doing the taking things apart and then not putting them back together properly,” he says.

Richard did his A levels and was expected to go to college, but felt that it wasn’t right for him. “I really wanted to get earning and start off in the world,” he says.

So he plumped for joining Orange’s new (1998) MA scheme, and says he now earns more than friends who did go away to study, doesn’t have their debt burdens, and is in a role and an industry he loves.

In March, Orange was awarded a Certificate of Commitment by the Learning and Skills Council for its Modern Apprenticeship programme, which was developed in partnership with a body called e-skills UK.

E-skills UK is one of the first organisations to replace the old National Training Organisations, and is tasked with developing training and skills requirements at a national level for the IT and telecoms industries. It has now been recognised as a Sector Skills Council for this purpose.

Orange is one of the first big companies to latch on to the potential of Modern Apprenticeships. Along with Coca-Cola and Bae it says it’s filling particular skills gaps through recruiting local school leavers and 16-24 year olds from diverse ethnic and social backgrounds. It has now put around 80 candidates through its MA programme.

“Orange has successfully shown that through work-based learning young people can become valuable employees filling vital skills gaps,” said Bryan Sanderson, Chairman of the Learning and Skills Council.

MAs came along in 1997 and were in fact a brainchild of the last Conservative government.

The MA system is based on passing a National Vocational Qualification in the relevant area (from business administration to healthcare) and a Technical Certificate (equivalent to the old ONC/OND qualifications), combined with a number of so-called key skills.

These are designed to equip the apprentice with a range of employable skills such as communication, applications of number, information technology, working with others, problem solving and improving of one’s learning and performance.

There are now two levels of MA available – Foundation (if the candidate acquires Level 2 NVQ) and Advanced (Level 3 NVQ).

The government says Modern Apprenticeships have “helped revive interest in long-term approaches to meeting [employer] skills needs,” especially in manufacturing industries.

There is also a suggestion that it would like to see 50% of school leavers going into some form of tertiary education and the rest choosing some structured training path like MAs.

And the biggest UK user of the MA scheme for telecoms is the Minsitry of Defence, which now starts many young entrants into the Armed Forces down this path.

“There are many, many benefits to the MA scheme – paying young people to learn, unlike the old YTS system; allowing the development of skills at your own pace, unlike the time-based manufacturing era apprenticeships, which could take up to four or even seven years; encouraging personal growth and higher self-esteem in the young person; getting them employment with qualifications in growing industries like IT,” says e-Skills MA project manager for telecom Dave Willett (pictured, top right).

But there are challenges, he admits. “There is talk about a future ‘guarantee’ of an MA place but at the moment you can only get on a scheme if your employer, be they either public or private sector, chooses to join the system. We’d like to see a lot more employers signing up to the MA programme.”

And even though the MA system in many ways puts the UK ahead of many other economies in what we do with young people who don’t want to enter higher education, we’re still way behind Germany which has a very well-established and successful apprenticeship and training framework in place.

Still, MAs like Hooper say this worked for them. “Don’t go into this as an easy alternative to going to university – it isn’t,” he warns.

But if you know a young person who has some GCSEs and maybe an A level or two who is a bit stuck, the MA programme may be the best thing you could suggest they look into.

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