Gender stereotypes undermine Apprenticeship success
Nancy Rowntree
Friday, December 14, 2007
Young Apprenticeships are providing a successful alternative to academic education for 14 to 16 year olds, but gender stereotyping remains a problem for many of the programmes.
An Ofsted evaluation of the Young Apprenticeships programme found students who take part in the programme have good personal development and are enthusiastic, well motivated and well behaved.
Inspectors also found that employers saw the benefits of the programme with some apprentices offered work as a result of successful work placements.
But in more than half of the programmes inspected in 2006/07, gender stereotyping persisted.
In the engineering and motor vehicles courses inspected the apprentices were all male. While in hairdressing and health and social care, they were all female.
Inspectors recommended that gender stereotyping must be tackled rigorously.
