Lisa Morrison Coulthard: End decline in youth apprenticeship starts

While there has been some recovery during the latest academic year, it is not clear to what extent this recovery will be sustained.

Recent research from the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER), Equalising Access to Apprenticeships, builds on the insights from our previous report in 2021, which highlighted the disproportionate impact these reforms had on disadvantaged young people. It outlines several barriers to attracting and retaining young people to intermediate and advanced apprenticeships.

Equal access to apprenticeships needs to be enabled through financial incentives provided to training providers, colleges and employers to support young people to achieve their Level 2 in English and maths during their apprenticeship. Some employers, colleges and training providers appear to be setting minimum GCSE English and maths requirements as part of their selection process. This demonstrates that apprenticeships will often not be an achievable route for lower-attaining young people – currently, 47 per cent of disadvantaged pupils in England fail to achieve grade 4 or above in both GCSE English and maths.

The minimum apprenticeship wage must be reviewed and the 16-19 bursary fund extended to cover travel costs for apprentices from disadvantaged backgrounds. Our interviews with small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) highlighted that the minimum apprenticeship wage may be insufficient for some young people to survive on. High travel costs can exacerbate the impact of this low wage, particularly for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, and who may not have more specialised opportunities available locally. This barrier will only be intensified by the current cost-of-living crisis.

Timely and engaging information provision on intermediate and advanced apprenticeship opportunities to young people, parents, carers and teaching staff must be improved. SMEs said they are concerned that there is low awareness of apprenticeships among young people which may be a significant barrier to recruitment. Moreover, there are concerns that the longer-term financial and progression benefits of an initially lower-paid apprenticeship are not well understood by young people and so they may be more attracted to initially higher paid but low-skilled jobs.

Access to work experience and greater employer engagement in schools is needed. The SMEs reported that young people applying for intermediate and advanced apprenticeship opportunities often do not have the skills and work experience which they are looking for. This means that there is a need for employers to invest substantial resource in their development that can particularly impact on the day-to-day running of SMEs. More focus should be given to incentivising employers to offer work experience to young people.

The traineeships offer, designed to support more young people to successfully progress to apprenticeships, must be urgently reviewed. Despite being introduced to support young people to prepare them to progress on to an intermediate apprenticeship, evidence suggests that, in many cases, this is not being achieved.

Without action to address these issues, there is a risk that the number of apprenticeship starts, especially for intermediate and advanced levels, will continue to struggle, to the detriment of the young people they were intended to support.

• Lisa Morrison Coulthard is research director at the National Foundation for Educational Research