DS wants to turn down job

[MrsCD67]

DS(18) has managed to secure an apprenticeship with an insurance company which will pay him around £4.50 an hour.
He will have to work at least 40 hours a week up to around 44 in some weeks.
My son thinks that this is absurd and he no longer wants this job as the pay is low and the hours are long.
I've told him he should still go for it as the hours are fairly standard and it'd be good experience.
Does anyone else think that 40+ hours a week is quite a lot for an unqualified apprentice?

Oh, and yes it feels like balancing a full time job and part time study all at once and it is hard. Though my AP is quite academic so could be different.

That’s pretty low pay and long hours for an apprentice.
What qualification will he get from it and is he actually interested in insurance ?
It does sound like an excuse for cheap labour.
There are plenty of apprenticeships with far better hours with much better pay.
It sounds quite soul destroying. Even apprenticeships should offer an incentive for wanting to go to work and this doesn’t seem to have any other than slavery.

In light of what they said about the previous apprentices I'd be very very wary. If it's a call centre I'd bet many of the staff are badly paid, closely managed and demotivated, which is likely to make him absolutely miserable. That isn't conducive to productive studying. To be honest I wouldn't really trust an employer using that minimum apprenticeship wage. I did a brilliant apprenticeship and had the same salary and benefits as anyone else doing that role from day one.

I know nothing about how apprenticeships work but Op it is a real qualification if that's what you're concerned about and one that can be built on. There are minimum competency requirements for working in insurance and with a qualification he wouldn't be limited to working in sales.

I know the hourly rate doesn't seem great but bear in mind 8 hours are for study. Also, does that rate increase through the apprenticeship? It sounds like he's thinking quite short term tbh, understandable at 18 but he should look at expected salary and progression after gaining this qualification. I work in Insurance (Ireland though, not UK) and earn a good salary.

I know there has been a bit of a hoo-hah recently about apprenticeships and them not equipping people with actual qualifications of value; Subway was forced to withdraw one that described the job as ‘sandwich artist’, for example. The bit that seems strange is that he’s not going to college and 2.5 hrs a day is for studying. Is an assessor/tutor from said college/awarding body going to visit? And why not just let him have a day at home to study, rather than a couple of hours each day? Are they providing a separate area for him to do the work or at his desk, where others will assume he is working as normal and will interrupt/give him tasks to do?

When I was facing the end of my contract last year, I looked to see if I could do an apprenticeship (I can’t but that’s another story), my brother said his organisation were advertising some. I looked at the advert and the wage wasn’t terrible, neither were the hours but it was on the call centre and shifts, including early starts/late finishes and weekends. That would be for 2 years until you could do something else. My brother said he didn’t know how they’d get round that if a 16/17 year old applied as there are rules around working times for them.

DD's nursery apprenticeship doesn't have release to college. Instead a tutor visits once a month. She submits assignments by email, but some are just done verbally and some are assessed practically. Time to study is variable, some weeks no time at all, and others bug chunks. Actually doing the work makes the theory much more real and understandable.

What does he want? Straight in on £90k? He could go to uni and pay them instead.

Thanks teen I wasn't sure how it worked, though I imagine some are more practical than coursework-based. A few years ago, I did an NVQ through work and we had an assessor visit us every few weeks, but there was little written work due to the nature of the job. More they would ask us how we'd deal with situations and then they'd come and observe us at work.

Our apprentices have a tutor who comes in, rather than going to college and get a good qualification, they always get back offered decent paid roles with us and some nice on to other similar organisations. The insurance one has a better professional qualification based on your update but that's only a good thing if he actually wants to work in insurance!

Depends on what both companies are offering. If he is good at sales then he is likely to earn more selling insurance - although that depends what insurance.

Estate agency will be target driven and if a large company there will be routes into management (often within a couple of years). Has he been set a target to get a company car? This saves so much money for younger people, a reliable car, tax, insurance, repairs, mot, etc paid for. A corsa may cost less than £50 a month in additional tax. It may be a motivator for him.

Both will require excellent people skills (if he wants to do well anyway). Does he want to work in sales?

I know a few teenagers doing apprenticeships. One negotiated the pay in the second interview and is on a normal wage for a new start yet the company are paying for a degree. Another was paid the minimum and treated terribly, not being given time off, tidying up after work with no pay and the bosses daughter got access to the work that the apprentice should have been allowed to do for her learning file. It was exploitative and the apprentice found another job in the end.

I did an apprenticeship and I really would recommend it to anyone as long as the qualifications are worthwhile. It was 1 year out of my life on less that £3 per hour but it changed my life and my earning potential massively.

What persuaded me was looking up the qualifications on job sites and training sites to see how much the training would cost me if I had to pay for it (it was thousands) and what salary I would get with the qualifications.

I would always recommend a decent apprenticeship, getting paid while getting free qualifications and actual experience is a no-brainer. He needs to be thinking about the next job not the current one on offer. The first job is generally going to be terrible and low paid so the important questions he should be asking are "What can this job do for me" & "Where can I go next"