So much for apprenticeships !

[Stasiland]

DS was adamant he didn't want to go to uni. Decent gcses and okayish A'levels, but not stellar grades. He was pretty certain he wanted to do an apprenticeship in IT so duly registered with several apprenticeship firms and started applying for various posts earlier in the year. CV and cover letter were literate and grammatically sound, only thing holding him back understandably was a lack of work experience in that field. Fast forward 4 months and zilch..... Apprenticeship company admit it's 'quiet', offered to expand his travelling time to one hour. So in desperation he's applied to our local uni to do a 2 year HND in computing. The uni isn't the most prestigious institution but it's a plan. He will have the opportunity to do some actual work experience between yr1 and 2. But also hopefully it will make him ultimately more employable...
Anecdotally I hear that other teens locally are having the same problems getting onto apprenticeship schemes beyond the normal ones like hairdressing and trades. It's such a shame but ds is so lucky he has another option. Just wanted to vent really and wondered if anyone else's dc has experienced similar issues ?

I don't have any personal experience of this as ds is going to uni but it's certainly the case that if the government really wants more young people to do apprenticeships and fewer to "waste time" at uni, then they need to facilitate a massive increase in apprenticeship places

Yep! My friends' sons are struggling to find apprenticeships and they're looking at trades like plumbing, joinery, bricklaying.

This government is so incompetent!

All I can think of is that lots of older applicants with work experience are taking the plunge and applying for them due to job instability post covid. The ones with larger firms are inundated with applicants and have pick of the bunch. Smaller firms anecdotally are hiring and not keeping them on. One friends son was halfway through and the company went bankrupt. He was left with nothing. I just wonder what the job market is like out there. Is it literally graduate opportunities or minimum wage/dead end stuff for youngsters now if you cannot get onto one ?

It’s because of Kick start government funded 6 months work in a company. I work on it in Bristol and the opportunities are insane I have secured a dental nurse traineeship and an apprenticeship for Direct Line this week aside from Kickstart placements

Funnily enough my son applied for an apprenticeship with direct line in cybersecurity but didn’t have a look in.

Of the friends of DD and DS1 (both uni age) those who went for competitive apprenticeships were the highly academic or knew someone in the company. One was as an accountant apprenticeship and a photo boy for the college, the company belongs to his step dad and of course not mentioned in the article. Most of those who wanted apprenticeship have took a gap year and applied for university the following year.

My ds has been looking and applying for months. He wants to go into one of the construction trades or alternatively to become a mechanic. He has completed a one year construction course at college and is still having no joy.

Which county are you based in? I work in IT and know of quite a few active apprenticeship schemes.

@MintjuliaMint we live in the NW of the UK.

He applied to one tech company. Seemed a perfect post. The apprenticeship company emailed him and said it's too far away, it's got to be within 45 mins travel. Thing is he's learning to drive and I or dp would have given him a lift until he had passed his test. Appreciate it was further away than we wanted but worth the travel if it was half decent. Weirdly the vacancy is still on the website months later. And because these companies are not local their travel restrictions are illogical. It takes 45 mins on public transport to cross our town, it's actually quicker to travel by train to our nearest big city even though it's further away !

Really sorry to hear about your experiences. I think it probably varies across the country as my son is in a similar position to yours and was offered two level 3 apprenticeships in IT locally (Yorkshire). He applied direct via the government site rather than an apprenticeship recruitment/training firm so not sure if that made a difference.

Was your son applying for level 4 posts? The ones round here seemed to require extensive experience but bizarrely a lot of level 6/degree apprenticeships require none and look more for "potential", so might be worth considering, depending on how the HND goes. There are still some advertised to start this year and the big name ones for summer 2022 are also starting to be advertised with more to come out over the next few months. Good luck!

We advertised a degree apprentice post in my work department ( NHS technical role) and were overwhelmed by the number of good applications we received. We had several kids travel a long distance for the interviews, and felt bad that we only had funding for one post. It seems that there are not enough of these sorts of post for the number of good candidates.

thanks for thread.

I am trying to figure out how DS could get an apprenticeship in IT support, coding or databases or something similar. Situation is confused because he's on A-level course but I predict very poor results (unless kid surprise me, which kids do, so maybe... but probably not).

Argh. Virtually No digital/database/IT apprenticeships offered within 50 miles. College offers similar courses that are labeled apprenticeships but they all started last week & DS won't be able to just switch instantly.

Can people age 18+ do L3 apprenticeships thru a 6th form college, does anyone know?

@lljkk
Can people age 18+ do L3 apprenticeships thru a 6th form college, does anyone know?

Pretty sure any age adult can do an apprenticeship as long as they don't already have a similar qualification. I've read for example about people with an art degree then going onto study for a STEM degree apprenticeship. I don't think it matters who the educational provider is.

That's super helpful, thanks DoctorDonna.

Am finding the same thing. No response to emails, constant rejection. That doesn't seem to bother him, but I think it's poor.

Well a bit of an update. Ds attended enrolment at uni for the HND course that he applied for out of desperation. He seems pretty enthusiastic about the course and is more upbeat now he's got something concrete to look forward to. Ironically he's heard from the apprenticeship agency about an interview on thursday. Not sure what job it's for but obviously he's going to have to explain the situation to them. Could have done with this a month ago ! But maybe there is hope after all ?

I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding here. Decent apprenticeships are pretty elite. They are not something you "decide you want" - rather something that you hope for and aim for, with a back up plan for insurance.

Generally we get our top students onto apprenticeships, and the rest go to uni.

@Orangejuicemarathoner I don't think I'm misunderstanding anything tbf. My complaint concerned the dearth of any apprenticeships. My son was aiming for level 3 or 4 apprenticeships not the very competitive degree ones. What at one time would have been basic entry level IT jobs so first level support desk types ideal for a tech savvy school leaver. As I said in the first post he didn't want to do a degree or go to uni. He's dyslexic so he felt a full blown academic degree wouldn't be ideal. The IT support type apprenticeships were asking for 5 Gcses at most so not for high flying candidates. He has 3 A'levels and 10 Gcses so is fairly intelligent.

I run a wide range of apprenticeship programmes at work - engineering, quantity surveying and IT. They are in high demand and I can receive 100 applications for each one.

The best time to look for an apprenticeship role is November through to March each year. There are not many decent roles advertised at this time of the year.

[quote Stasiland]**@Orangejuicemarathoner* I don't think I'm misunderstanding anything tbf. My complaint concerned the dearth of any* apprenticeships. My son was aiming for level 3 or 4 apprenticeships not the very competitive degree ones. What at one time would have been basic entry level IT jobs so first level support desk types ideal for a tech savvy school leaver. As I said in the first post he didn't want to do a degree or go to uni. He's dyslexic so he felt a full blown academic degree wouldn't be ideal. The IT support type apprenticeships were asking for 5 Gcses at most so not for high flying candidates. He has 3 A'levels and 10 Gcses so is fairly intelligent.[/quote]
I wasn't implying he wasn't intelligent, I was just pointing out that a decent apprenticeship is more academic and harder to get on to than a university course. Apprenticeships are not an alternative for people who are not academic enough to get into university. It is the other way around. Universities are for people who can't get apprenticeships

@Orangejuicemarathoner totally agree with your comment. My DD has just started her A levels, she is also considering degree apprenticeship vs uni option and based on our research, the application process, selection etc is far more difficult than being accepted to a uni, as the companies are investing heavily on the students and they want to have the ones who are on the top of their games

Degree level apprenticeships, where you work / get paid and study for a degree alongside your work are pretty popular and have the pick of candidates.

https://careers.sky.com/earlycareers/apprenticeships/

Lots of office workers are still working from home so they're not physically able to support apprentices at the moment because they generally need to be supervised in person.

@Orangejuicemarathoner I think we are at cross purposes. I’m well aware that decent level 5 and 6 apprenticeships are like hens teeth, extremely competitive and a very rigorous selection process. I’m under absolutely no misapprehension about that. And I didn’t think for one minute you were insinuating he wasn’t
bright !
I appreciate that some apprenticeships with multinational companies are extremely popular and attract candidates of a very high calibre. He hasn’t applied for any of those apart from one at the start of the year. He’s realistic enough to know that he hasn’t a cat in hells chance ! There do seem to be many with small local companies but I’m not sure how popular they are as many just keep being re-advertised.
To suggest that apprenticeships are for the more academic students kind of defeats the object ? Not all students are suited to degree level study, they’d rather learn on the job with a kind of day release option too so I don’t get how most are for ‘high fliers’.

Like I said earlier it’s all academic as he’s off to do a HND at our local uni now so delaying the job search for a couple of years. Funnily enough he should have had an interview today but has already enrolled at uni . Sods law really !