Modern Apprenticeships still give thousands of young people opportunities to gain valuable skills & work placements.
The history of the apprenticeship goes as far back as Medieval Times, with Master craftsmen taking on young apprentices to teach them the skills & hopefully pass along their businesses once they had passed on themselves.
‘The first national apprenticeship system of training was introduced in 1563 by the Statute of Artificers, which included conditions which could be likened to apprenticeship minimum standards today; Masters should have no more than three apprentices and apprenticeships should last seven years. The Act was repealed 251 years later as the popularity of apprenticeships waned in the early nineteenth century, partly due to conditions in factories and the perceived exploitation of young apprentices.’ (1)
Despite apprenticeships seeming to wane at the beginning of the 1900’s, they remained consistent in popular professions & began to spread to newer industries of engineering, shipbuilding, plumbing and electrical work.
In the early 1900’s it was estimated that there 340,000 apprentices in any year & this growth continued after both World Wars. By the 1960’s a third of boys leaving school were heading into apprenticeships.
Throughout the generations, the face of the apprenticeship has changed dramatically, offering some lifetime opportunities & failing others through lack of funding. My Father, Roger Mason, left school at the age of 15 in the early 1960’s, with virtually no qualifications & went straight into an apprenticeship as a Bricklayer. Since that time & with the vast skills he accrued during his apprenticeship, my Father moved on to become Site Foreman. He subsequently joined the Prison Service in 1978 & spent the next 25 years teaching inmates NVQ qualifications in building & brick laying. Then at the age of 60, he left the Prison Service, completed a Degree level Teaching Qualification & spent the next 5 years to retirement teaching at local Colleges.
Without the grounding of that initial apprenticeship scheme & the knowledge it imparted to my Father; he would have most likely had a very different career path.
However, the traditional apprenticeship path has changed dramatically since my Father’s times & it has become more & more difficult for employers in particular to support this valuable resource. Despite employers being the major supporters of the apprenticeship schemes & more often than not, small businesses enabling this to build their own businesses; the Government have made some dramatic changes over the past 30 years, not always in support of the apprenticeship scheme.
Sadly, for a vast proportion of the 20th C, there were no major reforms to the apprenticeship schemes, with employers criticising the scheme as being too restrictive & after seeing the apprenticeship scheme stabilise post WW2, the scheme entered a decline ,with half as many apprentices in employment in 1995 as there were in 1979. (1)
‘In 1968 the Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers’ Associations concluded:
…apprenticeship is a farce and provides less training than a properly constituted course lasting only a few months…The fact that a man has completed an apprenticeship does not therefore of itself guarantee that he has acquired any particular level of skills, or that he has passed any form of test of ability.’(1)
The resurgence in the apprenticeship scheme came in the form of the ‘Modern Apprenticeship’ which was launched in the UK in 1993.
The vast difference was that the modern apprentice would count as an employee & be paid a wage, contracts would be drawn up & all modern apprentices would be required to work towards an NVQ Level 3 qualification.
Employers are still able to champion the modern apprentice & offer opportunities for young people to gain valuable skills, with the support of a college based qualification. The process is relatively complicated & does require employers to support not only with the skills & teaching at their places of business; but also take on board the additional administration tasks involved in taking on an apprentice. However, the modern apprentice is still a valuable way for small businesses to expand & generate the skills sets for the next generation of employees.
Written by Katy-Jane on behalf of Virtually Smart Ltd
