Great investment.

Expanding local Apprenticeships

• Introduction
• What's the ambition?
• Where are we now?
• How much further to go?
• Identify solutions to get there
  • Employer focus
  • Young people focus
    • Developing demand for Apprenticeships by young people
    • Promoting diversity in Apprenticeships
• Putting the vision into practice
• Reflecting on progress
• Case studies
• Useful links
• Glossary
• About the Young Foundation and the Pathfinder Project

Promoting diversity in Apprenticeships

• Currently, not everyone benefits equally from the opportunities offered by Apprenticeships. For example, black and minority ethnic young people and those with physical disabilities are under-represented in Apprenticeships. NAS is committed to increasing the diversity of young people accessing Apprenticeships and activity on this agenda is already taking place in local areas.
• In 2008, BT formed a partnership with Yorkshire Forward and Fair Cities to promote its Apprenticeships. BT engaged with local community centres and ran adverts during Ramadan in local newspapers and on a local Pakistani radio station, and young BME people were encouraged to attend through a Fair Cities programme. This enabled a much more diverse range of apprentices to be recruited.
• In Hertfordshire, major efforts to promote Apprenticeships among disabled young people have been undertaken by Hertfordshire PASS, a charity that aims to use employment and self-directed support to enable disabled people to be more independent. Hertfordshire PASS provides a mentor to manage each apprentice, until the company feels comfortable doing this themselves, and this has been a key element in success.
• Apprenticeships for Me is a project being run by the Black Training and Enterprise Group (BTEG), aimed at tackling inequality in London’s Apprenticeships amongst BME young people.

• In some sectors there is traditionally high gender segregation in Apprenticeships, for example in construction, engineering, hairdressing or childcare. In response to this, Manchester City Council, as part of the Young People into Construction scheme, offered young people the opportunity to attend an onsite job taster. The practical event addressed some gender divisions in applications for jobs, providing an opportunity for young women to try out a range of roles they may previously have not considered.
• The third sector has a particularly important role in promoting diversity in Apprenticeships. Third sector organisations can work to support local authorities in helping to target disengaged young people, providing pre-Apprenticeship support or even running the scheme on behalf of the local authority. Lincolnshire County Council, for example, runs a Care Leaver’s Apprenticeship Scheme (CLAS) with Barnardo’s. The scheme provides extensive pre-Apprenticeship support on behalf of the Council, but is managed by an Education Training and Employment (ETE) coordinator in the ‘leaving care’ service in Barnardo’s.

Last Updated: 04/10/2010