With the tendency of many schools to focus on academic qualifications as a route to a good career, the value of vocational education is often overlooked. This is a shame, because vocational qualifications and training in the form of apprenticeships can often provide a valuable foothold into the real world of work, equipping young people with skills and experience learned literally ‘on the job’.
In this article, we look at five great reasons to consider apprenticeships and explain why vocational qualifications can offer an equally valid alternative to their academic counterparts even up to degree level.
Reason 1 – You learn by doing
While classroom-based teaching suits some people, it can often be a turn-off for those with a more hands-on approach to learning. Vocational qualifications and work-based learning provide the opportunity to discover not just why things work in theory, but also how they how they work in practice. Especially when training is conducted in the workplace, there is the opportunity to learn from the very best teachers – the people who do the task as part of their actual daily job – and to gain honest and informed feedback on your performance.
In many cases, this will entail working alongside people from different backgrounds, age groups and education, introducing an added dimension of interpersonal skills training that can prove invaluable in later life. The ability to communicate with mixed groups of people, for example, is a key skill needed in management, which is why you will often find many senior managers in many different walks of life who started their careers as apprentices.
Reason 2 – Find out what you want to do – and what you don’t
Getting hands-on into a role is a great way of realising that the lifelong ambition you’d been aiming may not be your true calling in life. Steve Wilding, now Field Sales Manager for ABB Measurement & Analytics in the UK and Ireland, sees his apprenticeship as the starting point for his career in engineering sales, after originally having wanted to be a draftsman.
Says Steve: “I was lucky enough to get an apprentice technician role with Vickers, which at the time manufactured electric motors for aerospace and defence applications. At the start, I saw this as a great way of fulfilling my ambition of becoming a draftsman.”
“However, after having worked in several positions around the company, including positions on the factory floor, I realised by the time I got to the design department that I was much more interested in other areas of the company’s activities. Luckily, my apprenticeship gave me scope to choose something else – had I come in straight from school or university, I may well have ended up being stuck in a role I didn’t like.”
It was also Steve’s experience as an apprentice that gave him his next role, which led to the start of a life on the road from which he has never looked back.
“After working in internal sales with Vickers, I took a position with Bourdon, a French manufacturer of instrumentation equipment, becoming sales office manager within a year and then going on the road as a sales engineer. It is this role that really laid the foundations for my career with ABB and a job that I really love doing.”
Reason 3 – Get ahead
While university degrees are often touted as the passport for high salaries and quick advancement, there is no real substitute for experience.
Some of the UK’s most prolific business leaders started as apprentices. Consider, for example, JCB Chairman, Lord Bamford who as Anthony Bamford, started his career as an apprentice for agricultural machinery manufacturer Massey Ferguson. Or Andrew Reynolds Smith, previously CEO of GKN Automotive and now CEO of engineering company Smiths Group, who began his working life as an apprentice for Texas Instruments.
Furthermore, contrary to popular belief, apprenticeships aren’t just limited to the engineering and manufacturing sector. A wide range of professions, from entertainment through to fashion and cooking, offer their own versions of apprenticeships giving candidates the opportunity to gain valuable hands-on experience.
Famously, Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay, Karen Millen, Stella McCartney and even Sir Ian McKellen all started as apprentices in their respective fields, rising through the ranks to become leading names. Some, such as Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay, have even started their own apprenticeship programmes to encourage future generations.
It is also often the case that many people who undertake vocational qualifications and apprenticeships are ahead in their careers by the time their academic counterparts emerge from university. This can provide not just a financial advantage, but also the advantage of accessing opportunities to work in roles in other companies that would not be available to a newly-qualified graduate.
“Not long after finishing his apprenticeship, one of my friends was headhunted by Boeing in the US to work as an interior designer for its aircraft,” says Steve Wilding. It was his four years of experience as an apprentice that gave him this opportunity – a big step for someone still in their early twenties.”
Reason 4 – Earn and learn
The prospect of leaving university laden with tens of thousands of pounds of debt to repay tuition fees is leading many school and college students to rethink their life choices. As a way of both learning and earning, apprenticeships can offer an attractive and worthwhile alternative career path.
One of the biggest benefits of an apprenticeship is the opportunity to earn while you learn. Wage rates vary according to age, with the average wage for an apprentice starting at £3.70 an hour for those aged 16 to 18, £5.90 for those aged 18 to 20 and £7.83 for over 25s. In many cases, there is the prospect of pay increases as time goes on, with rates tending to increase once the first year of training is complete.
In terms of qualifications, apprenticeships offer a great way to combine work with study, with the chance to earn valuable qualifications. Depending on the length of the apprenticeship, candidates can progress from Intermediate level (Level 2), equivalent to GCSE, through to Higher or Degree level (Level 4,5,6 and 7), equivalent to a Foundation, Bachelor or Master’s degree. In addition to providing direct work experience, apprenticeship programmes also incorporate a study element, typically involving day release at an associated college.
Most importantly, unlike university education, there is no repayment expected at the end of the experience. All fees are covered by the employer and the Government. Once the apprenticeship is complete, subject to positions being available, a qualified apprentice can either remain with the organisation they trained with or move on to find other opportunities.
Reason 5 – Make lifelong friendships
In the same way that many people who go to university create lifelong friendships, the same is also true for apprenticeships.
Says Steve Wilding of ABB: “The best thing about doing an apprenticeship is that you’re all in it together. For example, I had friends doing apprenticeships with other companies – to get an idea of what each other did, we would spend time visiting each other’s companies, which gave us a great insight into different ways of working and doing things.
Even though it’s now 28 years since I did my apprenticeship, I’m still in touch with many of my fellow apprentices, many of whom I still meet up with on a regular basis.”
Interested?
If reading this article has helped spark your interest in becoming an apprentice, there are plenty of advice sites available with more information about how to take the next step. The following are examples of some sources of information that may help:
UCAS Apprenticeships page – Everything you need to know about apprenticeships in the UK, with a breakdown of opportunities and schemes by region
GOV.UK page on becoming an apprentice – The UK Government’s page on becoming an apprentice is a good starting point for finding out more about what’s involved and how to prepare yourself for an apprenticeship
The Apprenticeship Guide – A complete step-by-step guide to apprenticeships, containing the full what, how and why of becoming an apprentice and a full list of opportunities by region and industry sector
Get my first job – enter your location and specify which industries you’re interested in to find a choice of suitable apprenticeship opportunities