I’m not surprised, apprenticeships are just free labour a lot of the time, no training, just expected to work for little to no pay
That’s what happens when you combine running out of money with the realisation you’re not learning anything.
Articles slating older folk who have left the workforce (e.g. retiring early causes dementia), and now attacking the younger folk who just aren’t prepared to work for nothing apparently (imagine that).
Could the common denominator be rubbish pay relative to cost of living, work-life stress balance unbalanced? Nah. Let’s dance around that and just blame the workers.
A friend of mine was doing an apprenticeship with Camden Council for 2 whole years, 3.30£/hr. I pointed out to her this was illegal and she spoke to unison and that very month got her salary of 35k. Most these apprenticeship schemes are just taking the piss.
“Apprenticeship” is so devalued they are mostly meaningless.
In most trades an apprenticeship meant something and took years……. These days it mostly just means low paid trainee
Wonder what the dropout rate is for apprenticeships in the trades or in STEM fields are.
The bulk of these are low quality means of sourcing cheap labour, some of which don’t even supply a qualification equivalent to A-Level. At one point I read that the likes of KFC were offering ‘apprenticeships’ in their outlets… absolutely baffling.
The government is not policing apprenticeship schemes sufficiently. They need to be far more stringent on what the employer will provide in terms of theoretical and practical learning BEFORE allowing the scheme to register.
Then they need to run random inspections and interviews with the learners to evaluate whether to shut it down or not.
I’ve seen Waitressing apprenticeships, at this point I wonder if most are the employer taking advantage of cheap labour
I’ve recently left my previous employer, a further education institution, so I managed to get a lot of insight into the massive apprenticeship and T Levels push.
The way it was described, the numbers that we were required to hit over A Levels (which has now shrunk immensely across the education providers I’m able to check), the courses being offered…all of it indicated filling up labour markets with new blood. The VAST majority of these courses aren’t aimed at anything fancy, unless you’re one of the few that didn’t slap “car mechanic” down for engineering. You are brick layers, hair stylists, hospitality staff, plumbers, training for uniformed services, retail workers etc.
It doesn’t surprise me in the least that young people are ditching these scams that are effectively a legalised way of assigning you your life role.
Apprenticeship used to be for things like , plumbing, carpentry, bricklaying, Mechanics,etc
It does seem to cover things it was never meant to be for.
Things like an office junior is probably called an apprentice now .
It does want sorting out ,but is a cash cow for many so it will never happen
I believe that these higher rates may also be influenced by the fact that the Apprenticeship Levy, if you are eligible as a company, is mandatory, and that those employers usually enroll as many of their employees as they can, even if their roles aren’t as relevant, just because they are already paying for it so they might as well.
When the apprenticeship, starts those same employers realise they don’t actually want to give their employees 20% off the job time to be able to complete the programme, or the employees joining aren’t really that keen to complete it, given the amount of work required, and drop outs happen.
Awfully I had to interview someone for an Apprenticeship the other week as “corporately” this is something we wish to do. Where we resemble a blazing dumpster fire at least a couple of days a week (if not more) this wasn’t something I’m overly in favour of (e.g. we’ve got more pressing problems at hand than trying to educate an apprentice) but I was like OK let’s try and make this worthwhile for him. He’s unfortunately got moved into a different department (Management decision) where I don’t believe he will draw as much benefit (for his potential future career) so I believe ours will soon be part of that statistic probably.
Yes , there’s a lot to it , living far away and traveling is bad as it drains you , you need a balanced lifestyle
Started my apprenticeship in Accounting & Audit earning £11,800 pa. Working 50 hours a week doing the same work as normal staff and expected to work more (doing admin duties on top of standard work).
Once all commuting costs were accounting for, along with food for lunches, and perpetual expense claims, I had about £300 at the end of each month to show for it, if I was lucky. Driving to an audit site a few hours away could have wiped most of that out.
For 1 day a week in a six week block I was studying for a level 3 qualification, despite having an A Level in accounting. They got around the 25% rule by pressuring you into marking time down on your timesheet to technical training when other jobs ran over.
After 2 years, I got my first bonus. £400. I left after that and now earn comfortably doing much more interesting work. If I was to have stayed on for another year, doing a level 4 qualification, I would have to had pay the training fees back if I left within 2 years of the course finishing.
It’s cheap, exploitative labour that was/is massively missold by schools and colleges. In the professional services, if you don’t have a degree, you won’t get a look from recruiters. They’re just not worthwhile for most industries.
Because the vast majority of apprenticeships are a complete joke used to trick people into working for less than minimum wage.
Did an apprenticeship once, the company who managed the apprenticeship disappeared off the face of the earth for 9 months then came back dropping a years worth of work on us. The place i was apprenticing at was less than pleased
The problem with apprenticeships now is they mean nothing. When you can get admin apprenticeships and warehouse apprenticeships and supermarket GA apprenticeships then the first year is fine because the low wage is expected. It’s when they get to year 2 and start to realise they’re going through an apprenticeships to only earn 18 grand a year for the rest of their life and have zero transferable skills. Apprenticeships should be a quantifiable, certifiable skill. Sparky, brickie etc. a skill that makes you employable in a number of industries. Not just any old shite to get cheap labour for a few years.
I started working at a new job last spring. There was a staff electrician and his apprentice. The electrician has since left for a new job and the apprentice is stuck without a master. Doesn’t seem fair or legal.
Guess it depends on the apprenticeship as I’ve seen a massive rise in them in my area but most are for a year, doing a job that takes like 5mins to be trained on and takes away someone elses job purely so they can have cheap labour
I’m doing my college course at home and earning over 500 a week as an apprentice, with a pay rise each year
My old employer definitely abused apprenticeships. My cohort was the last to not be treated like shite, my partners group the next year wasn’t so lucky. A week before they were due to start (some had already handed in notices at other places) they were told it’s being delayed by a month whilst they basically replanned the whole thing. It went from less than 1 year to over 4 years, they had to take multiple tech exams to get pay rises that non-apprentice service desk workers didn’t have to do, and by the end of the whole thing they were still on peanuts. The service desk, which used to have only a few apprentices out of everyone, slowly became mostly apprentices as they were cheap labour. Quality dropped, stress and turnover increased.
I did one with work, where I’d already been working for the past 7 years. I was expected to do the course whilst still carrying out my full time job which wasn’t too bad as I was able to just log my normal everyday tasks toward my qualification. However, in the end the company responsible for the apprenticeship told me I’m way being because I haven’t logged any learning time (suppose to be 20% as week) it just wasn’t doable. My employers weren’t using me as cheap labour and I genuinely know they are trying to upskill staff, but I had to knock it on the head. I found it way too difficult to be a full-time member of staff doing an apprenticeship, as opposed to if I was a genuine apprentice
There are serious problems with education in this country. It’s impossible to upskill or retrain once you’ve been through education once because you can’t get funding and the cost is ridiculous.
As someone who is just finishing my AAT level 2 (I only started a few months ago afterall), I was mixed on whether to continue to study level 3 part time and fund it myself, or try the apprenticeship route which will give me the required experience in the accounting trade that even minimum wage accounting positions DEMAND that you have.
Then I looked at the offerings.
£4 an hour for the first year with 35 hour weeks? With only a “possibility” of permanent placement once the year is up and they conveniently have to pay minimum wage by Law. How on Earth are people supposed to survive on that? Even school leavers who don’t pay their parents any rent and don’t have to pay travel expenses will struggle with that. Those of us with responsibilities? Tough fucking luck for us.
Imo it just looks like an excuse to get a free years labour out of the naive school leaver situation. Nobody else can live off the pathetic wages and the very real possibility of them ducking you off after the first year is up makes it obvious it’s not worth throwing a year of your life away on one :/
Does make me wonder how on Earth I’m gonna get into the industry at 26 though now…
I used to work in IT (managed services). We had 3-4 apprentices and they all graduated into 1st line Service Desk jobs.
I think it’s a mixed bag, depending on the industry.
Thousands out of thousands, or thousands out of millions ?
A percentage would be more informative and less click baity I suppose
As someone who just struggled my way through one, it’s tough when your employer wants to use you for cheap labour rather than a future investment
Maybe this is because most of them are stupid shit like working at Cash Generator and they find something better mid job
When they pay you 200 a week to work in central London…no wonder there’s dropout.
I’m on an apprenticeship currently, I do it in conjunction with my job to get a qualification at the end of it.
It consists of a monthly meeting with my tutor and coursework that I have to complete along with 500 off the job hours. I started November 2021, had my first meeting then my tutor left December ‘21 and I had nobody for 5 months, I was then given another tutor who I had from May up until December this year and now she left too.
Never once have I felt like I was learning from the tutor, they literally just read PowerPoints word for word and then send me work to do. Now this tutor has left instead of assigning me a new tutor the company who run it just sent the 3 remaining modules to me including the PowerPoints that would have been “delivered” by a tutor & I have no contact with them.
Hell, when the tutors assessor was on our call the tutor even delivered the same module as she did the month prior.
It’s so frustrating.
Having just completed a 6 year apprenticeship I feel like some balance should be added to this discussion. Some apprenticeships do offer proper qualifications. I had my degree payed for by the company and every Friday I could work on any work I had to complete for it (assignments) I also got an NVQ level 4 and level 2 and a foundation degree.
There were also opportunities for me to get my yellow belt certification, my orange card and I was trained in many different disciplines such as CAD, CAE, project management and was given real responsibilities that had an effect on the business.
I was also payed well for all of this, I signed my new contract a couple of weeks ago and I am went from 44 to 48 thousand a year salary, 40 hour week, with 27 days annual holiday and sick pay. There are good apprenticeships do research into which suits you best and are regulated by the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education. Going straight into higher education isn’t the only option.
Don’t blame them. I was one. Had no training. Basically cheap labour. They got banned from the scheme 3 times while I was there lol. Still going.
I’m a senior doing an apprenticeship, I’m supposed to do 20% of my time on my course, However being in the public sector there is no resilience so I can’t take the time off. I have to either do it in my own time, or I have to do 5 days work in 4. Its unsustainable. I feel so guilty for leaving colleagues to pick up the slack and am so tired from doing the work out of hours, the quaility suffers.
I am the last of my cohort of 6 doing the course for the reasons mentioned.
I’m starting an apprenticeship in a month as a primary TA as no where around me are taking on unqualified TAs. Hoping the first year of shite pay makes up for it in the long run, if I want to go onto teaching etc. We’ll see.
2 of my experiences as an ‘apprentice’.
1: working for a boat company, just a general worker apparently, not sure why I even ended up there after my college forced me into it. Their inventory was at -1000 across the board, ended up single handedly sorting their lack of care about stock. Lady who was supposed to teach me locked me in the extention where the ‘office’ was so she could have tea and cake with friends, also leaving the toilet locked off. On top of that used to leave the grandkids in the office with me so her and her daughter could relax. College refused switching to another place and I had to leave the course conpletely.
2. A care company offered me an apprenticeship administrator in their office. Whoever done it last had messed up all the records, not updated pretty much everything across the board from deaths to correctly naming and placing client files. I didn’t have time to sort much of it. Constantly in trouble for asking questions in regards to care (I had never done care work, I had been there 2 months). Everything in the office was considered my job, from writing care plans to disciplining carers regarding their jobs (lets ignore the fact I wouldn’t be able to do their job). Lets just say they asked me to leave pretty doon after that. Pretty glad, 2 months in and not one piece of education involved, no study, no resources to pull from and no structure or help.
Innapropriate company’s that have nothing to teach anyone, they just want cheap workers. My assumption would be that most company’s are similar experiences.
I’ve applied for loads of apprenticeships and not been successful at securing a place anywhere.
Maybe it’s Cos I’m 34 and they all want to exploit school leavers also?
Its legit a code word for exploitation.
Bit of a personal rant here about apprenticeships so feel free to skip by.
I’ve struggled to find worthwhile employment my entire adult life especially considering with some of the utter shit I’ve had to put up with working minimum wage jobs and bullshit apprenticeships.
My first ever job at 17 (10 years ago) was a shady warehouse apprenticeship for a small business that sold dog beds online in the far north of England. Honestly the job market and prospects for a fresh faced, just out of college teenager in my area were slim to non existent. Especially since I couldn’t join the armed forces as I’d hoped to as a kid (medical deferral) to try and get a trade that way.
The owner paid me about £2.60ish per hour, I remember the monthly wage being about £520 by the end of it. By the time I’d paid for my travel to work which was about £100, paid for very frugal packed lunches for work and kicked up board to my parents I was left with about £200 per month (tbh I wish I had that much spare after bills these days) while my boss and his family had regular holidays every 2-4 weeks to France whereby I was left in charge of his business (not forgetting it’s illegal to let someone work under the age of 18 unsupervised). My boss used to complain that I didn’t couldn’t drive and didn’t have a car, when I asked him for the 2 grand it’d cost for insurance he just sneered and said I wasn’t working hard enough. Yet when he was away to his cosy chateau somewhere near Nice I’d be stuck in a tiny warehouse arranging everything from ordering stock, fulfilling orders, managing logistics and multiple sites of sale with no real training other than being told not to fuck it up. But alas, I was young, I didn’t complain I just took another bite out of the shit sandwich and asked for more. I didn’t receive a bonus at Christmas, no happy birthday as I was ordered to do overtime at a rate of time and a half, instead I was pressured by the owners son who worked on an ad-hoc basis to buy the owner a watch worth about £100 (obviously I told him to get fucked).
I was cheap labour, wasn’t the first and wasn’t the last. The “training” consisted of filling out a booklet on stock rotation and H&S once a week, the same booklet every week, on my Thursday lunch break. I “achieved” an NVQ level 2 in warehousing but it’s not even worth the paper it’s printed on, never once have I been asked to show an employer completion of it and it’s never contributed to any gainful employment.ive a folder of qualifications like this, I often look at them and think to myself, “at least I can line my jacket with them for extra insulation when I can’t afford heating or rent”.
On the day the apprenticeship was contracted to end I at least hoped I’d be kept on at least minimum wage, a higher rate to an 18 year old but sadly, no. I was told to hand my key over at the start of the day and offered an early finish, however I’d left some CDs in the warehouse so I turned around and went back to get them halfway home, as it turns out my then ex boss was already interviewing my 16 year old replacement, to which I advised the poor lassie to run for the hills. Turns out a few years liquidated his business as he ran it into the ground, go figure.
That apprenticeship only led to a string of abysmal jumps through wage slavery with zero hour contracts, hire, fire and rehire temporary jobs over the next several years where I’ve ultimately ended up nowhere (so far). Even after taking time out of work the last two years due to caring commitments brought on by COVID I can’t even get a permanent position in that same industry because I’ve been out of work for that long.
Apprenticeships these days are an utter sham, for each advertisement for a real trade there’s another 10 adverts for customer service apprenticeships where some poor teenager has to work for peanuts trying to generate sales leads by cold calling or pulling pints at Wetherspoons. It’s a grift to get young workers to take low wages so the statistics show the Tories have increased employment come election time and companies that use it to their advantage are scum.
“examples including schemes in the hospitality and retail sectors that teach learners to “serve pre-cooked meals” or “push around a drinks and snacks trolley””
Wtf? Why are some employers so shameless?
A lot of “apprenticeships” are basically just insanely low paid jobs – “sandwich artist” or waitressing apprenticeships ffs, it’s just a minimum wage job for less than minimum wage. There’s no trade they’re being trained for, they’re literally doing minimum wage work for fuck all money – with the result that they treat it as a way to gain a minimum amount of experience to get a better paid job
The point of an apprenticeship is that your training is basically paid for by your lower wages, or that you’re being paid a little to survive during your training, depending on your perspective. Apprenticeships meant you were an apprentice to a tradesman or craftsman – It was never meant to just be cheap labour for massive multinational corporations, and the way it’s been co-opted for that is disgusting
This happened to me, I was on a wage of something like £4.30 an hour and was treated like actual shit. Had multiple mental breakdowns infront of my boss due to stress (She owned the company) and they never hired any more professionals, but they did hire more apprentices which I had to train.
The apprenticeship scheme is so exploitive.
I would avoid doing an apprenticeship that pays you apprenticeship minimum because it’s a sign they are trying to exploit you.
I did my apprenticeship as a chef in a pretty good restaurant. While I did learn a lot about myself, my abilities and how to organise myself and have a good work ethic. Also learning to cook properly and so on I look back and I really don’t think it was worth it. It increased my workload further and didn’t really teach me anything I didn’t already learn on the job. It’s just needless paperwork to make it look like someone else is doing a job. My invidulator just turned up every now and then to watch me and I had to spend a few hours of my own time doing online courses, I was already doing 60+ hours a week and lacking sleep, it was a real pain to have to do extra work ontop of that. I got paid over the minimum for being an aprpentice but my boss was pretty good about it, a lot aren’t though and will pay the bare minimum. If a place is only going to pay the bare minimum as far as I’m concerned that’s an insult to the apprentice. I get paid more now packing items then I ever did or could as a chef. Less stress and I don’t have to think so much.
Chefs in this country aren’t considered very highly but that’s what you get when you demand the cheapest food and treat staff like shit. I always get the impression that in this country everyone including the government is out to scam you and take you’re money/time.
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I’m not surprised, apprenticeships are just free labour a lot of the time, no training, just expected to work for little to no pay
That’s what happens when you combine running out of money with the realisation you’re not learning anything.
Articles slating older folk who have left the workforce (e.g. retiring early causes dementia), and now attacking the younger folk who just aren’t prepared to work for nothing apparently (imagine that).
Could the common denominator be rubbish pay relative to cost of living, work-life stress balance unbalanced? Nah. Let’s dance around that and just blame the workers.
A friend of mine was doing an apprenticeship with Camden Council for 2 whole years, 3.30£/hr. I pointed out to her this was illegal and she spoke to unison and that very month got her salary of 35k. Most these apprenticeship schemes are just taking the piss.
“Apprenticeship” is so devalued they are mostly meaningless.
In most trades an apprenticeship meant something and took years……. These days it mostly just means low paid trainee
Wonder what the dropout rate is for apprenticeships in the trades or in STEM fields are.
The bulk of these are low quality means of sourcing cheap labour, some of which don’t even supply a qualification equivalent to A-Level. At one point I read that the likes of KFC were offering ‘apprenticeships’ in their outlets… absolutely baffling.
The government is not policing apprenticeship schemes sufficiently. They need to be far more stringent on what the employer will provide in terms of theoretical and practical learning BEFORE allowing the scheme to register.
Then they need to run random inspections and interviews with the learners to evaluate whether to shut it down or not.
I’ve seen Waitressing apprenticeships, at this point I wonder if most are the employer taking advantage of cheap labour
I’ve recently left my previous employer, a further education institution, so I managed to get a lot of insight into the massive apprenticeship and T Levels push.
The way it was described, the numbers that we were required to hit over A Levels (which has now shrunk immensely across the education providers I’m able to check), the courses being offered…all of it indicated filling up labour markets with new blood. The VAST majority of these courses aren’t aimed at anything fancy, unless you’re one of the few that didn’t slap “car mechanic” down for engineering. You are brick layers, hair stylists, hospitality staff, plumbers, training for uniformed services, retail workers etc.
It doesn’t surprise me in the least that young people are ditching these scams that are effectively a legalised way of assigning you your life role.
Apprenticeship used to be for things like , plumbing, carpentry, bricklaying, Mechanics,etc
It does seem to cover things it was never meant to be for.
Things like an office junior is probably called an apprentice now .
It does want sorting out ,but is a cash cow for many so it will never happen
I believe that these higher rates may also be influenced by the fact that the Apprenticeship Levy, if you are eligible as a company, is mandatory, and that those employers usually enroll as many of their employees as they can, even if their roles aren’t as relevant, just because they are already paying for it so they might as well.
When the apprenticeship, starts those same employers realise they don’t actually want to give their employees 20% off the job time to be able to complete the programme, or the employees joining aren’t really that keen to complete it, given the amount of work required, and drop outs happen.
Awfully I had to interview someone for an Apprenticeship the other week as “corporately” this is something we wish to do. Where we resemble a blazing dumpster fire at least a couple of days a week (if not more) this wasn’t something I’m overly in favour of (e.g. we’ve got more pressing problems at hand than trying to educate an apprentice) but I was like OK let’s try and make this worthwhile for him. He’s unfortunately got moved into a different department (Management decision) where I don’t believe he will draw as much benefit (for his potential future career) so I believe ours will soon be part of that statistic probably.
Yes , there’s a lot to it , living far away and traveling is bad as it drains you , you need a balanced lifestyle
Started my apprenticeship in Accounting & Audit earning £11,800 pa. Working 50 hours a week doing the same work as normal staff and expected to work more (doing admin duties on top of standard work).
Once all commuting costs were accounting for, along with food for lunches, and perpetual expense claims, I had about £300 at the end of each month to show for it, if I was lucky. Driving to an audit site a few hours away could have wiped most of that out.
For 1 day a week in a six week block I was studying for a level 3 qualification, despite having an A Level in accounting. They got around the 25% rule by pressuring you into marking time down on your timesheet to technical training when other jobs ran over.
After 2 years, I got my first bonus. £400. I left after that and now earn comfortably doing much more interesting work. If I was to have stayed on for another year, doing a level 4 qualification, I would have to had pay the training fees back if I left within 2 years of the course finishing.
It’s cheap, exploitative labour that was/is massively missold by schools and colleges. In the professional services, if you don’t have a degree, you won’t get a look from recruiters. They’re just not worthwhile for most industries.
Because the vast majority of apprenticeships are a complete joke used to trick people into working for less than minimum wage.
Did an apprenticeship once, the company who managed the apprenticeship disappeared off the face of the earth for 9 months then came back dropping a years worth of work on us. The place i was apprenticing at was less than pleased
The problem with apprenticeships now is they mean nothing. When you can get admin apprenticeships and warehouse apprenticeships and supermarket GA apprenticeships then the first year is fine because the low wage is expected. It’s when they get to year 2 and start to realise they’re going through an apprenticeships to only earn 18 grand a year for the rest of their life and have zero transferable skills. Apprenticeships should be a quantifiable, certifiable skill. Sparky, brickie etc. a skill that makes you employable in a number of industries. Not just any old shite to get cheap labour for a few years.
I started working at a new job last spring. There was a staff electrician and his apprentice. The electrician has since left for a new job and the apprentice is stuck without a master. Doesn’t seem fair or legal.
Guess it depends on the apprenticeship as I’ve seen a massive rise in them in my area but most are for a year, doing a job that takes like 5mins to be trained on and takes away someone elses job purely so they can have cheap labour
I’m doing my college course at home and earning over 500 a week as an apprentice, with a pay rise each year
My old employer definitely abused apprenticeships. My cohort was the last to not be treated like shite, my partners group the next year wasn’t so lucky. A week before they were due to start (some had already handed in notices at other places) they were told it’s being delayed by a month whilst they basically replanned the whole thing. It went from less than 1 year to over 4 years, they had to take multiple tech exams to get pay rises that non-apprentice service desk workers didn’t have to do, and by the end of the whole thing they were still on peanuts. The service desk, which used to have only a few apprentices out of everyone, slowly became mostly apprentices as they were cheap labour. Quality dropped, stress and turnover increased.
I did one with work, where I’d already been working for the past 7 years. I was expected to do the course whilst still carrying out my full time job which wasn’t too bad as I was able to just log my normal everyday tasks toward my qualification. However, in the end the company responsible for the apprenticeship told me I’m way being because I haven’t logged any learning time (suppose to be 20% as week) it just wasn’t doable. My employers weren’t using me as cheap labour and I genuinely know they are trying to upskill staff, but I had to knock it on the head. I found it way too difficult to be a full-time member of staff doing an apprenticeship, as opposed to if I was a genuine apprentice
There are serious problems with education in this country. It’s impossible to upskill or retrain once you’ve been through education once because you can’t get funding and the cost is ridiculous.
As someone who is just finishing my AAT level 2 (I only started a few months ago afterall), I was mixed on whether to continue to study level 3 part time and fund it myself, or try the apprenticeship route which will give me the required experience in the accounting trade that even minimum wage accounting positions DEMAND that you have.
Then I looked at the offerings.
£4 an hour for the first year with 35 hour weeks? With only a “possibility” of permanent placement once the year is up and they conveniently have to pay minimum wage by Law. How on Earth are people supposed to survive on that? Even school leavers who don’t pay their parents any rent and don’t have to pay travel expenses will struggle with that. Those of us with responsibilities? Tough fucking luck for us.
Imo it just looks like an excuse to get a free years labour out of the naive school leaver situation. Nobody else can live off the pathetic wages and the very real possibility of them ducking you off after the first year is up makes it obvious it’s not worth throwing a year of your life away on one :/
Does make me wonder how on Earth I’m gonna get into the industry at 26 though now…
I used to work in IT (managed services). We had 3-4 apprentices and they all graduated into 1st line Service Desk jobs.
I think it’s a mixed bag, depending on the industry.
Thousands out of thousands, or thousands out of millions ?
A percentage would be more informative and less click baity I suppose
As someone who just struggled my way through one, it’s tough when your employer wants to use you for cheap labour rather than a future investment
Maybe this is because most of them are stupid shit like working at Cash Generator and they find something better mid job
When they pay you 200 a week to work in central London…no wonder there’s dropout.
I’m on an apprenticeship currently, I do it in conjunction with my job to get a qualification at the end of it.
It consists of a monthly meeting with my tutor and coursework that I have to complete along with 500 off the job hours. I started November 2021, had my first meeting then my tutor left December ‘21 and I had nobody for 5 months, I was then given another tutor who I had from May up until December this year and now she left too.
Never once have I felt like I was learning from the tutor, they literally just read PowerPoints word for word and then send me work to do. Now this tutor has left instead of assigning me a new tutor the company who run it just sent the 3 remaining modules to me including the PowerPoints that would have been “delivered” by a tutor & I have no contact with them.
Hell, when the tutors assessor was on our call the tutor even delivered the same module as she did the month prior.
It’s so frustrating.
Having just completed a 6 year apprenticeship I feel like some balance should be added to this discussion. Some apprenticeships do offer proper qualifications. I had my degree payed for by the company and every Friday I could work on any work I had to complete for it (assignments) I also got an NVQ level 4 and level 2 and a foundation degree.
There were also opportunities for me to get my yellow belt certification, my orange card and I was trained in many different disciplines such as CAD, CAE, project management and was given real responsibilities that had an effect on the business.
I was also payed well for all of this, I signed my new contract a couple of weeks ago and I am went from 44 to 48 thousand a year salary, 40 hour week, with 27 days annual holiday and sick pay. There are good apprenticeships do research into which suits you best and are regulated by the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education. Going straight into higher education isn’t the only option.
Don’t blame them. I was one. Had no training. Basically cheap labour. They got banned from the scheme 3 times while I was there lol. Still going.
I’m a senior doing an apprenticeship, I’m supposed to do 20% of my time on my course, However being in the public sector there is no resilience so I can’t take the time off. I have to either do it in my own time, or I have to do 5 days work in 4. Its unsustainable. I feel so guilty for leaving colleagues to pick up the slack and am so tired from doing the work out of hours, the quaility suffers.
I am the last of my cohort of 6 doing the course for the reasons mentioned.
I’m starting an apprenticeship in a month as a primary TA as no where around me are taking on unqualified TAs. Hoping the first year of shite pay makes up for it in the long run, if I want to go onto teaching etc. We’ll see.
2 of my experiences as an ‘apprentice’.
1: working for a boat company, just a general worker apparently, not sure why I even ended up there after my college forced me into it. Their inventory was at -1000 across the board, ended up single handedly sorting their lack of care about stock. Lady who was supposed to teach me locked me in the extention where the ‘office’ was so she could have tea and cake with friends, also leaving the toilet locked off. On top of that used to leave the grandkids in the office with me so her and her daughter could relax. College refused switching to another place and I had to leave the course conpletely.
2. A care company offered me an apprenticeship administrator in their office. Whoever done it last had messed up all the records, not updated pretty much everything across the board from deaths to correctly naming and placing client files. I didn’t have time to sort much of it. Constantly in trouble for asking questions in regards to care (I had never done care work, I had been there 2 months). Everything in the office was considered my job, from writing care plans to disciplining carers regarding their jobs (lets ignore the fact I wouldn’t be able to do their job). Lets just say they asked me to leave pretty doon after that. Pretty glad, 2 months in and not one piece of education involved, no study, no resources to pull from and no structure or help.
Innapropriate company’s that have nothing to teach anyone, they just want cheap workers. My assumption would be that most company’s are similar experiences.
I’ve applied for loads of apprenticeships and not been successful at securing a place anywhere.
Maybe it’s Cos I’m 34 and they all want to exploit school leavers also?
Its legit a code word for exploitation.
Bit of a personal rant here about apprenticeships so feel free to skip by.
I’ve struggled to find worthwhile employment my entire adult life especially considering with some of the utter shit I’ve had to put up with working minimum wage jobs and bullshit apprenticeships.
My first ever job at 17 (10 years ago) was a shady warehouse apprenticeship for a small business that sold dog beds online in the far north of England. Honestly the job market and prospects for a fresh faced, just out of college teenager in my area were slim to non existent. Especially since I couldn’t join the armed forces as I’d hoped to as a kid (medical deferral) to try and get a trade that way.
The owner paid me about £2.60ish per hour, I remember the monthly wage being about £520 by the end of it. By the time I’d paid for my travel to work which was about £100, paid for very frugal packed lunches for work and kicked up board to my parents I was left with about £200 per month (tbh I wish I had that much spare after bills these days) while my boss and his family had regular holidays every 2-4 weeks to France whereby I was left in charge of his business (not forgetting it’s illegal to let someone work under the age of 18 unsupervised). My boss used to complain that I didn’t couldn’t drive and didn’t have a car, when I asked him for the 2 grand it’d cost for insurance he just sneered and said I wasn’t working hard enough. Yet when he was away to his cosy chateau somewhere near Nice I’d be stuck in a tiny warehouse arranging everything from ordering stock, fulfilling orders, managing logistics and multiple sites of sale with no real training other than being told not to fuck it up. But alas, I was young, I didn’t complain I just took another bite out of the shit sandwich and asked for more. I didn’t receive a bonus at Christmas, no happy birthday as I was ordered to do overtime at a rate of time and a half, instead I was pressured by the owners son who worked on an ad-hoc basis to buy the owner a watch worth about £100 (obviously I told him to get fucked).
I was cheap labour, wasn’t the first and wasn’t the last. The “training” consisted of filling out a booklet on stock rotation and H&S once a week, the same booklet every week, on my Thursday lunch break. I “achieved” an NVQ level 2 in warehousing but it’s not even worth the paper it’s printed on, never once have I been asked to show an employer completion of it and it’s never contributed to any gainful employment.ive a folder of qualifications like this, I often look at them and think to myself, “at least I can line my jacket with them for extra insulation when I can’t afford heating or rent”.
On the day the apprenticeship was contracted to end I at least hoped I’d be kept on at least minimum wage, a higher rate to an 18 year old but sadly, no. I was told to hand my key over at the start of the day and offered an early finish, however I’d left some CDs in the warehouse so I turned around and went back to get them halfway home, as it turns out my then ex boss was already interviewing my 16 year old replacement, to which I advised the poor lassie to run for the hills. Turns out a few years liquidated his business as he ran it into the ground, go figure.
That apprenticeship only led to a string of abysmal jumps through wage slavery with zero hour contracts, hire, fire and rehire temporary jobs over the next several years where I’ve ultimately ended up nowhere (so far). Even after taking time out of work the last two years due to caring commitments brought on by COVID I can’t even get a permanent position in that same industry because I’ve been out of work for that long.
Apprenticeships these days are an utter sham, for each advertisement for a real trade there’s another 10 adverts for customer service apprenticeships where some poor teenager has to work for peanuts trying to generate sales leads by cold calling or pulling pints at Wetherspoons. It’s a grift to get young workers to take low wages so the statistics show the Tories have increased employment come election time and companies that use it to their advantage are scum.
“examples including schemes in the hospitality and retail sectors that teach learners to “serve pre-cooked meals” or “push around a drinks and snacks trolley””
Wtf? Why are some employers so shameless?
A lot of “apprenticeships” are basically just insanely low paid jobs – “sandwich artist” or waitressing apprenticeships ffs, it’s just a minimum wage job for less than minimum wage. There’s no trade they’re being trained for, they’re literally doing minimum wage work for fuck all money – with the result that they treat it as a way to gain a minimum amount of experience to get a better paid job
The point of an apprenticeship is that your training is basically paid for by your lower wages, or that you’re being paid a little to survive during your training, depending on your perspective. Apprenticeships meant you were an apprentice to a tradesman or craftsman – It was never meant to just be cheap labour for massive multinational corporations, and the way it’s been co-opted for that is disgusting
This happened to me, I was on a wage of something like £4.30 an hour and was treated like actual shit. Had multiple mental breakdowns infront of my boss due to stress (She owned the company) and they never hired any more professionals, but they did hire more apprentices which I had to train.
The apprenticeship scheme is so exploitive.
I would avoid doing an apprenticeship that pays you apprenticeship minimum because it’s a sign they are trying to exploit you.
I did my apprenticeship as a chef in a pretty good restaurant. While I did learn a lot about myself, my abilities and how to organise myself and have a good work ethic. Also learning to cook properly and so on I look back and I really don’t think it was worth it. It increased my workload further and didn’t really teach me anything I didn’t already learn on the job. It’s just needless paperwork to make it look like someone else is doing a job. My invidulator just turned up every now and then to watch me and I had to spend a few hours of my own time doing online courses, I was already doing 60+ hours a week and lacking sleep, it was a real pain to have to do extra work ontop of that. I got paid over the minimum for being an aprpentice but my boss was pretty good about it, a lot aren’t though and will pay the bare minimum. If a place is only going to pay the bare minimum as far as I’m concerned that’s an insult to the apprentice. I get paid more now packing items then I ever did or could as a chef. Less stress and I don’t have to think so much.
Chefs in this country aren’t considered very highly but that’s what you get when you demand the cheapest food and treat staff like shit. I always get the impression that in this country everyone including the government is out to scam you and take you’re money/time.