I’ve watched the education system from both sides: as an employer who needs skilled people, and as a parent trying to help my children find their way in the world. And the conclusion I keep coming back to is this — we have badly undervalued apprenticeships, and an entire generation is paying the price.
When my children left school — one in 2021 and the other in 2024 — there was no meaningful conversation about apprenticeships at all. The narrative was fixed and narrow: stay on at school, go to college, go to university. That was presented as the only respectable route — and as I understand it, the route government preferred to promote.
I’m not writing this as an academic, or a politician, or someone trying to win an argument online. I’m writing it as a parent and an employer who has watched young people make life-shaping decisions with incomplete information — and who has watched businesses quietly struggle to find practical, capable apprentices.
This isn’t about blaming schools.
I want to be clear: I don’t blame schools, colleges, or careers advisers.They can only play with the hands they’ve been dealt. They operate inside rigid frameworks, funding rules, qualification structures, and accountability measures that reward certain outcomes and quietly ignore others. In many cases, the job becomes less about genuinely guiding a young person and more about signposting what formally exists.
So when apprenticeships were mentioned, the options were extremely limited. Typically, it was an administration apprenticeship or an engineering apprenticeship. That wasn’t a failure of effort or intent — it was simply the narrow menu available.
What a real apprenticeship looks like
To explain why this matters, let me give a real example.
My son is 16 years old. He has already passed his forklift licence and is now a genuinely valuable member of the team. He understands health and safety. He understands responsibility. He turns up knowing that what he does matters.
He’s learned how to clean, fault-find, and fix coffee machines — not from a textbook, but by doing the work properly and repeatedly. He’s learning to spot errors before they become problems. He’s beginning to understand the business from the ground up — logistics, equipment, production, time pressures, standards.One of the most important things I see is this: he gets up early every day — and on some days, that means a 5 a.m. start. Some evenings he doesn’t finish until 5.30 p.m. It’s a proper working week. He’s learning discipline, reliability, and what it means to see a job through to the end.
And guess what? He’s got money in his back pocket. He understands what it means to earn, not just receive.
This is what a good, old-fashioned apprenticeship used to look like: learning by doing, building capability layer by layer, and growing into responsibility rather than being handed it on day one.
“Yes, but he’s your son…”
I can already hear the response.
And it’s true — he is lucky.
But here’s the uncomfortable counterpoint: I’ve been looking for good apprentices for years. People I could invest in, train properly, and bring through the business long-term.
Not one has come forward.
Not one has been pushed.
Not one has been presented.
Not one has even been suggested.That doesn’t come from a lack of opportunity. It comes from a culture problem — one that starts much earlier, not because people don’t care, but because apprenticeships are no longer presented as ambitious, valuable, or future-facing.
Young people aren’t failing to choose apprenticeships. They’re simply not being shown them.
The hidden cost of the university default
Too often, the push towards university ignores the long-term financial reality.
Many young people leave with tens of thousands of pounds in student loan debt, only to discover their degree does not guarantee secure or relevant employment. That debt doesn’t disappear — it quietly follows them for decades, reducing take-home pay, limiting borrowing, and shaping life decisions long after graduation.
It’s a heavy price to pay for a choice made at eighteen, often without a full understanding of the consequences.
Apprenticeships, by contrast, offer skills, earnings, independence — and momentum — without starting adult life with a financial drag.
Skills in the age of AI
And this is where the conversation becomes even more urgent.
We are entering a time when artificial intelligence is becoming part of everyday life — in work, education, and decision-making. In fact, AI helped me write this piece.
And here’s the uncomfortable truth: almost anything that can be learned purely in a classroom can now be learned, accessed, or supported by AI.
Information is no longer scarce. Knowledge is no longer locked behind lecture halls.
What is scarce — and becoming more valuable by the day — are real, physical, human skills.
The ability to mend. To fix. To fault-find. To produce. To create. To build. To invent. To upcycle rather than discard.
These are skills that AI cannot do. They require hands, judgement, experience, patience, andresponsibility. They require people who understand how things actually work — not just how they are described.
If anything, the rise of AI makes apprenticeships more important, not less. Because the future belongs to people who can combine practical skill with problem-solving — not just theoretical knowledge.
Yet instead of doubling down on these human capabilities, we continue to push young people toward increasingly abstract routes, while undervaluing the very skills that will anchor our economy and communities.
The rise of the university default
From the late 1990s onwards, Britain became increasingly focused on university attendance under the banner of “education, education, education.” This is part of Tony Blair’s legacy (and the Iraq war but I won’t start on this one right now!), and it reshaped how success was measured.
University became the default marker. Schools were judged on academic destinations. Apprenticeships were reshaped into narrow, compliant frameworks designed to fit funding models rather than people or businesses.
The result? Degrees by default, skills by accident.
So I built something myself
When the system couldn’t accommodate the kind of apprenticeship that made sense, I didn’t reject education — I worked around it.
I created my own apprenticeship syllabus: real work, real responsibility, real skills, real progression.
When I presented it, the response was telling:
Yes, it had value.
Yes, it built skills.
But no — it wouldn’t be recognised under the qualification framework.
Not because it wasn’t good enough — but because it didn’t fit the box.
And that moment summed up the problem perfectly.
Why does an apprenticeship need a badge at all?
Why does an apprenticeship need a label, a formal sign-off, and compulsory involvement from a college or education syllabus to be considered valid?
An apprenticeship should just be an apprenticeship.
Yes, there should be oversight.
Yes, safeguarding matters.
Yes, standards matter.But oversight is not the same as ownership.
Somewhere along the way, apprenticeships stopped belonging to workplaces and trades and became administrative exercises. The place where the real learning happens — the workplace — now has less authority than the place that processes the paperwork.
That feels backwards.
We’ve confused reassurance with control, and quality with compliance. Instead of asking, “Is this person becoming competent?” the system asks, “Does this fit our framework?”
Why this matters
Apprenticeships done properly don’t just teach skills — they build confidence, discipline, and purpose. They create capable adults, not just qualified ones.
The tragedy is that this route still exists — but it’s no longer actively offered, explained, or celebrated.
Until that changes, employers will keep searching for apprentices who never arrive, and young people will keep being told — directly or indirectly — that the only successful future starts with a lecture hall.
Time to change the culture
This isn’t about blame. It’s about design.
We need:
• Schools and colleges given freedom and flexibility, not just targets
• Apprenticeships built around real businesses and real skills
• Parents reassured that success isn’t defined by university alone
• A cultural reset that values capability as much as credentials
Because when young people are shown what’s possible — clearly, honestly, and without apology — many of them will choose it.
I see that every day at work.
And it’s exactly what we’re missing.
Duncan Bond
Managing Director,
Cornish Tea & Coffee
Serving the world cup by cup
Read how Microsoft has teamed up with the MET office to support skills building in our article here.
Guest Contributor
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