Reconstructing the Work‐based Route: lessons from the Modern Apprenticeship

Abstract

Since the late 1970s, the work‐based route in post‐compulsory education and training has been struggling to create a respectable image through being seen as almost totally synonymous with discredited government‐sponsored youth training schemes. Yet, for many young people, who have no desire to remain in full‐time education after the age of 16, the work‐based route offers an attractive means of acquiring further education and qualifications. The introduction of Modern Apprenticeship, with its professed aim of raising the standard of the work‐based route, provides the opportunity to re‐examine how such a route could be reconstructed a decade after the launch of the YouthTraining Scheme (YTS). This paper draws on current research into young people's experiences of the pilot year of Modern Apprenticeship covering 14 occupational sectors. Interviews with ‘apprentices’ will be presented to highlight the ways in which young people conceptualise such issues as the form and structure of their future working lives, the realities of their local labour markets, the disadvantages of full‐time education (including higher education), the liberating potential of workplace learning, and the term ‘apprentice’.