On the 19^th January, Jayne, our Early Careers Strategist, ventured to the ISE Apprenticeship Conference, with apprentices now at the heart of the government’s post-16 education and skills strategy, this conference covered everything you need to know to put apprentices at the core of your early talent strategy. So, find out what our key takeaways were…

#1 – UCAS stats show a continuing challenge of hiring motivated and quality applicants

750,000 students engaged with UCAS last year and half of those were interested in apprenticeships. Yet there were only 4500 starts!!! Of those students, less than 10% view apprenticeships as “prestigious” compared with 75% of students seeing Higher Education as such.

Apprenticeship retention and completion rates are currently sitting at 53% – compare this to Higher Education, with its retention rate of 70% and the problem becomes clear. There is a lack of quality decision-making for those students choosing apprenticeships.

1/3 of primary school children already think of Higher Education as part of their futures and according to a soon-to-be-released survey from UCAS, this figure is much lower for apprenticeships.

We still have a long way to go before apprenticeships receive the same level of understanding, interest and attraction as Higher Education does.

Things to think about:

The UCAS Career Finder career tool will support both university and apprenticeship applications. They are fast becoming a one-stop shop for applications and positioning themselves as the digital equaliser. I wonder how many employers have looked at the UCAS website (and other aggregated, third-party media websites) recently and reviewed what they are saying about their industry and roles. Is the information up to date? Do you have case studies and profiles uploaded (where freely available).

Are your apprentice numbers reflecting the demographic opportunity of the roughly 1 million predicted UCAS applications by 2026? This is a huge future opportunity to engage with potential applicants whose post-18 choices will become more competitive.

 

#2 – How to engage with parents

Naturally, parents will have an influence in terms of the opportunities that students are open to. This is something we cannot deny. As a result, schools are supposed to provide career guidance to parents too.

Careers events that allow both parents and students to attend, such as Open and Insight Sessions have real benefits. BPP careers fairs are one such event encouraging parental involvement. Certain BAME students face pressure from their parents when making decisions on careers or choosing an apprenticeship rather than university. These deeply ingrained stigmas can be challenged once parents can speak with advisors. During the conference one such student shared their experience of this:

Another useful tool is Parent to Parent networks. It is worth reflecting on how to use your employees as Ambassadors in their local community to promote apprenticeships generally.

Join the apprentice ambassador network – across 9 different regions in England. https://engage.apprenticeships.gov.uk/aan

 

# 3 – Closing the D&I gap

Springpod, presented their interesting approach to closing the D&I gap, by introducing a persona-led approach to engaging potential apprentices, they believe they have found the key to the door sharing 4x personas from their data set of over 58,000 black and Asian minority students:

• Perusing Paul
• Selective Soraya
• Interested Isla
• Focussed Freddie

They called for employers to have a fully mapped candidate decision journey for each persona to promote inclusion and diversity.

 

# 4 – Apprentice panel advice for employers

• Give current and potential apprentices access to real work and case studies as soon as possible
• Provide more support apprentice applicants through the process, as for many this is a stressful and unknown experience
• Keep students interested in apprenticeships even if they get rejected by providing constructive and personal feedback
• Be mindful of the academic pressures – “don’t open applications in March as I’ll be studying!”
• Be thoughtful in when organising assessment centres, some students were invited to assessments on dates when A-level exams were taking place

 

#5 – Supporting apprentices to achieve peak performance

Gen Z Healthy Minds and HP Enterprises, share the 5 elements to supporting apprentices in becoming truly successful and adapt well to the new challenge that is the working world ….

• Encourage apprentices to develop healthy habits around diet, activity, sleep and hydration
• Provide stress and resilience support/guidance
• Provide motivation and a sense of confidence and belief in them
• Help apprentices realise their worth and support them in unlocking their true potential
• Have opportunities readily available for coaching and mentoring

HP have built their Early Careers programme around these 5 x pillars and as a result have seen:

• Greater parity between apprentices and graduate-level hires
• A levelling of the playing field for programme participants from underrepresented groups

 

#6 VisionPath and Ofcom – from Grassroots to Growth

VisionPath and Ofcom shared a case study where they co-developed a programme to support socially disadvantaged pupils from zero career capital to their first 100 days in Ofcom as an Apprentice.

Lessons learned:

• Schools outreach was built on “thought-provoking content that started a conversation”; a debate that was relatable and personal to the students irrespective of what or who they know. The activities they designed provided students with a place where they felt safe and confident to contribute.
• The Programme involved real-life work masterclasses – but only once they had built that confidence.
• Light touch assessments were then introduced post the masterclasses – but only assessing learnings from the masterclass – again ensuring no previous experience bias.
• Finally, they gave programme participants a mentor for 6 months!