Well, the March 2025 blog attempts to give both a parent and young person perspective on apprenticeships instead of full-time university.
We can all agree that there are students who whom full-time university is the better, even natural pathway. Academic students who enjoy learning through reading, researching, listening to lecturers, writing analyses and opinions usually want more of this and university will be an environment they will thrive in.
However, there are many young people, including those who get good grades who thrive through ‘learning by doing’ and are usually good at just getting on with tasks, even learning from mistakes. Apprenticeships can provide a natural environment for them to do this where the emphasis changes from theory, concepts and research (all part of academic learning) to the learning of technical skills such as IT, project management, writing reports, computer aided design and soft skills such as effective teamworking and how to communicate in the workplace.
I have not chosen these video clips from You Tube to promote apprenticeship programmes at Lloyds Banking Group! They do, however, give very useful coverage of the perspectives of both a parent, Sarah, and her daughter Eleanor who is the apprentice at Lloyds Banking Group. Each link is presented below with comment.
Our featured parent, Sarah realised that full-time university wasn’t the best path for her daughter and it is very significant to hear from Eleanor how important having support from home was in deciding on her career path. The process of mum steering Eleanor away from full-time university towards a degree apprenticeship is not explained but the dynamics involved have to be taken seriously. Young people frequently have other ideas to those of their parents and this can lead to tension. Career Lift-Off can certainly enable young people to identify what kind of learning style they have and assist them to analyse the full-time university and apprenticeship options. It is likely that any parent who is in the same position as Sarah in the video will want to contact Career Lift-Off.
It is clear that as a parent Sarah could see the positive change in Eleanor through her experience to date in the world of work as an apprentice.
Some good parental observations from Sarah here: Eleanor will get a recognised qualification at degree level, gain transferable skills in her career, such as team-working, project management and IT, and the secure knowledge that her daughter will be guaranteed a permanent job if she completes the apprenticeship
The key thing here is that both mum and daughter perceive opportunities for further career development within a large corporate business.
So, not only the degree level qualification is paid for but it is clear that the salary Eleanor has been paid has enabled her to afford her own car and holidays. There is no mention of whether Eleanor continues to live at home (common for late teen/early twenties) or whether she incurs a cost of renting her own accommodation. The comparison is made with students at full-time university who are in debt and can’t afford these things at this age. The rub is that 21 year olds leaving university (or even 22 year olds with an additional master’s degree) are behind those who have competed a degree apprenticeship in terms of earned income. This doesn’t have to be a problem and is dependent on the life goals that any young person has. To expand in this point there are no right or wrong motivations or values that young people may have. For example, earning good money from business and then providing from themselves or for a future family can be a value or motivation for a young person. Other young people might have values and motivations around helping society and people. The motivation to earn high income may be a secondary consideration for them.
After many years of Sarah being proud of Eleanor by reading her favourable school reports, she is now proud of the feedback from her managers about her work performance that her daughter is sharing with her.
This highlights a crucial point about apprenticeships from Lloyds Banking Group. The Group is effectively saying that if a young person gets through their apprenticeship recruitment process they merit the security of knowing that they will have a guaranteed job, indeed a career, at the end of the apprenticeship. It is true that apprenticeships can go wrong and the apprentice can be assessed as not performing to the standards required which could lead to the employer thinking that they have mis-hired an apprentice. However, the investment Lloyds Bank and other corporates make in the recruitment process aims to reduce the chance of making such a mis-hire to effectively zero. We can conclude that getting through the recruitment process is a tough challenge for any young person. This is where Career Lift-Off comes in.
17/18-year-olds do worry that they will miss out on making new friends, having fun and possibly meeting a future life partner if they decide not to go to full-time university. Eleanor appears to say that she got to know other young people in the recruitment process and implies she has maintained some of these friendships. She doesn’t expand on what kind of social life outside of work this has led to. Angelo went to school in Hampshire and is currently a degree apprentice for the Ministry of Defence. With respect to the need for a social life for any degree apprentice he advises as follows.
“I’m enjoying it, but I would encourage anyone doing a degree apprenticeship to get involved with their university’s Student Union. Without that, the social aspect of life can take a hit, so making an effort to connect with others is essential”.
To be clear, a degree apprentice will gain their qualification through a university and will be entitled to benefit from all the opportunities that full-time students at that university benefit from. The degree apprentice will have fewer hours of free-time during the week and at weekends because they go to work for 80% of their time (the degree course is for 20% of the time). Being a degree apprentice can be tiring and this will inevitably impact on social life.
