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Apprenticeships and the New Government

The General Election campaigns are out of the way and it is time to look ahead to what the Conservatives proposed in relation to work, education and skills. What will they deliver in career education, advice and guidance, and specific initiatives to support young people into sustainable employment and relevant training over the next five years? There is of course one thing that every party talked about (endlessly, it seemed, at times): apprenticeships. Apprenticeships for young people, if any of the party manifestos were to be believed, are going to solve a heck of a lot of problems. While my PhD looks at one specific programme of apprenticeships in Scotland, what I want to talk about in this post are apprenticeships in general. There are major challenges if they are to be used as the magic elixir they have been purported to be. There are concerns about current apprenticeship provision: the percentage of people starting apprenticeships who are already over 25 (and therefore