Olly Newton, Executive Director at Edge Foundation, reflects on key messages from the Edge Foundation-sponsored workshop at Learning and Work Institute’s Employment and Skills Convention, exploring how small employers and local partners can support more young people into apprenticeships.
Edge Foundation’s session at this year’s Learning and Work Institute’s Employment and Skills Convention had the upcoming Milburn report in mind as it turned to two concerns shaping the future of work for young people: apprenticeships and small businesses. Our panel included Laura Hawksworth (Associate Director, Policy and Impact, Careers and Enterprise Company), Kate Carr (Senior Employer Engagement & Partnerships Manager, Youth Futures Foundation), Anna Morrison (Founder and Director, Amazing Apprenticeships) and Chris Mayne (Managing Director, Teleplan Forsberg and co-founder, Electech Innovation Cluster).
The national body for careers education, the Careers and Enterprise Company, supports 44 careers hubs nationwide, covering 96% of England’s secondary schools and colleges. This kind of scale gives Laura Hawksworth a unique national insight. CEC data shows that while awareness of apprenticeships has improved in recent years, understanding of what’s involved has not. Laura pointed to interim findings from the Milburn Review that show that disadvantage, health and place also continue to shape young people’s access to opportunity, reinforcing the case for a systems-level response.
The CEC has recently launched Aspiring Pathways. This programme combines employer-led outreach in local growth sectors with hub-level coordination, reflecting evidence that young people’s career choices shift through repeated encounters with employers, colleges and training providers, not a one-off experience. In Devon, the programme prompted Year 10 alternative provision students to design and build their own community café, offering a hands-on feel for the construction sector rather than an abstract introduction in the classroom.
Kate Carr at Youth Futures suggested that the main hurdle to meaningful work is not a lack of motivation, but navigating a complex system – and that “NEET” often over-simplifies a group facing overlapping barriers. Risk factors include low prior attainment, special educational needs, poor mental health, caring responsibilities, and coming from low income or care backgrounds. However, systemic barriers to apprenticeships are perhaps the larger issue, including low awareness within some communities, especially where family expectations favour traditional academic routes. Hidden financial burdens (e.g. transport and equipment costs) also pose a problem, as does workplace discrimination.
Kate called for earlier, sustained interventions for those facing barriers, alongside improved wraparound support throughout the first year of an apprenticeship. Employers could also ease the burden on learners by redesigning recruitment processes so they rely less on qualifications and more on aptitude.
Anna Morrison of Amazing Apprenticeships highlighted her organisation’s partnership with Youth Futures’ Make it an Apprenticeship campaign and Edge’s Small Business Summer. Amazing Apprenticeships is itself a small business with a team of ten, and this shapes its mission to help SMEs offer more apprenticeships and work placements. Young people are often drawn to big companies, Anna said, while similar roles within SMEs get little attention. Yet industrial estates often hide exciting businesses. Hers is based on one in Hitchin, which is also home to a puppet-maker supplying Hamleys and a coffee roaster supplying Fortnum & Mason. Small Business Summer aims to encourage young people to explore their local SMEs rather than seeking careers via big name companies only.
Small businesses also need trusted advisers who understand the reality of running an SME. And the system itself needs simplifying. Cutting back on paperwork, jargon and rigid assumptions – such as that apprenticeships need to be full-time from day one – could go a long way to preventing small employers being put off before they start.
Chris Mayne of Teleplan Forsberg, a tech company near Lancaster, said that like many SMEs, he struggled to find suitable electrical technicians. He’s found university graduates are often strong in theory but have less impressive practical skills. To tackle this, Chris and other local business leaders founded the Electech Innovation Cluster, a collective which aims to build the region’s reputation as a centre of excellence. The cluster’s first project was creating a lockdown bootcamp, with content developed by the businesses’ own engineers. Of the first hundred students, 64 passed and 43 went straight into electronics jobs or were promoted internally. Electech has also supported a local college to build a dedicated electronics lab, kitted out by cluster members and supported by engineer-led masterclasses.
Since 2021, around 620 young people have come through local electronics pathways. Chris’s recent recruitment has drawn almost entirely from cluster alumni. The instinct to work together rather than compete is a real advantage SMEs have over larger businesses. While big companies compete for talent, locally connected SMEs can develop a mutually beneficial pipeline.
The overarching message from our panel was clear: collaborate. These discussions often default to calls for government to pull more policy levers. That’s needed too. But employers large and small are increasingly recognising their own role – building trusted SME networks, collaborating to ‘overtrain’ apprentices and to support each other with pastoral care. It’s great to see this happening more and more. Let’s hope the Milburn Review’s recommendations support this growing appetite for apprenticeships among SMEs.
