National Apprentice Week 2018

National Apprentice Week 2018 is a chance for apprentices and employers to come together and share their stories and to celebrate all the successes from apprentices. It’s a chance to encourage people to apply for apprenticeships by showing them what it is like to be an apprentice.  

Apprenticeships have been around for many years, but they haven’t always been as appreciated as they are now. In the past apprenticeships were heavily labor orientated, with apprenticeships in Motor Vehicle, Construction and Joinery, among the many. Now we have apprenticeships in thousands of different fields, like Digital Marketing for instance. 

Recently the game has changed as far as apprenticeships go, to maximize the opportunity to learn for the apprentice. Previously apprentices have been mis-treated and viewed as ‘cheap work’, not as someone who’s learning about a trade that they potentially want a career in. Throughout the years there have been various common mis-conceptions about apprentices and their role within a business; ‘there just here to fetch the drinks’ ‘they can have all the jobs that we don’t want to do’ ‘you can’t get a high-class job without a degree’ and so many more. 

Most people don’t understand what an apprenticeship is and what an apprentices role is within a business. An apprentice can be anyone, with any background, all you need is the motivation and the drive to learn. Apprenticeships are a scheme that allows people to learn about a specific trade or industry whilst working, this provides the apprentice with a profound amount of knowledge, not just from their course but also from the insight given by their employer. This also shows the apprentice what it is like to have worked within an industry, so they are more prepared for the real world.