Government Supported Apprenticeships in England: A Transitions Regime Perspective

Abstract

This paper uses a transitions regime framework to track the development of government supported apprenticeships in England from the 1990s to the 2020s. During this period the apprenticeship programme grew from around 30,000 to 330,000 starts per year. Traditional apprenticeships were targeted at a specific age group who were entering a narrow band of skilled occupations. After three-plus years of training the recipients were intended to be ‘skilled for life’. Today’s government supported apprentices can be any age, last for any period from six months to four or five years, and at are all levels from basic to post-graduate. It is argued that this outcome arises from allowing education and labour markets to distribute government support, and is helping to align England’s youth transition regime with the realities of working lives in the twenty-first century.