What do 15 year olds think about Apprenticeships?

The Opinion Wall

Ask a room full of 15-year-olds what they think about Apprenticeships, and you’ll get everything from ‘pointless’ to ‘life-changing’ all in the space of 5 minutes.

Earlier this Summer, as part of a residential organised by Villiers Park Educational Trust at University of Bath, Dale worked with high-achieving Year 10 students from areas of the UK where opportunities can be tougher to find. We were exploring the reality of Apprenticeships, and what they could mean for their futures.

He started with a simple question “What Do You Think of Apprenticeships?”

Each student wrote a few words on a post-it that summed up their opinion of Apprenticeships.

They gave it a score from 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest).

Patterns jumped out quickly:

⬆️ The highest scores often came with words like MONEY and EXPERIENCE

⬇️ The lowest scores were all about NO MONEY and NOT FOR ME

One thing was crystal clear……. 💷💷 MONEY was super important 💷💷.

Dale noted that the whole room was surprised to learn that a year 11 student leaving school aged 16, after their GCSEs, who starts an Apprenticeship, will be paid a minimum of £15,700 for a 40 hour week……so a fraction over £300 a week.

And that Degree Apprenticeships had an average starting salary of around £25,000.

Once he’d got that out of the way, it felt like Apprenticeships were back on the table, and were an option the students wanted to explore a bit more.

If you’re a teacher or careers lead, this could be a quick, impactful way to start career conversations in your classroom.

"How do your students talk about Apprenticeships — and what might shift that conversation?"