Richard Negus: Crafting a Future - The Need for Rural Apprenticeships [9 min listen]

Voices of the Countryside

With record numbers of A level students shunning University courses, can Modern Apprenticeships be the means of filling the gaps in our 'lost rural skills'.

For over one million young Brits, the next few days will be a time of heightened nervous excitement and anticipation. They wait on tenterhooks for the 15th August, when the results of their A level, T level, and AS levels are released. The sounds of rip and tear as they open envelopes, the whoops of self congratulation or gasps of disappointment are the soundtrack to an end of childhood. Alice Cooper pumps out from Alexa, ‘School’s Out for Ever’, and the fresh dawn of adulthood appears to them with a golden light.

Attending university has been seen as the next step after school for the majority of British young people. In 1999 Tony Blair, then into his second year as Prime Minister announced his demand that 50% of all school leavers should go into Higher Education, in order he claimed, so that Britain would succeed in the ‘knowledge economy’. Twenty years later, Blair’s dream was realised, yet this was deemed insufficient by the man. In 2021, the ex PM demanded that seven in ten teenagers should attend Uni. This refrain was echoed by Lord Johnson, brother of another former Prime Minister, who claimed, despite 53% of the UK’s school leavers already attending University that “We still don’t have enough highly skilled individuals to fill many vacancies today.” This PR campaign by political figures, was unsurprisingly endorsed by a swathe of academics attached to the 160 or so UK Universities.

However, this norm for youthful society appears to be coming to an end. School leavers are now turning their backs on degrees and choosing to leave the dreaming spires to their slumber. Analysis this week by The Times reveals that 18 of the 24 Russell Group Universities still have vacancies in more than 4,000 of their degree courses.