One apprentice has gone further. Lawrence White, 26, joined in 2009 and is the first former apprentice to break into a management position, in charge of a team of 30. ‘I’m not a very academic person,’ he said, ‘but I like learning and I wanted to get a qualification. I came into this looking for a career, not just a job.’
Aside from a dislike of the classroom, other reasons for not going to university include a fear of incurring debt, along with the need to secure a job. A recent report by the Sutton Trust found that many university students – of which there are more than 412,000 starting this year – will be paying off their loans into their 40s and 50s, while figures from the Office for National Statistics last year showed that half of recent graduates are in non-graduate jobs. Max McCarthy, 21, one of Mulberry’s newest apprentices, said that was what put him off university. ‘I’d rather not be in debt – my sister went to uni and now, two years later, she doesn’t have a job. I didn’t think it was for me.’
Not that apprentices make a fortune: the minimum wage for an apprentice aged 16-18 and those over the age of 19 in their first year is £2.68 per hour. Mulberry apprentices are paid £5.06 an hour, about £170 a week. Part way through the programme they get an uplift of £15 per week, and are eligible to earn 50 per cent of bonuses awarded to their team if they beat their targets. (The factory produces about 1,200 bags a week.)
The benefits to young people are obvious but, as Mulberry found, having an apprenticeship scheme can also transform a business. Eight years after the introduction of its scheme, and with an influx of young people who ‘have refreshed the business’, Mulberry opened its second UK factory, in Bridgwater, in March, allowing it to maintain its British product manufacturing level at 50 per cent of total output.
Scott said this would not have been possible without the apprenticeship scheme and the regeneration the apprentices brought to the workforce. ‘Before, we didn’t have the people and skills available to us but now we do. I could have hired some temporary workers as a quick fix, but I wanted to reinvest in the local community and I’m really proud of what we’ve achieved.’
Emma Wilding chose an apprenticeship because she was concerned about paying back university tuition fees. Photograph: Luisa Whitton
The crash tester: Emma Wilding, 20, is one of six women out of 160 apprentices at Jaguar Land Rover in Coventry
‘From a very early age I wanted to know how stuff worked,’ Emma Wilding, 20, said. ‘And I’ve always had an interest in cars – I used to walk along the pavement with my mum when I was little and name the makes and know all the badges.’
Wilding was applying to study material science at Sheffield University when a friend told her about apprenticeships at Jaguar Land Rover. ‘She told me I could get a degree while doing the job,’ Wilding said. ‘I hadn’t really considered doing an apprenticeship before then but I thought I’d apply alongside my uni application and see what happened.’
Had she gone to university Wilding would have been among the first intake of students to pay £9,000 tuition fees. ‘It was a worrying thought that I would be paying that off for the rest of my working life,’ she said. ‘Theoretically you’re more likely to get a higher-paid job if you have a degree, but that’s not guaranteed. The apprenticeship sounded a better option.’
Wilding, who lives with her parents in Rugby, less than 20 miles away from the factory, is one of 160 apprentices at Jaguar Land Rover; only six are female. ‘It is a male environment, but my manager is a woman and she’s been very encouraging.’ Wilding is a higher apprentice in vehicle safety and has just started her third year of the six-year course. One of her jobs has been to crash-test cars. ‘You get to drive at a target at set speeds and hope the vehicle brakes in time. It is a lot of fun.’ She has also been testing systems and writing reports. ‘I have a computer model of a car crash and I look at how various components in the car react. I can alter those components to improve the performance of the car.’
After two years Wilding already has a foundation degree in engineering; when she graduates in four years’ time she will have a Bachelor of Engineering degree with honours, and various NVQs in safety. She started on £16,000 and can expect to finish, when she is 24, on £32,000 and is likely to have a job at the company. ‘I can’t go travelling like all my friends did this summer because like everyone else in the working world I have normal holidays. But here we’re at the forefront of technology. Things are always moving and changing.’
Jordan Malcolm Taylor initially worried about how he would fit in at Crossrail – ‘Now I feel it’s a privilege to be working here.’ Photograph: Luisa Whitton
The carpenter: Jordan Malcolm Taylor, 20, is studying carpentry as one of 360 apprentices at Crossrail in London
After finishing school at 16 Jordan Malcolm Taylor completed a two-year BTec and national diploma level 3 in music. The next step might have been university, but Malcolm Taylor was not sure. ‘I didn’t really know what I wanted to do in life and I didn’t want to go to uni for the sake of it. I decided it would be better to learn a trade – then you have a guaranteed job for life,’ he said.
After an open day in May, Malcolm Taylor applied to Crossrail, which employs 360 apprentices. He impressed the carpentry foreman with his knowledge about the company and was offered a place, starting in June. ‘I began with the basics – I made a toolbox and fixed a bench – now I’m putting up the lining walls in the tunnels.’
Morning briefings on site start at 7.30am, work starts at 8am and the days are long – until 6 or 7pm. Working in the heat of the summer has, he admitted, been draining. ‘It definitely looks like an easier life at uni,’ he said, ‘but I think about the people who are struggling to find work once they’ve got their degree, and here I am, in a job now, being paid to do what I want to do and getting a qualification.’
From September Malcolm Taylor, who lives with his mother in Tottenham, north London, will join three other Crossrail carpentry apprentices at Stratford Building Crafts College, studying formwork NVQ level 2 one week a month for the next 18 months.
Malcolm Taylor started on £4.44 an hour; after the first month his pay went up to £4.52 ‘and I get bonuses now and then’. The site was, he admitted, daunting at first. ‘It was really surreal. I thought, where am I going to fit in? I don’t know what to do. But it was all explained to me. Now I feel that it’s a privilege to be working here – I know there will be a lot of people who will benefit from it in the future.’
Lewis Boulcher got his prop-making apprenticeship at the National despite knowing little about theatre – ‘I’d never even been.’ Photograph: Luisa Whitton
The prop maker: Lewis Boulcher, 20, is one of the National Theatre’s eight prop-making apprentices
‘Every day is different, but this morning I’ve been making a fake meat pie,’ Lewis Boulcher said proudly. ‘It’s a play about King James of Scotland, and in the play the pie is torn apart by actors. So I modelled the pie in clay, cast it in a plaster mould, filled it with latex and cut it into sections. Someone else then made a filling and put magnets in the segments so we can put it back together every night.’
Boulcher is one of the National Theatre’s eight prop-making apprentices. After completing his GCSEs he went to sixth form college but dropped out. ‘It wasn’t for me,’ he said. He had previously considered university, but ‘I don’t like debt and it seemed the way the current climate is going that I’d be spending all this money and time at uni and getting out of it and getting a job at McDonald’s or something.’ He found the apprenticeship online. ‘I had zero experience in the theatre – I’d never even been – or with prop making but it sounded fun.’
After studying one day a week for a year at Tower Hamlets college for a level 2 design support apprenticeship and a BTec in design, he achieved a distinction and was awarded Apprentice of the Year at the college. ‘I preferred college when I was working for a purpose,’ he said.
Boulcher, who lives at home with his mother in Lewisham, south London, earns £12,000 a year. He starts work at 8.30am and finishes at 5.30pm. ‘Maybe I’ve missed out on some of the social aspects of uni, but I don’t think so. I still see my friends, but I have money that I can keep rather than money that I have to pay back.’
He will graduate from the apprenticeship in January, ‘and then I’ll be well set up to be a freelance prop maker,’ he said. ‘I’ve fallen on my feet – it’s something I really enjoy doing so I love putting in the effort.’
- To read more stories from the Telegraph magazine visit telegraph.co.uk/magazine
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