Closed Doors? Are apprenticeships becoming harder to access?
Closed Doors? Are apprenticeships becoming harder to access?
Ola Kolade, Employment & Skills Director at Business in the Community, explores why apprenticeships risk becoming harder to access and how employer recruitment practices shape who gets through the door.
Apprenticeships are rightly celebrated as a powerful route into skilled work, combining earning, learning and long-term progression. But in today’s labour market, we need to be honest: access to apprenticeships is becoming more competitive, more fragmented, and harder to navigate, particularly for young people without strong professional networks.
Interest in apprenticeships is not the problem. Evidence consistently shows that young people are increasingly seeing them as positive and credible pathways.1 The challenge is that demand now far outstrips supply, especially for higher and degree apprenticeships, and the system for accessing them requires more transparency.
Research by UCAS, working with the Sutton Trust, found that around three in five young people who considered an apprenticeship did not pursue one because they could not find a suitable opportunity.2 This points to a structural issue, not a lack of aspiration. Unlike higher education, which benefits from a centralised application system and clear timelines, apprenticeship recruitment requires young people to navigate multiple processes, unclear entry requirements, and inconsistent employer practices, often with little guidance. In this context, how businesses design and deliver apprenticeship recruitment matters as much as how many roles they create.
This is a challenge that runs deeper than individual choices or effort. Improving access to apprenticeships will require collective action across government, education and employers to simplify pathways, increase supply and bring greater transparency to how opportunities are accessed. But there is no time to wait for perfect reform. Young people are navigating this reality now. That means the way employers design and deliver apprenticeship recruitment today has a direct impact on who applies, who persists and who ultimately succeeds.
In a highly competitive and complex landscape, there are specific moments in the recruitment journey where employer behaviour can either reinforce existing barriers or begin to lower them.
Competition without feedback is a confidence killer
As competition intensifies, rejection is inevitable. What is not acceptable is silence. For many young people, an apprenticeship application is their first experience of formal recruitment. Yet employer research and careers evidence repeatedly show that most unsuccessful applicants receive little or no feedback.3 Left without explanation, young people are more likely to internalise rejection, disengage, or opt out of the labour market altogether. The World Economic Forum has long highlighted the role of feedback in building career adaptability and resilience.4 Even light-touch, constructive feedback helps young people understand expectations and improve future applications. From a business perspective, this is not about handholding; it is about fairness, transparency and sustaining the future talent pipeline. With the efficiencies and capabilities AI is professed to possess, providing tailored feedback at scale is increasingly achievable. For employers serious about social mobility, this should be standard practice.
Parents and carers still shape outcomes
One of the most under-acknowledged influences on young people’s career decisions is their parents and carers. Evidence from the Gatsby Foundation shows they remain the single biggest influence on pathway choices.5 Where parents understand vocational and technical routes, young people are significantly more likely to pursue them. Yet awareness of apprenticeships among parents is uneven. Families without experience of vocational pathways often lack clear information about progression, pay and long-term prospects. In these circumstances, young people are frequently steered towards familiar academic routes not because they are better suited, but because they feel safer. Employers can play a decisive role here. Engaging parents through open events, accessible communications and visible role models helps build trust and legitimacy around apprenticeships. This is not about marketing; this is about widening informed choice.
Employer action in practice
There is a growing appetite from employers to widen their careers outreach beyond young people, teachers and schools. Last year, Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) launched the SkillsFest initiative to bring the world of work to life for over 1,000 young people, their parents and carers. These in-person events held at their major UK hubs helped young people build essential skills, showcased career opportunities and provided insights into apprenticeships.
The evidence is clear, young people are not short of ambition. They are navigating entry routes into work that are harder to find and increasingly difficult to navigate without guidance or support. If apprenticeships are to remain a genuine engine of opportunity and social mobility, employers have a critical role to play, starting with the way opportunities are designed, communicated and experienced. In practice, that means focusing on where employer behaviour has the greatest impact on access and confidence. Employers can:
These actions matter for all young people, but they matter most for those furthest from opportunity. Young people who are not in education or employment, and those from racially minoritised backgrounds, are more likely to be filtered out early unless employers act deliberately to widen access.
BITC is supporting employers to turn these principles into practice by encouraging fairer access to apprenticeships and early careers. Find out more about how we can assist your business to help young people into employment through our Race at Work campaign and Talent Unlocked programme.
Apprenticeships should widen the door to opportunity, not quietly narrow it. In a highly competitive and fast-changing labour market, how businesses recruit is as important as who they recruit. The challenge now is not whether apprenticeships work, but whether we are prepared to design them to work for everyone.
