Apprenticeships have a long tradition in the United Kingdom, dating back to around the 12th century. They were flourishing by the 14th century and were the major form of training in manufacturing and services in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Apprenticeship declined during the Industrial Revolution as large firms and factories emerged, offering other ways to gain skills and more jobs were semi-skilled. They remained important in many occupations, however, throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. In modern times, apprenticeships were formalised in 1964 by act of parliament and they continue to be in widespread use to this day.
Background
An apprenticeship is a system for training a new generation of practitioners of a trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study (classroom work and reading). Apprenticeships can also enable practitioners to gain a licence to practise in a regulated profession. Most of their training is done while working for an employer who helps the apprentices learn their trade or profession, in exchange for their continued labour for an agreed period after they have achieved measurable competencies.
History Early history Apprenticeships have a long tradition in the United Kingdom, dating back to around the 12th century and flourishing by the 14th century. During the sixteenth and seventeenth century, a large share of training in towns took place in London: almost 80% of urban apprentices in England would be found in the city, having travelled from across the nation. The parents or guardians of a minor would agree with a master craftsman or tradesman the conditions for an apprenticeship. This contract would then bind the youth for 5–9 years (e.g., from age 14 to 21). Apprentices' families would sometimes pay a "premium" or fee to the craftsman and the contract would usually be recorded in a written indenture.
In towns and cities with guilds, apprenticeship would often be subject to guild or city regulation, setting minimum terms of service, or limiting the number of apprentices that a master could train at any one time. The most important source of oversight of apprenticeship contracts was through the courts operated by towns or cities, such as the Lord Mayor's Court of London, which heard large numbers of disputes each year. Elsewhere, Justices of the Peace could judge disputes. Guilds also often kept records of who became an apprentice, and this would often provide a qualification for later becoming a freeman of a guild or a citizen of a city. Many youths would train in villages or communities that lacked guilds, however, so avoiding the impact of these regulations.
In the 16th century, the payment of a "premium" to the master was not at all common, but such fees became relatively common by the end of the 17th century, though they varied greatly from trade to trade. The payment of a one-off fee could be very difficult for some parents, limiting who was able to undertake apprenticeships. In the 18th-century, apprenticeship premiums were taxed, and the registers of the Stamp Duty that recorded tax payments mostly survive, showing that roughly one in ten teenage males served an apprenticeship for which they paid fees, and that the majority paid five to ten pounds to their master.
In theory no wage had to be paid to an apprentice since the technical training was provided in return for the labour given, and wages were illegal in some cities, such as London. However, it was usual to pay small sums to apprentices, sometimes with which to buy, or instead of, new clothes. By the 18th century regular payments, at least in the last two or three years of the apprentice's term, became usual and those who lived apart from their masters were frequently paid a regular wage. This was sometimes called the "half-pay" system or "colting", payments being made weekly or monthly to the apprentice or to his parents. In these cases, the apprentice often went home from Saturday night to Monday morning. This was the norm in the 19th century but this system had existed in some trades since the 16th century.
In 1563, the Statute of Artificers and Apprentices was passed to regulate work and wages in England. It aimed to prevent workers leaving agriculture and included rules limiting access to apprenticeship system, as well as famously forbidding anyone from practising a trade or craft without first serving a 7-year period as an apprentice to a master. In practice, the sons of artisans might qualify by working with their father outside a formal contract, but the law remained unclear on this and many did enter indentures.
From 1601, 'parish' apprenticeships under the Elizabethan Poor Law came to be used as a way of providing for poor, illegitimate and orphaned children of both sexes alongside the regular system of skilled apprenticeships, which tended to provide for boys from slightly more affluent backgrounds. These parish apprenticeships, which could be created with the assent of two Justices of the Peace, supplied apprentices for occupations of lower status such as farm labouring, brickmaking and menial household service.
Nineteenth century In the early years of the Industrial Revolution entrepreneurs began to resist the restrictions of the apprenticeship system, and a legal ruling established that the Statute of Apprentices did not apply to trades that were not in existence when it was passed in 1563, thus excluding many new 18th century industries. In 1814 the requirement that a free worker in a skilled trade needed to have served an apprenticeship was abolished. However with the abolition of slavery, the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 established an apprenticeship system whereby formerly enslaved Africans where obliged to work three quarters of their time for their former owners, This was reckoned at 40½ hours per week. (The full week of 54 hours comprised five full days of 8 hours per day, with Saturday a half-day and Sunday off.)
By the end of the century, in the railway industry an ordinary apprenticeship involved a fee, with a higher fee required for a 'premium apprenticeship'. This offered greater breadth and depth of education for trainees aiming eventually at the higher grades.
System introduced in 1964 The mainstay of training in industry has been the apprenticeship system (combining academic and practice), and the main concern has been to avoid skill shortages in traditionally skilled occupations and higher technician and engineering professionals, e.g., through the UK Industry Training Boards (ITBs) set up under the 1964 Act. The aims were to ensure an adequate supply of training at all levels; to improve the quality and quantity of training; and to share the costs of training among employers. The ITBs were empowered to publish training recommendations, which contained full details of the tasks to be learned, the syllabus to be followed, the standards to be reached and vocational courses to be followed. These were often accompanied by training manuals, which were in effect practitioners' guides to apprentice training, and some ITBs provide training in their own centres. The ITBs did much to formalise what could have been a haphazard training experience and greatly improved its quality. The years from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s saw the highest levels of apprentice recruitment, yet even so, out of a school leaving cohort of about 750,000, only about 110,000 (mostly boys) became apprentices. The apprenticeship system aimed at highly developed craft and higher technician skills for an elite minority of the workforce, the majority of whom were trained in industries that declined rapidly from 1973 onwards, and by the 1980s it was clear that in manufacturing this decline was permanent.Peter Haxby and David Parkes. "Apprenticeship in the United Kingdom: From ITBs to YTS". European Journal of Education, Vol. 24, No. 2 (1989), pp. 167–181.
Since the 1950s, the UK high technology industry (Aerospace, Nuclear, Oil & Gas, Automotive, Telecommunications, Power Generation and Distribution etc.) trained its higher technicians and professional engineers via the traditional indentured apprenticeship system of learning – usually a 4–6 year process from age 16–21. There were 4 types of traditional apprenticeship: craft, technician, higher technician, and graduate. Craft, technician and higher technician apprenticeships usually took 4 to 5 years while a graduate apprenticeship was a short 2-year experience usually while at university or post graduate experience. Non-graduate technician apprenticeships were often referred to as "technical apprenticeships". The traditional apprenticeship framework in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was designed to allow young people (from 16 years old) an alternative path to A Levels to achieve both an academic qualification (equivalent to today's level 4 or 5 NVQs) and competency-based skills for knowledge work. Often referred to as the "Golden Age" of work and employment for bright young people, the traditional technical apprenticeship framework was open to young people who had a minimum of 4 GCE O-Levels to enroll in an Ordinary National Certificate or Diploma (ONC, OND) or a City & Guilds engineering technician course. Apprentices could progress to the Higher National Certificate, Higher National Diploma (HNC, HND) or advanced City and Guilds course such as Full Technological Certification. Apprenticeship positions at elite companies often had hundreds of applications for a placement. Academic learning during an apprenticeship was achieved either via block release or day release at a local technical institute. An OND or HND was usually obtained via the block release approach whereby an apprentice would be released for periods of up to 3 months to study academic courses full-time and then return to the employer for applied work experience. For entrance into the higher technical engineering apprenticeships, GCE O-Levels had to include Mathematics, Physics, and English language. The academic level of subjects such as mathematics, physics, chemistry on ONC/OND, and some City & Guilds advanced technician courses, was equivalent to A level mathematics, physics and chemistry. The academic science subjects were based on applied science in subjects such as thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, mechanics of machines, dynamics and statics, electrical science and electronics. These are often referred to as the engineering sciences. HNC and HND were broadly equivalent to subjects in the first year of a bachelor's degree in engineering but not studied to the same intensity or mathematical depth. HNC was accepted as entrance into the first year of an engineering degree and high performance on an HND course could allow a student direct entry into the second year of a degree. Few apprentices followed this path since it would have meant 10–12 years in further and higher education. For the few that did follow this path they accomplished a solid foundation of competency-based work training via apprenticeship and attained a higher academic qualification at a university or Polytechnic combining both forms of education; vocational plus academic. During the 1970s, City and Guilds assumed responsibility for the administration of HNC and HND courses.