State schools and the rise of posh apprenticeships
Recently, a friend forwarded me a letter he’d received from his children’s school, an independent secondary in London, to mark National Apprenticeships Week. The letter set out to parents everything the school was doing to provide children with information, options and contacts to explore apprenticeships, either in combination with or as an alternative to a university degree. The school isn’t household-name famous, but it’s still prestigious, exclusive and, yes, expensive: a year’s fees cost something close to the national average full-time salary. My guess would be that the vast majority of the parents who can cover such fees are themselves university graduates: a degree tends to be a minimum requirement
