The language used in education shapes policy, practice, and perceptions. Edge’s series asks, What's in a Word? and scrutinises the impact of the terminology we commonly employ.
Having spent the past five years leading the organisation that set standards for apprenticeship training, you’d think it would be easy to write 500 words on the definition of an apprenticeship, wouldn’t you? Well you’d be wrong! I think most people would think an apprenticeship is a work-based training programme designed to impart the ability to do a skilled job. So far so good, but how do you define a skilled job and who sets the training standard? Is it OK for an apprenticeship to train for a specific job or should it include wider skills? Should the training all take place on the job, or should apprentices also have time away from the workplace to study, and if so, how much? Who is allowed to conduct training? Is attaining competence enough to constitute an apprenticeship or should we require excellence? And who is qualified to determine whether competence has been reached and how should they do that?
So perhaps we should go backwards to go forwards, after all, apprenticeships in England are rooted in centuries of tradition - maybe that could provide some helpful pointers. The first records of apprenticeships show apprentices as young as ten being sent to the home of a skilled craftsperson who would train them, feed and house them. The apprenticeship usually lasted for seven years and during that time there was no requirement for the master to pay the apprentice a wage. There were also tough restrictions on what apprentices could do outside work, no gambling, going to the theatre or the pub. Now while that might feel quite offensive to our modern sensibilities, by the 1560s and the Statute of Artificers, some of the things we concern ourselves with today start to feature.
By trying to ensure consistent standards of skills across trades and delineating the trades that necessitated an apprenticeship, the Elizabethans were saying very clearly that training standards are important, and some jobs are suitable for an apprenticeship whilst others are not. For centuries after the Act, apprenticeships continued to be seen as a prestigious route into skilled employment. However, by the early 19th century, the system began to falter. The repeal of the Statute in 1814 coincided with industrialisation, which introduced factory work and eroded the traditional master-apprentice relationship. Concerns about exploitation and deteriorating training quality led to a decline in public confidence, though apprenticeships remained popular in engineering and other technical fields well into the early 20th century.
By the mid-1960s, apprenticeships reached a peak, with around 35% of male school leavers undertaking them. Yet this high take-up masked growing concerns about quality. The rise of post-16 education, shifting labour market demands, and inconsistent standards across industries contributed to a steep decline in participation by the 1990s. In response, the government launched Modern Apprenticeships in 1994, aiming to restore credibility and expand access. These new programmes introduced formal qualifications, wage guarantees, and structured training plans, but employers were not central to setting standards and by 2009 quality concerns erupted into scandals of individuals, employed as apprentices without their knowledge, receiving no training at all.
The Richard Review 2012 aimed to change all that, re-establishing the Elizabethan principle that apprenticeships should be for skilled jobs, that employers were best placed to define the knowledge, skills and behaviours required for competence in the role, and that there should be a minimum training period – not seven years this time, just one!
Those strictures have been challenged over the past ten years, and the new government has responded with a series of ‘flexibilities’ including reducing the required training time to 8 months for some apprenticeships. Whilst I applaud the desire to increase apprenticeship take up, history shows that the reputation of ‘apprenticeship’ stands or falls on the quality of training. To my mind, defining ‘apprenticeship’ in a way that ensures good quality training and helping more people to access them, is the only way to increase the overall skills of the country.
By Jennifer Coupland
Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute for Legal Executives (CILEX) from September 2025 . Pro Vice Chancellor Skills at London South Bank University since February to July 2025. Previously Chief Executive of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education from November 2019. Before that I was Director of Professional and Technical Education in DfE for three years, where I was responsible for T Level development and delivery, the Level 3 and below qualifications review and the Higher Technical Education Reforms. Prior to that, I was Acting Chief Executive of the Standards and Testing Agency, where I oversaw the Agency’s work on primary school assessment policy and operational delivery. Before that, I spent three years as the Deputy Director of the joint DfE/BIS Apprenticeships Unit.