How confident are parents and carers in supporting their child to apply for apprenticeships?

January 31, 2025

Throughout 2024, Amazing Apprenticeships, in partnership with Hertfordshire Careers Hub, and the Stoke and Staffordshire Careers Hub, undertook a series of surveys across two main groups:

  • Parents and Carers of young people in secondary education
  • Teachers and careers advisers in secondary schools

Both groups are widely understood to be the ‘key influencers’ in the career decisions of a young person, and so the surveys provide a fascinating insight into their knowledge, understanding and confidence when it comes to helping young people to navigate through their post-16 and post-18 options.

Parents and carers

More than 15,000 parents and carers completed the survey. The findings showed a high level of interest and support in apprenticeships.

  • 75% told us their secondary school-aged child had already expressed an interest in a particular career, with Computing, Technology and Digital being the highest ranked.
  • 70% of parents and carers would encourage their child to consider an apprenticeship
  • The biggest driver for parents and carers to encourage apprenticeships was the fact that their child would gain relevant skills in their area of interest.

However, we also found that there is a huge knowledge and confidence gap in knowing how to best support their child, with only 1 in 10 parents and carers feeling confident in supporting their child to apply for an apprenticeship.

Teachers and careers advisers

4,000 teachers and careers advisers completed the survey. Similarly to the parents and carers, there is a real appetite from teachers and careers advisers to be better able to support their students. However, there is a similar gap in knowledge and confidence.

  • 9 out of 10 subject-level teachers are having regular careers conversations with their students
  • Only 24% (1 in 4) feel they know a lot about apprenticeships
  • Only 5 in 10 would feel confident in supporting students with the application process
  • 65% of teachers would like to receive more information about apprenticeships and technical education to build their knowledge of the different options.
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