The Playbook
If you have a child in Year 9 or Year 10. The power to arrange workplace experience for them already exists and does not need the 2028 scheme. Under section 560 of the Education Act 1996 a school or council can arrange a placement as part of their education, and the child employment rules do not apply to it. Ask the school what it currently offers, how many days, and to how many pupils. If the answer is vague, that is itself the answer. Schools in England also have a legal duty to provide independent careers guidance covering the full range of options, apprenticeships included, from Year 8.
If your child is sixteen and thinking about not continuing. In England the duty to be in education or training runs to their eighteenth birthday, and an apprenticeship satisfies it in full, as does full-time work combined with part-time study. There is no penalty attached to the duty, but the point is not the penalty. Leaving with nothing attached is the route into the group nobody counts.
If you employ people. Apprenticeship vacancies advertised on the government's own service fell 23 per cent in a year. If you have ever thought about taking a sixteen-year-old and not got round to it, the competition for that hire has thinned, and small employers can currently get an incentive payment for taking on under-25s. Check the current rules before relying on that; they have changed twice in eighteen months.
If you want to hold somebody to something. Two dates. The full apprenticeship figures for 2025/26 are published in November 2026, and they will show whether under-19 starts kept falling. The technical routes are promised to begin rolling out from September 2028. Write both down.
And the one line worth keeping. Before anyone announces the next plan for young people, ask what happened to the last one. Not whether it was a good idea. How many.
*from the editor*
The founding question starts with whether a young person can reach work at all. Everything here is about the door.