Apprenticeships in today's world

We are very proud to be celebrating 100 years of training apprentices this year, and also having the largest number of apprentices going through training in living memory at Metalcraft. When you look at the guy's (and girls) in the the timehop picture above you can think about some stark contrasts in the two different centuries which these young individuals were born into and developed their skills and knowledge.

In 1916, colour photography had only been invented a decade earlier, the first blood transfusion took place in this year, and things we take for granted now such as sticking plasters, hair driers, antibiotics, frozen food and the pop-up toaster hadn't yet been developed. Our current generation of apprentices will have mobile phones that can take & store pictures at a resolution never dreamed of in 1916 and have the benefit of an infinite array of modern technology to enable what we take for granted now in supporting our daily life.

We don't have the benefit of being able to understand what the aspirations of the apprentices in 1916 were, but they would have been set against a background of the First World War and all the issues that would have brought at the time. Talking to our apprentices about the things what are important to them, they would also have been important a century earlier - earning whilst you learn, the potential develop a career and progress through the ranks of the company. Apprenticeships provide a route to a lifelong career without the millstone of debt you get saddled with if you choose a path through University.

Whilst an apprenticeship isn't for everyone, we have almost 40% of our current employees who have been trained at Metalcraft, a good proportion of which, have 20, 30 or 40+ years service.

Let's keep waving the flag for high quality apprenticeships and another century of training the Metalcraft way.