The Draft Apprenticeships Bill, recently launched, is nothing if not ambitious. The Bill aims to ‘establish a statutory basis for the Apprenticeships programme, …set out the relationship between different parts of the Apprenticeship system and ensure employers and apprentices can be confident that an Apprenticeship offers a high quality route to acquiring skills.’
(Department for Innovation, Universities & Skills – DIUS). In recent years the Government has been enthusiastically increasing the number of apprenticeships – according to DIUS, ‘Over the past decade, the Government has more than doubled the number of young people and adults starting high-quality apprenticeships, with 184,000 starts last year.’ This, of course, is very positive news. But where does it leave the creative and cultural sector in particular – a rapidly growing sector with a workforce of 542,470 people, contributing £23.5 billion to the UK economy each year? Enter, the Creative Apprenticeship.
