Very good to hear about upskilling taking place but also immensely sobering numbers (i.e. 1300 apprentices is seen a big uplift) for a country the size of the UK.
118,770 apprenticeships achieved in the UK last year. We're not that big on practical education, with a preference for getting degrees so we can sit behind a desk moving (electronic) paper.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Kin...
They are often not very high quality, sometimes it will be things like the person who puts bread in the oven at a supermarket getting a level 2 in kitchen skills and so on.
1,300 high quality apprenticeships is noticeable (which is nuts).
Provision seem to be very mixed - we know some teenagers who've had good ones and others who've had awful ones and these were in practical skills
Best one I know of was a degree apprenticeship for one of the big accountancy firms. Person started work at 18, had a degree in their early twenties while being paid all the way through, and no student debt at the end