Foundation apprenticeships can bridge the gap too many young people fall through

Cutting youth unemployment takes more than just scattering random, disconnected schemes around. What we actually need is a flexible pathway that meets young people where they are, rather than expecting them to fit into a pre-made box.

Youth unemployment has surged to an 11-year high. We’ve got fresh leadership promising a shake-up to education, but while politicians debate the future, young people are left waiting. A generation is going to lose out while we wait for action. Right now, independent providers and businesses are left trying to handle an economy that feels incredibly flat.

At Swarm Training CIC, we are proud to be partnering with Skilled Futures to support our foundation apprenticeship programme. Filling that gap between standard study programmes and full apprenticeships – a gap far too many young people fall through. Filling that space with something useful, relevant, and valued by learners and employers alike is vital.

My perspective comes from decades spent inside classrooms, serving as a secondary school governor, and working with groups like London’s Violence Reduction Unit to catch young people before they completely drop off the radar. When you spend years working with vulnerable teenagers, you see the anxiety of a young person trying to bridge the chasm between a chaotic home life and the rigid expectations of a workplace. For plenty of these kids, leaping straight into a standard full-time job is just too far in one go.

Often ability isn’t the problem, readiness and confidence are. A young person can leave school with amazing technical potential but have never caught a bus to work on their own, managed money, or known how to talk to a manager. That isn’t a qualifications gap, it’s a transition gap.

Headteachers tell me regularly how desperate they are for employability training for their students, but the funding simply isn’t there. Meanwhile, at every business event I attend, leaders voice the exact same frustration: young people are leaving education totally unprepared for the world of work.

Foundation apprenticeships won’t solve this problem entirely, but they are a massive step in the right direction.

The best programmes treat learners as individuals. Some need heavy employability support, mentoring, and confidence-building before they’re ready for a workplace. Not every learner needs eight months, employability training or more technical knowledge bolted on.

We also need to make sure pastoral support sits right next to technical training. Getting a young person through their first few months at work usually comes down to the unglamorous, everyday stuff: helping them budget until that first payday, figuring out a bus route, or just being on the other end of the phone when everything feels like too much. None of that shows up in achievement data, but it is often the exact difference between someone sticking with a job or walking out the door.

The best employers I know aren’t looking for someone who knows everything on day one. It is all about attitude – the rest can be taught. Foundation apprenticeships give employers a structured way to shape a young person into their business, with proper support for both sides.

But none of this works if a foundation apprenticeship sits in a silo. It has to lead somewhere. Every learner needs to know from day one what job they are working towards and what comes next. It is one step on a journey, but if you can’t see where you’re going, you are just as likely to walk into a wall or off a cliff rather than into a long-term, productive, and rewarding career.

There is also a tougher conversation we need to have. Plenty of independent training providers genuinely want to work with the young people who need this most. But there’s an understandable nervousness about the risk because we are judged on rigid achievement rates, progression, and an increasingly tough inspection framework. Have we accidentally built a system where providers avoid the learners who need the most help simply because taking them on puts official performance figures at risk?

Our funding and accountability systems need to catch up to reality. Inclusion will only ever work if it is embedded at all levels. Taking on a vulnerable learner shouldn’t leave a provider worse off than one who plays it safe.

We want to work with employers to shape programmes that flex around the individual, not the scheme. If we get this right, foundation apprenticeships stop being just another government programme and become the start of a truly sustainable route into work that changes lives, strengthens businesses, and tackles one of the country’s most stubborn problems head-on.