The Thinkery: Gloucestershire responds to the PM’s new age of apprenticeships

This week Keir Starmer told the nation we’d be moving away from a belief university degrees are best, to give parity to apprenticeships. How has that gone down in the county?

Dear reader,

With the tragic events outside the Manchester synagogue overshadowing all news as we publish today, it’s easy to forget what happened earlier this week.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer took to the stage at the Labour Party Conference to tell us we are about to see apprenticeships come centre stage, marking a new era that puts them on a par with university degrees.

It was this, he said, that would help drive the much-needed growth and £800 million of what he claimed was ‘new’ money would ensure that it happens.

In Gloucestershire that battle for parity has long been waging, with the county out ahead of many other areas of the UK in recognising the power of apprenticeships.

Leaving aside the opinion of struggling universities you might have thought the news would be welcomed here then among those existing apprenticeship champions, but it’s more complicated than that.

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