In a plea that will resonate with thousands of school-leavers who have waded through a flood of rejection emails this summer, the skills minister has announced that getting a coveted apprenticeship in Britain has become harder than winning a place at Oxford or Cambridge.
Baroness Smith of Malvern, a former Commons Homes secretary turned Strictly Come Dancing contestant who now chairs the Department for Education’s skills forum, told the Sunday Sun that young people across the country were “queuing up” for apprenticeships, while employers were being forced to choose. His comments came as Whitehall figures revealed a rise in the youth workforce: almost a million people aged between 16 and 24 are now classed as Neets – not in education, employment or training.
The numbers behind the soundbite
The arithmetic seems, on the face of it, to support him. Cambridge received 22,820 applications for 2025 intake and offered 3,716 places, an acceptance rate of 16.3 per cent. Oxford was the strongest, admitting just 3,245 out of 23,061 hopefuls, 14.1 per cent. By comparison, several blue-chip apprenticeship schemes, particularly graduate-level engineering programmes, typically attract north of 150 applications per position, which exceeds the odds of a dream.
According to the latest Department for Education figures for apprenticeships, there were 353,500 apprenticeships starting in England in the 2024-25 academic year and 761,500 people taking part in total, with higher-level apprenticeships up more than 15 per cent year-on-year. Business, management and law remain the single largest subjects.
To open the bottle, Lady Smith pledged £600 million of new funding to pay for 60,000 more students, part of a wider campaign to close skills gaps in construction, engineering and digital roles. “Sometimes it can be easier to get into Oxford or Cambridge than to do an apprenticeship,” he said, adding: “Sometimes people say, ‘Young people don’t want to work in the construction industry’, but they actually do…
Why employers hesitate
The promise, however, works surprisingly well for small and medium-sized businesses that have historically struggled to recruit students. Industry data suggests that one in five construction SMEs plan to study this year, and employer groups argue that the Chancellor’s autumn measures, particularly the increase in employer National Insurance contributions from 13.8 to 15 percent in Rachel Reeves’ first Budget, have left many small firms recruiting new numbers.
The minimum wage that went into effect in April was only tightened. The apprenticeship rate rose by 6 per cent to £8 an hour; the 18-to-20 band rose by 8.5 per cent to £10.85; and the National Living Wage for over 21s reached £12.71. As Business Matters previously reported, the combined effect has been to push employer costs for low-wage workers up to more than £2,100 per job, a sum that, for owner-managers in hospitality, retail and care, has made hiring under-25s, in the words of one trade association, “unaffordable” without external support.
The political stranglehold is tightening
The minister’s term shows the Ministry of Finance is under increasing pressure to demonstrate that ministers can turn announcements into employment. The latest National Office for Statistics NEET report put the proportion of 16 to 24-year-olds out of school at 12.8 per cent, equivalent to 957,000 young people, with the next release due at the end of May.
Industry watchers will be looking for evidence that the policy mix is starting to turn the dial. With youth unemployment close to 11 years and employers warning that wage and tax bills leave little room to increase the number of young people, the £600 million pledge will need to be translated into hard money on the ground, not just a press release, if Westminster is to ease the bottleneck that, if a minister agrees to admit a British student, leaves a difficult student at school. the most selective universities in the country.
For SMEs, the equation has not changed: talent is willing, and undoubtedly abundant. The question is whether the policy framework ultimately makes the yes affordable.
