What’s better than hearing about the value of an apprenticeship from the apprentices themselves?

For National Apprenticeship Week, we recently held a webinar surrounding this year’s theme “skills for life,” and asked our past and present apprentices what skills they developed from their experience.

Together, the panel explained how valuable their apprenticeship has been, and how their perception of apprenticeships completely transformed after their experiences.

Event panellists

The webinar was led by Jenny Pelling - Kaplan’s Apprenticeship Partnerships Director. Her career in education and apprenticeships has seen her involvement in designing programmes, and enhancing provision for learner’s and employer’s benefit. She is one of the Wellbeing Leads at Kaplan and a qualified Mental Health First Aider. Jenny is also the lead at Kaplan for “Brighter Futures,” which focuses on social mobility and opportunities for all.

Alongside Jenny was a full panel of Kaplan Apprentices. We find that understanding the views and experiences of our apprentices is very important to help us continually evaluate and improve our Apprenticeship programmes as well as provide guidance to all who are interested in assessing their career options.

Key topics discussed

The panel tackled questions and provided tips on topics such as:

• What skills for life do you think you’ve developed through your apprenticeship and how have they helped you?
• Are there any skills that you were concerned about that you thought you would need going into your apprenticeship that you didn’t have?
• What kind of data skills are you using in your roles?
• How does Kaplan support you with Excel skills?
• What has been the most challenging part of your apprenticeship and what did you learn from that?
• Tips and strategies that have worked well for time management.

Overall, the panel highlighted how they now acknowledge their value to the organisation that they work with, as well as the importance of time management skills, developing your confidence and working well with other people from all backgrounds.