back to article I thought there'd be more Instagram: ICT apprenticeships down 20% in five years

The number of youngsters taking up ICT apprenticeships has fallen by nearly 20 per cent over the last five years, according to the UK's Education and Skills Funding Agency. Some 15,010 people started ICT apprenticeships in Blighty in 2016/17, down from 16,020 the previous year and a fall of 3,510 since 2011/12, the government …

  1. Missing Semicolon Silver badge
    Devil

    Perhaps it's the obvious

    .. all IT jobs are prime candidates for outsourcing, so the jobs are either badly paid, or non-existent. And of course the biggest user of cheap, offshored, contracted, untaxed IT labour is... Government!

    1. Naselus

      Re: Perhaps it's the obvious

      Or the even more obvious, in that there's really no such thing as an 'IT apprenticeship' so the whole thing is just an excuse for paying your helpdesk monkeys £2.35 an hour.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Perhaps it's the obvious

        I have noticed with our UK outsourced ICT services, the Helldesk seems to be populated mostly with people with apprentice in their job title.

        I would hate to start in IT these days, can't learn anything when people are yelling ITS BROKEN

      2. Doogie Howser MD

        Re: Perhaps it's the obvious

        100%, mate. If the experience of my son is anything to go by, few IT apprenticeships are worth their salt, just cheap labour.

        In my day, an apprenticeship with a plumber meant shadowing them as they did work, doing bits and bobs and doing more as you got more competent. Doesn't seem like there's much quality checking (if any) around placements as I assume agencies get their finders fee and fuck the kids (not literally, obvs.)

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Perhaps it's the obvious

        Spot on! TBH there are very few proper apprenticeships! working in a shop for 2 years ISN'T an apprenticeship! My old dad did a 7 year apprenticeship as a stone mason, he'd be turning in his grave. These are NOT apprenticeships they are YTS schemes nothing more. Can we just call a turd a turd and not try and bullshite things up to be something they're not

  2. Lysenko

    ICT remains less popular with youngsters, despite repeated government lip service about improving the tech skills gap

    What skills gap? IBM, HPE and the rest are churning out hundreds of highly skilled and experienced personnel every month and not all of them are walking into another job inside 24 hours. This has got nothing to do with a "skills gap" per se, it's about increasing supply to flood the market and drive down wages prices.

    You can hardly expect enthusiasm for an ICT career when the entire purpose of the training strategy is to destroy what little prestige the profession has and drive down expected career income to the level of a Bangalore rickshaw driver. If HMG wants UK IT to compete on price with sub-continent outsourcing then they can start by cutting food prices, taxes, housing, utilities and so on to sub-continent levels. Once that's done, we can all work for less money.

    1. John Styles

      The skills gap is the same as it always has been, of 18 year olds with 5 years experience in technologies that have been round for 3 years who will work 80 hour weeks for peanuts and not answer back.

    2. gurugeorge

      Such a brilliant comment.

      I left IT 15 years ago but so true . Check out the taxpayers alliance - when the 40% rate was brought in, 1in 20 paid it, now its 1 in 4

    3. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

      re: IBM HPE etc

      IBM, HPE and the rest are Jettisoning hundreds of highly skilled and experienced personnel every month

      There fixed it for you.

  3. Al-Noor Ramji

    Why would any youngster want a career in IT when they can see the government flooding the country with cheap workers from India on uncapped intra company transfer visas, taxing them less than locals, and going on to give many indefinite leave to remain and British citizenship simply for working here? When the big outsourcers are also flooding the country with tech grads from Bulgaria and Romania, because they are cheaper.

    We have an economy on a one way race to the bottom, either shifting our work abroad, or using the cheapest possible imports here. And the quality has nose dived preventing us selling our own skills on quality not price internationally.

    1. wolfetone Silver badge

      "Why would any youngster want a career in IT..."

      I turned 30 in October, and I've been working in IT professionally since I was 20, left school at 16 to do my CCNA etc etc.

      Looking back, if I had my chances again, I wouldn't touch IT with a barge poll. I'd be in something else, like engineering or construction. Better money, better work/life balance, better time of it all.

      1. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

        @ wolfetone

        There's a new building being put up next to my office. As the construction workers go home I think: They know they're not going to get an email or text telling them something is broken later that evening and expected to fix it before everyone gets in the next day.

        Lucky bastards!

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        probably earn more money settings oneself up as a hair dresser. Having said that, come the apocalypse I'd rather be a shoe maker. We all need shoes!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      When the big outsourcers are also flooding the country with tech grads from Bulgaria and Romania, because they are cheaper.

      I have seen both their and UK educational system and I have worked with products of both. My 0.02 lei, stotinka or pound. Make your choice. Or even 0.02 Euro.

      1. They are not cheaper. Starting salary for an IT graduate there is comparable to starting salary in UK while the costs of living are significantly lower. This is even more pronounced in the Vishegrad countries. A starting sysadmin salary in Brno or java Developer in Bratislava is HIGHER than the starting salary for the same positions in London. I will restrain from trying to compute the living cost in Brno and London as I this usually ends up with me swearing in 5+ slavic languages punctuated by English comments.

      2. The CS education while nowhere near what these countries produced around the crash of the wall day, is actually still better than UK. A lot of UK universities have gone down the "cater for industry needs" route resulting in the production of bullshit degrees. I went through the syllabus with an interviewee once. He was a fairly nice guy and was trying hard, but he was just clueless on fundamentals so I decided to see exactly what did he study in Uni. Oh my god, I regretted that. I had to call in someone to finish the interview as I was only milliseconds away from blowing a gasket.

      3. Even the Russel group as far as CS is nothing to shout about which is demonstrated by their standings in the annual CS university student competitions where only one of them scored top 100 (UCL) and it was BEHIND the university of f*** Bombed out Aleppo. Yes, the bombed out hulk where lectures are punctuated by air raid sirens scored higher than ANY UK University.

      4. IMHO the root cause of the problem is that CS (and STEM for that matter) is not for everyone. You have to weed ~ 70%+ of the candidates because their brain is not for it. Just to be clear, I am not alone in this thinking. For example - see here: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/12/29/the-perils-of-javaschools-2/ (this is written in 2005 by the way, things only have gone worse since). Unfortunately, the double wammy of student fees/loans and unpopularity of the profession makes the universities cherish the little candidates they have and not weed them mercilessly as they should. There is an easy fix for that too (and most of STEM dearth) - remove fees for STEM. And make it hard.

      5. Optional - make Asimov's Profession a mandatory humanities credit for engineering grads (as it used to be in MIT).

      1. Dabooka

        @AC

        Have you got a link for the Russell Group / Aleppo link? I could see that being quite useful to me at work

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: @AC

          Have you got a link for the Russell Group / Aleppo link?

          https://icpc.baylor.edu/worldfinals/results-2016

          They have changed the presentation format so you cannot see the full top-100.

          UCL was ~ 80-ish, Aleppo was ~56 if memory serves me right. It was discussed on el-reg about a year ago, dig the archives.

          2017 is slightly better - there is a UK entry in the top-50, but nowhere near the "cheap" Eastern Europeans some of which are in the top 10 year after year after year.

          1. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

            Re: @AC

            https://icpc.baylor.edu/worldfinals/results-2016

            That doesn't work for me: "No page found for name "results-2016"."

            1. Adrian 4

              Re: @AC

              https://icpc.baylor.edu/community/results-2016

          2. Paul Kinsler

            Re: Have you got a link for the Russell Group / Aleppo link?

            It's a competition result, and therefore not necessarily indicative of the average standard of typical students (or of the distribution of standards). But it does make a good soundbyte :-)

      2. Al-Noor Ramji

        I have been in the big outsourcers, and have seen the spreadsheets, whether you like it or not people from these places are a lot cheaper that locals, and thats why these people are used.

      3. gurugeorge

        Wow brilliant sir

      4. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "There is an easy fix for that too (and most of STEM dearth) - remove fees for STEM. And make it hard."

        What a good idea.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          totally agree we've been saying this for years. If you want to do a degree in a STEM subject, no charge, want to do a BA or PPE! then cough up!

      5. A Non e-mouse Silver badge
        Headmaster

        @A/C

        Even the Russel group as far as CS is nothing to shout about which is demonstrated by their standings in the annual CS university student competitions where only one of them scored top 100 (UCL) and it was BEHIND the university of f*** Bombed out Aleppo. Yes, the bombed out hulk where lectures are punctuated by air raid sirens scored higher than ANY UK University.

        The only UK University I saw listed in the results was UCL. I don't see any of the other 23 Russell Group Unis in the competition. (Or any of the non-Russell Group ones) Is that because UCL were the only entrants, or because all the other UK Unis failed to reach the finals?

        Looking at the finalists for 2018, I see Oxford & Cambridge listed. Again, I don't know if other UK unis didn't enter or just didn't get to the finals.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why?

    I've two girls and neither I would encourage into IT. Not because of the "nerd" image, or the "bro" culture, but because for many it's utterly soul destroying.

    You can be stuck at your screen with little or no reward, with the ever present threat of being outsourced.

    If you programme, well your to expensive, if you loo after tin, then you're being shifted to cloud.

    If you look after the "cloud" you end up doing the same, boring tasks day in , day out.

    Take a lower paid job and be happy.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Why?

      I'm the same, I will make sure they have the skills but then combine it with something else because just IT where I started is not worth it. There's not really any progression paths unless you specialise but then it may get outsourced or what you specialise in becomes redundant and you've wasted a lot of your life for nothing.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Facepalm

      Re: Why?

      Of course, I'll teach them to proof read before writing on a forum...

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The IT boom is over. I’d probably go into Engineering these days too...

    Software Development has the same regard as “car mechanic” and “scaffolder” now. We’re not far off the same leering and wolf whistle stereotypes...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Software Development has the same regard as “car mechanic” and “scaffolder” now."

      People at parties don't expect car mechanics or scaffolders to solve their car/house problems for free.

      1. wolfetone Silver badge

        "People at parties don't expect car mechanics or scaffolders to solve their car/house problems for free."

        You'd be surprised.

        I was at a party the other month and got talking to this guy about hobbies. I told him I do mechanical work on my car, and he asked what type of work. Told him I had changed the shock absorbers, fitted new brakes, and fitted a complete clutch to my car without an engine hoist.

        He asked me loads of questions about cars then, like how to fix certain stuff. Finished it with "well maybe you could take a look at it for me?". Immediately turned the conversation on to computers.

        1. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge

          People at parties don't expect car mechanics or scaffolders to solve their car/house problems for free."

          You'd be surprised.

          I can only add to that, that after revealing I work for an engineering company that some old duffer restoring his car/bike/lawnmower goes

          "Oh can you make me 2 of these?"

          After several of those requests and making them (and getting bitched at for taking too long) I now answer

          "Sure, if you want 2 they will cost 2500 quid each, if you want 25 000 then the price will be about £1.50"

          To wit the usual answer is "I can get 1 for 99p at Halfords" Cue banging head into wall.

          But back to the topic..... dont bother with engineering either especially the down at the robot interface kind of BS I deal with.

          Outsourcing, no wage rises... and a wage that barely even breaks 25k at the best of times (unless you like pulling night shifts or working 60 hr weeks year round)

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        FREE!? what you don't at least get 4 cans of cheep beer or a £3.50 bottle of wine for a whole evening work are you mad!

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A lot of this is down to the low quality of many of the apprenticeships. Some of them are good. Really good. If you end up in one of the proper services arms of one of the bigger (and not imploding) IT consultancies you're golden. I know apprentices learning real skills on real projects with major clients via the likes of Accenture and Capgemini, moving on after 4-5 years to "real" jobs, equipped with proper degrees, oodles of experience and no debt.

    Unfortunately I also know loads of apprentices (many with those same companies) who have been shovelled off into low-grade outsourcing work where they're being used to keep the onshore component of today's en vogue 60-20-20 model as low-cost as humanly possible. No future, no enjoyment, no skills. Just front line service desk work paying £15k a year (even in central London) with no prospect for advancement or fulfilment.

    Dreary stuff, and it's entirely pot luck where you end up.

    1. Al-Noor Ramji

      Apprenticeships are indeed very low quality these days, and nothing like the apprenticeships of our parents and grandparents generation. Not long enough, quality not good enough, often taught by people who are not successful in the relevant profession themselves, and so on.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sexist adverts

    So trying to pretend that girls like IT as much as boys do and spending millions to push the feminazi "You are all the same" agenda doesn't work ?

    Surprise, surprise.

    How about trying an awful "Super boys on top love healthcare, go lads !" campaign next, to cut the number of medical students ?

  8. m0rt

    'digital skills'

    You either know all of it, or none of it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: 'digital skills'

      The more I know - the more I know I don't know.

      or as Homer says "All this new stuff keeps pushing the old stuff out of my brain".

  9. wiggers

    Supply and demand

    "Some 15,010 people started ICT apprenticeships in 2016/17, down from 16,020 the previous year and a fall of 3,510 since 2011/12, the government body found."

    So they have successfully increased the supply and now the demand is falling. Do we really need the NAO to tell us that?

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If you are a 10 year CCNA (that's kept up to date) and you aren't making more than an engineer or builder, you are doing it wrong.

    IT, the only (legal) job you do £80-£90K pa with 5 years (hard) graft/experience and no degree...

    1. rcap

      You dont need a degree to be a train driver and earn more...

      You dont need a degree to be a finance professional and earn more....

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Where the fuck do you find a £80-90k job (that doesn't involve 60+ hours/week, a suit and utter cockwombles for coworkers)?? Selling your soul is something completely different...

  11. This post has been deleted by its author

  12. JimmyPage Silver badge
    Joke

    Millenial job interview

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uo0KjdDJr1c

    1. techdead
      Thumb Up

      Re: Millenial job interview

      ha! how I larfed, it ain't that far off the truth

  13. Miss Lincolnshire

    Ambition

    I'd sooner my daughter started her own hairdressing or dog grooming business than followed me into IT

    There is no training, reward or career left in this commoditised and under appreciated industry any longer. Why "train" in an ICT Apprenticeship when she could get a real skill that you can't offshore or bluff with younger apprentices?

    1. Al-Noor Ramji

      Re: Ambition

      Re "hairdressing or dog grooming" well the reality is the government is not flooding the country with entrants with uncapped intra company transfer visas, with no resident labour test, and taxing them less than locals, in those lines of work. In IT the government is allowing the big outsourcers to flood the country with cheap foreign workers and subcontract them anywhere for less than it costs to hire a Brit.

      Plus its tough for hard won intellectual property and skills in those lines of work to be rapidly moved offshore like it is with software.

  14. Phil Endecott

    What is "ICT"?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      It's what gets taught in schools.

      Bears no resemblance to anything outside academia.

    2. Stevie

      What is "ICT"?

      Try here

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: What is "ICT"?

        "Try here"

        A ha ha ha

        ha ha ha

        ha ha ha

        Next time I'm having a party, I'll invite you, you top comedian.

        1. Stevie

          Re: What is "ICT"?

          Asked and answered. Saved him a pageload, three keytaps and a click.

          Don't see the problem.

  15. localzuk Silver badge

    IT is a bad career choice right now

    The constant use of outsourced labour and the flooding of the market with more people, has reduced the pay prospects in IT dramatically.

    I remember seeing IT jobs advertised as £30k per year, entry level jobs when I was a teen. Now, £30k is a mid-level job, if you've got a load of experience. Starting is £20k or less.

    Or, people can go into engineering, construction, politics, business management etc... and earn a heck of a lot more, a lot quicker.

    1. Al-Noor Ramji

      Re: IT is a bad career choice right now

      Re "engineering, construction, politics, business management etc... and earn a heck of a lot more, a lot quicker." and its not just the money, its still possible in those other lines of work to have relative security. and the wild west of the IT recruitment nonsense is avoided.

      the sheer quantity of BS on folks linkedin profiles demonstrates how up its own bum the whole business has become.

  16. AS1

    Recruitment bias

    Regarding offshoring, typically India in our case, we should also consider that an EU-based applicant is probably applying as an individual, whereas the overseas applicant has considerable support from their corporate consultancy HR department that has long experience crafting applications to match UK companies' needs and provides guidance during the (remote) interview stage.

    The contrast between what the manager has interviewed and what we receive is stark.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Lots of doom and gloom in these comments, the technology industry has lots of opportunity and its quite easy to shift around if your not happy to where the best money/jobs are over your career, I've been in for 10 years and experienced just this so far.

    1. B83

      Doom and gloom

      I have to agree with you there is too much doom and gloom about IT.

      I wonder what the doom merchants are talking about when they say IT. When I first started in the office, 2005, for a big company some folk classed themselves as IT experts but only worked on one system. Some of them had been on that system for 20 years+. They knew very little about anything else. The system was then switched off and they were fishes out of water. It did not stop me from going into IT all it did was to make me damn sure I was not a one trick pony. I'm still updating my skills and will continue to do so(actually I enjoy being the geek).

      As you say and it is a golden rule 'if your not happy F**k Off and get another job'.

  18. Someone Else Silver badge
    WTF?

    Nice!

    Use an acronym (ICT) throughout an article, and never once define it. Nice! I'm sure that ICT is as well known on the right side of the Pond as, say, WTF. But for those of us on the other side...a hint, please?

    1. Stevie
    2. Adrian 4

      Re: Nice!

      It's a government term. Low in meaning and popular in politicians speeches, training course titles, cheap qualifications. I'm told it's better known in mainland europe but in UK it's mainly used by outsiders.

      Because it's used by people who don't know what they're talking about, it's hard to define whether it's the same as we think of 'IT' or computer engineering, but they think it represents similar topics.

      FWIW, as an old fart from an engineering tradition, I don't have much use for 'IT' either. It doesn't, to me, mean CS or electronics or programming. It evokes images of low-paid data-entry clerks or their modern equivalent, corporate powerpoint drones. So not much different to ICT really. Perhaps some readers have a different concept of it, or a different word for the 'interesting' bits. I'd welcome opinions. I always assumed el reg used the term cynically.

      For more amusing answers - is there a (ready-made) version of LMGTFY for Urban Dictionary ?

  19. CheesyTheClown

    Apprenticeships are ruining corporate IT

    If you think a 18-19 year old is talented and smart enough to work for you... pay him/her to go to the university.

    The only reason that apprentice is sitting in front of you is that he/she knew they could skip getting a real education and take a shortcut to money and freedom. Pay them more than they would have made as an apprentice to study at a proper school. Either a real university (preferred if they have true potential) or at an ICT school.

    There is a 99% chance you'll lose them. Because once they grow up a little and start actually learning, they'll realize they don't want to be a loser IT guy.

    On the other hand... make them work for you over the summer and possibly an extra semester at some point. They'll be worth far more to you than they would have been as an apprentice.

    If they aren't interested in going to further education, it means they lack commitment to themselves and their future. It means they want an easy way out.

    IT is and always has been a bad idea. It was a replacement for using skilled and educated IS professionals. IT people click things together like Legos and always need more bricks. IS professionals design systems that once they work can continue working for decades to come.

    You simply DO NOT WANT TO HIRE IT PEOPLE. If you need someone to work on your systems, hire educated Information Systems people. They take longer to get things done, but that's because they'll solve the problems instead of the symptoms.

    1. Adrian 4

      Re: Apprenticeships are ruining corporate IT

      Or maybe corporate IT is ruining apprenticeships.

  20. SeanC4S

    IT is cheap and easy science/technology. You can get a second hand PC for $100 and compared to other applied science areas there is no art to the matter. Ie. You don't even need to know how to solder or heat a test tube. It's not surprising the international hordes have descended on it as a means of earning an income.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      It is true that the "entry barrier" is low, and that's what lead to many IT issues.

      But as soon as you try to create something not basic, knowledge, skills, and even "art" matters.

      Just managers also believe that "IT is easy", with the corollary "IT workers must be cheap". The results are well known.

  21. John Styles

    It's the Long Island ICT that drives you to drink.

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    With such a sexy acronym...

    Young people have no future in technology. As we approach the zenith of Moore's Law in hardware, we approach something similar in software and the "systems" that combine to support technology and digital communications.

    Look to physics, medicine, theoretical mathematics, biophysics, and even psychology for the breakthroughs that will alter the future of IT. By the time these ideas reach the ICT crowd, they'll be old, known, and largely stagnant.

    Why would I want a part in an old play? Why would I want to be an afterthought before I ever become a thought?

    If you want a real place in technology, start from a position of authority in the future of it. Start in physics, mathematics, engineering, medicine, chemistry, statistics, and business. Then tell the IT servants how to follow.

    We've largely figured out how to handle the help desk with bots, FAQs, and thick foreign accents with dubious names like "Brian." Leave it to government to promote a costly, redundant anti-solution.

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