Milburn calls for pre-apprenticeship scheme to tackle youth unemployment crisis

Alan Milburn, the former Labour cabinet minister now leading a sweeping review of Britain's youth employment crisis, is about to tell the government something it does not want to hear: the apprenticeship system is broken for the young people who need it most.

His recommendation, set to land in a full report delayed until at least November, calls for a new national pre-apprenticeship programme in England. The scheme would sit between secondary school and a full apprenticeship, offering young people a year of combined English and maths instruction, technical training, and hands-on workplace experience delivered mainly through further education colleges. It is designed for those who lack the qualifications, confidence, or basic workplace habits to step directly into a traditional apprenticeship. The model mirrors a successful one-year pre-vocational pathway in Austria, a country where more than half of upper-secondary students pursue vocational routes and youth unemployment sits far below British levels.

The urgency behind Milburn's proposal is stark. Over the past decade, youth apprenticeship starts have collapsed. Today, only one in five apprenticeships goes to a 16- to 18-year-old. The number of under-19s enrolling on apprenticeships has nearly halved in ten years. Meanwhile, nearly one million young people sit outside education, employment, or training altogether—a figure Prime Minister Andy Burnham has pledged to make a top priority. Currently, as few as 2 percent of people starting apprenticeships were previously in that Neet category, suggesting the system has drifted away from those who need it most.

Milburn's framing of the problem is direct. Young people have been told repeatedly to pursue apprenticeships, he said, but for many there remains a chasm between leaving school and being ready for one. Some need to strengthen their English or maths. Others lack any experience of showing up to a workplace, learning a job, and staying with it. Employers, reasonably, want confidence that a young person can do exactly that. A pre-apprenticeship route would bridge that gap, preparing people for progression into full apprenticeships and, ultimately, work.

The report's timing is delicate. Milburn's full recommendations were originally scheduled for release this week but have been pushed to at least November, after the 28 October budget. Downing Street, sources say, wanted to avoid the report sitting uneasily alongside the budget announcement and other major reviews, including one into disability benefits. The government is also exploring sweeping welfare changes—potentially scrapping a critical disability benefit for under-25s and replacing it with a multibillion-pound work-support package. Such moves carry political risk. Burnham and Chancellor John Healey are keen to address the rising benefits bill, and senior figures including Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden have made both moral and economic arguments for welfare overhaul. But the government is moving cautiously, mindful of the welfare rebellion that forced Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves into a costly U-turn not long ago.

In the meantime, the government has already begun moving on apprenticeships separately. This month it announced a £100 million expansion of local apprenticeship services, delivered by regional mayors over two years, aimed at doubling the number of areas matching young people with local businesses. That programme sits alongside Milburn's broader diagnosis: that Britain's vocational pathway has atrophied compared to countries like the Netherlands and Austria, where young people have clearer routes from school into skilled work. Milburn's pre-apprenticeship scheme is meant to be the missing link—the place where young people can build the foundation, confidence, and habits they need to step into the apprenticeship system and, from there, into stable employment.