Meet 18 year old Joe from Baglan, Port Talbot. He works as a Social Media for Business apprentice at tech company Aspire 2Be.
Joe left school and enrolled straight into college. He was working towards his IT, Computer Science and Music Technology A-Levels for two months before he dropped out.
When Joe started college, we were still in the worst of the pandemic. This made the experience more challenging – it wasn’t what he expected.
“Due to lockdown, the usual college layout had been changed meaning we didn’t get to have the normal experience. We never had proper exams and this was a massive change from comprehensive school. I started to look for other options”
He came across apprenticeships on the Welsh Government website. Whilst he had known about them before, Joe had always thought they were just for the trade areas. He applied for an apprenticeship with Aspire 2Be
“Through my apprenticeship I have learnt lots of new skills: communication, confidence, video prospection, flying drone, pod casts and I work as part of the marketing team. After I complete, I want to stay on and a keep learning. Really, I should have chosen apprenticeships from the start as I prefer hands on work to theory and essays.”
Joe is also now encouraging the apprenticeship route within his friendship group. Work-based learning is becoming more popular with young people who are coming to end of sixth form.
Apprenticeships aren’t just for trade industries. Whilst there are plenty of opportunities in maintenance and construction, this is a common misconception.
We offer a variety of different routes from Social Media, to Business Administration, to Digital Marketing.
