Cutting management apprenticeships would set young people up to fail at work

By Professor Malcolm Press CBE, Vice-Chancellor Manchester Metropolitan University and Ann Francke OBE, Chief Executive of the Chartered Management Institute, the UK’s professional body for managers and leaders.

There is a growing sense, shared quietly by employers, universities and apprentices themselves, that something valuable is starting to slip through the cracks of the skills system.

Amid much speculation, it would seem that the direction of travel is becoming harder to ignore. As Vice-Chancellor of Manchester Metropolitan University and CEO of the Chartered Management Institute, we are deeply concerned that management and leadership apprenticeships are under threat as funding tightens and priorities narrow.

Streamlining concerns

There is much talk about simplification, streamlining standards and shorter, more flexible provision. In a recent interview, the former Labour Cabinet minister Alan Milburn, who is leading a review into the rise in young people who are Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET), argued that the apprenticeship system has “drifted off course”. He described it as “crazy” that a significant number of apprenticeships are now taken up by people over the age of 40.

Worried that, as one business leader in Staffordshire described it, talk of ‘streamlining’ very quickly starts to sound a lot like ‘rationing’, employers, apprentices and higher education institutions have responded.

They are backing a petition that warns against reforms that would sever the vital pipeline that trains the UK’s future managers.

With more than 4,500 signatures from across the UK economy, voices from household names such as the Co-op Group, Capita, Ocado and TSB have joined hundreds of public sector and NHS workers, small business owners and charity leaders in calling for this route to be preserved.

Why management matters

At its heart, this is not about who gets to do an apprenticeship. It is about what happens if management apprenticeships are ‘streamlined’ out of existence. Who is then trained to support those unemployed young people as they take those first tentative steps into employment?

Many NEETs face complex health and social challenges and moving them off benefits and into work will not be simply a matter of handing them a job and telling them to show up each day.

Keeping them there, keeping them motivated and helping them to see a future career path will all take skills – management skills.

One third of workers have left a job because of a bad manager – and that’s without the myriad complexities faced by today’s NEET cohort.

Ella Gladwin shows what that difference looks like in practice. A Chartered Manager Degree Apprentice at Manchester Metropolitan University, she chose not to follow a traditional degree and did not want to learn leadership in the abstract.

Through her management apprenticeship, she has taken on real responsibility in the HVAC sector, contributed to business strategy, and built the confidence to lead in a male-dominated industry. She now mentors other young women entering the sector, not as a future leader, but as one already.

Her story reflects something bigger. Chartered Management Institute (CMI) research found that 71% of management apprentices come from families where neither parent went to university, and 59 per cent are women. Additionally, data shows that a significant number of management apprentices are under 25 – in 2024/25 this age group accounted for 38% of new starters in the Business Administration and Law sector alone.

A critical skills pipeline

These are not elite qualifications for already-advantaged professionals. They are one of the few remaining routes that allow people to progress into leadership through work, often later in life, without taking on debt.

Universities like Manchester Metropolitan have built programmes that are tightly aligned to employer need, rooted in real jobs, and open to learners who traditional routes have consistently failed to reach.

Management apprenticeships account for only around 8% of all apprenticeship starts in England, despite the fact that almost a quarter of the UK workforce has management responsibility. They account for less than 6% of the apprenticeship budget.

Consider in that context that most UK managers receive no formal training at all – CMI data shows that 82% get promoted having had no management training – creating a nation of ‘accidental managers’. Most of us will recognise the pattern, people promoted because they were good at their job, not because they were trained to lead others.

This is reflected in the UK economy’s bottom line – our productivity problem is not just about technology or capital. For two decades, research by economists like Nicholas Bloom and John Van Reenen at the LSE has shown that management capability is the missing ingredient.

Studying thousands of firms across 35 countries, they consistently find that better-managed organisations deliver higher output, stronger profitability and faster growth, regardless of sector or technology. John Van Reenen, who until recently chaired the Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ board of economic advisers, has seen first-hand how central management quality is to sustainable growth.

None of this is an argument against supporting young people. We strongly support the Youth Guarantee and the urgent need to reduce inactivity. But those ambitions depend on skilled line managers who can recruit, retain and develop young people once they arrive. Entry routes matter, but progression and management matter too.

As reforms to the apprenticeship system continue, ministers including Pat McFadden face a choice about the kind of skills system the UK truly needs. One that prizes speed over substance – the very problem that the levy on employers to fund apprenticeships was meant to solve. Or one that is rooted in what employers need – one that wisely recognises that opportunity does not end at the age of 24.