Black and Ethnic Minority Apprenticeship Experiences

SummitSkills, the sector skills council for building and engineering, has identified in its Action Plan the need for more research to help them in their efforts to increase the diversity of the workforce in the building services engineering sector. An acknowledged challenge for the sector is to increase the numbers of young people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds entering apprenticeships. Little research has focussed on the experiences of apprentices from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, and so IES has been commissioned to undertake qualitative research with young people who successfully passed skills tests in the early summer, and who have either been successful or unsuccessful in gaining employment as apprentices over the summer.