Someone you care about is weighing up an apprenticeship, and you want to know it is a proper opportunity rather than cheap labour with a certificate stapled on. Sensible question. This page answers it the way we would want it answered about our own kids.
An employment contract from day one, wages every month, 5.6 weeks of paid holiday and the same workplace rights as anyone else. The training costs them nothing, and charging them is against the funding rules.
At least six hours of every working week belong to training, on full pay, agreed in writing before they start. A named mentor at work and a TLC assessor watch over their progress the whole way.
They finish with a nationally recognised qualification plus something a classroom cannot give: a track record. Most programmes run twelve to eighteen months, and each level opens the next.
Safeguarding at TLC starts before enrolment and runs through every review. Our staff are vetted and trained, there is a named safeguarding lead you can contact directly, and concerns get a response within one working day. Under-18s get particular attention, and that includes watching how the workplace treats them. The full picture, including out-of-hours contacts, lives on our safeguarding page.
Different rather than lesser, and for hands-on learners often far better. They earn while they learn, the skills get used the same week they are taught, and levels stack from GCSE-equivalent up to degree height. The honest trade-offs: less subject breadth than A levels and no student social scene. We keep a genuinely impartial comparison of all the routes, including full-time study, on our other routes page, because the right answer depends on the young person, not on us.
Under-19s continue studying maths and English as part of the apprenticeship, taught through the job itself rather than worksheets. Dyslexia, dyscalculia and exam anxiety all have real support behind them, including adjustments in the final assessment. The details are on our maths and English page, which was written to lower blood pressure rather than raise it.
Regular reviews exist to catch problems while they are small, and most get fixed with a change of pace or support. If the programme is genuinely wrong for them, they can withdraw, and we help them do it well. Nobody gets trapped, and nobody gets billed on the way out.
Send them to our Deciding for yourself page, then talk it through together. The ten minute readiness check gives them a personal report worth reading side by side. And the decision should end up theirs. Apprentices who chose the route themselves finish it at far higher rates than those who were steered.
You are not handing them over. You are gaining a mentor, an assessor and a safeguarding lead who all want the same thing you do.
What changes for you
Parents and carers email us all the time, before and during. Ask anything, including the awkward ones.
