As mentioned in various articles, skilling is key to enhancing employability. An important instrument to favour youth employability are apprenticeships: “Quality apprenticeships offer a variety of benefits to different stakeholders, particularly to apprentices, enterprises and government. These include:

• facilitating transitions to employment
• matching skills supply with fast-changing labour market needs
• increasing productivity and promoting sustainable enterprises
• offering a cost-effective form of VET delivery”.

An emerging trend in many sectors that are experiencing growth in the post-Covid-19 era is the lack of readily available skills to address the surge in demand. In many sector, this growth is projected as medium to long-term need. Coupled with the lack of trained staff, is a general shift in education which is being observed in many sectors and regions. There is a move away from formal education to an approach that encompasses a  broader perspective that addresses both hard, technical skills as well as the transversal soft skills that people need in an evolving workforce. Such a shift presents an opportunity to address the quality delivery of education. Importantly, this approach repositions the focus on apprenticeships as a key mechanism to address the needs for reskilling, upskilling and providing new skills opportunities for emerging jobs, trends and sectors such as in green skills, the technology industry, healthcare amongst others.

One common factor to Covid-19 impact on the labour market is the high levels of youth unemployment that is being experienced- it is clear that new learning opportunities must be created and apprenticeships offer one of the most viable pathways for meaningful learning to earnings.

Studies from the UK show a range of long and short-term benefits to employers, including:

• The apprentice’s contribution to production is large enough to offset most costs to firms.
• By retaining most apprentices, firms benefit substantially from low recruitment and training costs.
• Knowing that all trained apprentices have mastered a common set of skills is valuable to firms.
• Apprenticeship training enhances subsequent innovation within the training firm.
• Treating apprenticeship expenses as capital investments would improve measured gains

To contribute to shaping agile and responsive workforce development using work-based learning as a key driver, the Global Apprenticeship Network (GAN), that is a global, business-driven alliance of private sector companies, employers’ organisations, international organisations and thought leaders, was established in 2013.

In 2021, the Skills and Employability Branch of the ILO Office released a third tool to support policy makers, social partners and other stakeholders at the national level in designing, implementing, and evaluating apprenticeships programmes.  

This Evaluation tool follows the two-volume ILO Toolkit for Quality Apprenticeships (2017 and 2020), that aimed at presenting practical guidance on how to build apprenticeships systems.

Apprenticeships are in place in many countries of the world, but many lacks a system of evaluation, and therefore do not properly assess their impact and efficiency. Evaluation is essential to address any gaps in relevance and effectiveness of apprenticeships systems.

That is the reason why the Skills and Employability Branch of the ILO Office developed an “evaluation tool for a country’s apprenticeship policy and system, based on the common principles set out in the ILO Toolkit for Quality Apprenticeships”. The ILO Office Evaluation Tool comprises guidelines, questionnaires, a weekly action plan, a framework for an analysis of the performance of a country’s apprenticeship policy and system, which can then be benchmarked against international good practices. Questionnaires are tailor made for policy makers, social partners and apprenticeships graduates.

The questionnaires for policy makers and social partners were peer-reviewed by the GAN and other partners and got then tested by representatives from 20 countries (Albania, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Malawi, Myanmar, Namibia, Philippines, Romania, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Thailand, Uganda, Viet Nam and Zambia).

Such a tool constitutes the basis for improvement and reform of the apprenticeships policies and systems.