Standard's Ladder for London campaign inspires nationwide apprenticeships scheme

On the up: Kevin Davis, Robert Halfon and Eddie Stride at the launch of the new Ladder scheme in the House of Commons
Lucy Young

Award-winning Evening Standard campaign Ladder for London, which ­created more than 1,500 apprenticeships, has inspired an initiative that is to go nationwide.

Ladder for England was launched yesterday in the House of Commons by Robert Halfon MP, chairman of the Education Select Committee.

It will be run by the Ladder Apprenticeship Foundation with the aim of fostering apprenticeship campaigns in regional newspapers to inspire the creation of 10,000 new jobs and address issues of social mobility.

The nationwide Ladder will be jointly led by Kevin Davis, CEO of The Vine Trust Walsall, and Eddie Stride, CEO of TransformUK.

Mr Stride said: “Ladder for England is inspired by the Standard’s 2012 campaign. Having more newspapers like the Evening Standard will help bring about the transformation needed for young unemployed people at this time.”

The start of our pioneering campaign in 2012 (Evening Standard )
Evening Standard

The Standard’s initiative involved more than 400 London enterprises, including top City firms such as Goldman Sachs, who had never taken apprentices before.

We initially partnered with apprentice trainer City Gateway, then headed by Mr Stride, and later expanded our campaign to include Peabody and a consortium of London colleges headed by Hackney College.

The Duke of York became its patron, calling it “an invaluable initiative that had caught the capital’s imagination”, and he has been part of the impetus to take the scheme countrywide.

Ladder for London was also used as the blueprint for the creation of similar “Ladder for” initiatives in Staffordshire, Shropshire and the Midlands. Almost 85 per cent of the apprenticeships we created were for white-collar jobs, while the rest were in the construction sector.

The scheme helped to transform the lives of young people in the face of what was then a 25 per cent youth jobless rate, the highest in a generation. Many of the firms we supplied, such as Standard Chartered and PricewaterhouseCoopers, decided to go in for more apprentices the following year.

Mr Halfon said: “I am delighted that the Ladder initiative is continuing to expand across our county. This will give thousands more apprentices the chance to climb the ladder of opportunity to gain the skills and training they need to get jobs, security and prosperity for their futures.”

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