All political parties on prioritise maths, English, apprenticeships and traineeships, but the constant change of tack on how to achieve these aims had left little time to embed anything properly.
But before his Italian apprenticeship, English received a rigorous training in French cuisine at New York's La Côte Basque, the high-society hangout where owner and chef Jean-Jacques Rachou regularly spent thousands of dollars a week on flowers and linens.
The government, in its defence, points to prioritising apprenticeships, and English and maths.
A year-long apprenticeship programme emphasising English and maths leads to a nationally recognised qualification.
Pogba was, indeed, to sever ties with his Italian club and move to the Red Devils, a recently installed manager pinning his hopes on a player forged by English football during a previous apprenticeship in the north-west.
Desperate for a job, Hastings accepted the offer of an apprenticeship with an English engineer who claimed to have made a machine to extract gold in North Wales.
For Curry, the son of a Methodist minister who began his study of the theater at the University of Birmingham, it is all one of those odd turns of fate in a career which he had originally expected would build quite slowly through a long apprenticeship with an English repertory company.
He learned his craft "on the hoof," through apprenticeships at the English National Opera and at Manchester's Royal Exchange.
He was the author of more than 15 books published in English, including an autobiography, "Philosophical Apprenticeships" (1985).
