This year, the group placed 158 women in building trades apprenticeships, compared with 139 in 2006 and fewer than 50 in 2000.
Typically, providers would persuade employers that there would be no additional cost of participating in apprenticeships compared with existing training, but there were additional benefits from making the switch (e.g. in improving staff recruitment and retention).
Men dominate in higher paid fields and vice versa: in 2013, nearly 13,000 men started engineering apprenticeships while only 400 women did, while just over 24,000 women took up children's care apprenticeships compared to just under 1,800 men.
Thus small internationalized firms with a high share of employees without a degree at the upper secondary or tertiary level are less likely to provide apprenticeship training compared to otherwise comparable domestic firms.
Trendle (2007) finds similar evidence for non-Aboriginal Australians in Queensland who also have a lower probability of canceling apprenticeship contracts compared to the Aboriginal population.
The wage benefit for a woman who has completed an apprenticeship is 4%, compared with 20% for a man who has done the same training.
The relatively low esteem that apprenticeships were held compared with A-levels was one thing the panellists agreed had remained doggedly consistent.
And the share of black and other ethnic minority youths already employed who enter apprenticeships is 32%, compared with 44% for white youths.
Around two thirds of 15- to 19-year-olds do apprenticeships in Switzerland, compared with just 6% of 16- to 18-year-olds in England – although here, rising tuition fees, due to go up to £9,000 a year, and the subsequent drop in university applications, could change this.
