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‘Degree apprenticeships: training and retaining talent in the West of England’
For years, the idea of getting a degree has been associated with moving away from home, studying, getting a job and, often, not moving back. But degree apprenticeships have changed the blueprint for how people can study, work and live at home while doing so. This means talent that is trained in the west of England stays here.
Degree apprenticeships offer accessible, high-quality routes into education and employment, enabling people to earn a salary, learn and progress their career on their own terms. At the same time, they help employers develop future-focused skills that directly address the changing landscape of their industry.
Our role at UWE Bristol is to understand the needs of employers, working with them to co-develop programmes that put apprentices at the forefront of new skills and attributes that will make up the future workforce.
We do this with the likes of Rolls-Royce, Babcock, Bristol City Council, YTL and North Bristol NHS Trust currently, to name a few. This is playing a vital role in aligning education with the local economy.
Simon Flenley, assistant director of research & external engagement at UWE Bristol, discusses how degree apprenticeships are helping to retain talent in the region, supporting the west of England’s growth ambitions – photo: UWE Bristol
One of our most successful employer partnerships is with Avon & Somerset Police which, since 2019, has welcomed more than 1,200 student officers onto programmes such as the Police Constable Degree Apprenticeship.
Throughout this partnership, we’ve worked reactively and responsively with Avon & Somerset Police to ensure the programme material is constantly updated to reflect legislative and policy changes, aligning with the optimised College of Policing curriculum and supporting frontline resource needs.
This could even happen mid-programme and reinforces our approach to degree apprenticeships – ensuring they are authentic to the employer. This means that police constables trained in the west of England are being taught content that directly reflects the most up-to-date regional and national policing priorities.
With employers so central to curriculum design, it creates programmes that are truly reflective of our local economy and the needs of local employers, giving credibility to industry-led degrees. We’ve found that the strength of our partnerships with employers comes from their investment in the programme, shaped in the long run to benefit local learners and our regional economy.
By working closely with employers, degree apprenticeships are shaped around the communities we serve. But while our communities may be diverse, we know that often workforces aren’t. Degree apprenticeships help to recruit across the breadth of our local community, but more work needs to be done to train and retain talent in sectors with significant diversity gaps.
2025/26 cohort of Women Like Me – photo: Laura Fogg-Rogers
Engineering is an industry with consistent gaps in representation, and latest figures show that only 16.9 per cent of engineering professionals in the UK are women, compared to 56 per cent of other occupations. While this is a national snapshot, it suggests there will be similar trends regionally too.
To focus on both recruitment and retention, UWE Bristol’s Women Like Me programme, led by Dr Laura Fogg-Rogers, offers peer mentoring to our degree apprentices across STEM subjects.
Pairing senior female engineers in Bristol and Bath with UWE Bristol degree apprentices, Women Like Me is fostering mentoring relationships and providing a support system to female apprentices in an underrepresented industry. Not only does this help retain skilled workers, it also develops a workforce that better reflects the talent in our communities, in a sector that underpins the industrial strategy.
Ultimately, degree apprenticeships offer the opportunity to learn and earn at the same time. They create a talent pipeline for the region that can grow within the region. Addressing the needs of industry, degree apprenticeships play a vital role in retaining talent and supporting the west of England to achieve its growth ambitions.
“Our role at UWE Bristol is to understand the needs of employers, working with them to co-develop programmes that put apprentices at the forefront of new skills and attributes that will make up the future workforce,” said Flenley – photo: Milan Perera
This is an opinion piece by Simon Flenley, assistant director of research & external engagement at UWE Bristol.
During National Apprenticeships Week (February 9 to 15), Simon discusses how degree apprenticeships are helping to retain talent in the region, supporting the west of England’s growth ambitions.
Main photo: UWE Bristol
UWE Bristol is a member of the Bristol24/7 Better Business network, an initiative to help businesses thrive while creating a positive impact on Bristol and the people who live here. As part of their membership, businesses can publish member news stories like this. For more information, visit my.bristol247.com/better-business
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