apprenticeship refers to the period of service as a learner of a trade or handicraft. The apprentice, usually a boy at the beginning of his working life, is bound by a legal agreement to serve an employer for a fixed number of years in which the employer is reciprocally bound to instruct him. The system developed during the Middle Ages when guilds of craftsmen in particular trades, such as silversmiths and shoemakers, established control of their trades by regulating the number of recruits and their training. Contracts, or indentures, were enforced strictly and governed the premium to be paid for learning, the length of the training (usually seven years), and, in some cases, where apprentices lived. The statute of Artificers of 1563 gave magistrates power to compel compliance with apprenticeships. At the end of their apprenticeships trainees became journeymen, fully skilled tradesmen. If they could afford to set up in business they became masters in their own right. Apprenticeships were criticized as a system by which employers were enabled to pay low wages to a person whose skills might have been acquired in a relatively short time. Over time the power of many trade guilds declined and there were changes in the apprenticeship contracts. Amongst the more important was a reduction in the length of time to be served.

Apprenticeship in a wide variety of traditional skilled work continued into the second half of the 20th cent. However, challenges to such ‘training on the job’ combined with expanding provision of formal technical education led to a decline in traditional apprenticeship and the growth of full-and part-time education as a means of entry into skilled work.

Ian John Ernest Keil