Following Tom Bewick’s involvement in the inaugural conference of Apprenticeships for America, in Washington D.C. (March 12th-13th, 2024), here he outlines how the planned expansion of registered apprenticeship in the USA could more fully open the door to independent training providers and universities from the UK, who may themselves spot a business opportunity to get involved.Winston Churchill, a staunch Anglo-American, once observed: “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – once they have tried everything else.”After decades of being an international outlier in the registration and delivery of formal apprenticeships, this position may be about to change. Two potentially game changing initiatives have recently placed the federal government’s policy trajectory on course for an apprenticeship system much closer in design and ambition to world-class models found in Europe and Australia.Crucially, there is a renewed opportunity for UK-based providers of apprenticeship training and end-point bodies to support the expansion effort; by either forming their own ‘intermediary organisations’ across the pond; or by partnering with existing US firms that place registered apprentices with employers. This includes providing support to the emerging ecosystem of apprenticeship providers, with marketable products such as competency-based assessment plans, industry-backed credentials, virtual bureaucracy busting platforms; technical assistance and programme delivery expertise.In a sign of how organised the American apprenticeship community is getting, the non-profit, Apprenticeships for America (AFA), has been formed in the last year or so to be a strong advocate for the entire skills ecosystem of intermediary organisations – terminology in the UK context that means independent training providers (ITPs), FE colleges and universities that deliver degree apprenticeships.ITPs as intermediaries in the US context. The term intermediary is popular in the US because it has become shorthand for the fact that in order to expand the registered apprenticeship model, it is not always possible to assume that employers will simultaneously spring into action – i.e. recruiting apprentices and training them without some kind of intermediate support.To put the current registered apprenticeship model into some perspective: the US labour market is made up of 132 million full-time employees, more than four times the size of the British workforce of 31.7 million. Yet, when it comes to the penetration of apprenticeship numbers, the UK trains around 2.5% of apprentices as a ratio to its full-time workforce, compared to just 0.32% undertaking apprenticeship in the US. In other words, the US should be training about 4 million apprentices per annum to match the position in England, compared to only 600,000 American apprentices that currently take advantage of this pathway. US intermediaries carry out a number of functions in the registered apprenticeship model. Some act as sponsors, making it easier for employers to access and register programs with state and federal apprenticeship agencies. In return, these approved sponsors can access grants from the state or directly from various US-DOL grant calls. Other intermediaries are more end-to-end, not only guiding the employer through the whole registered apprenticeship process, but by also delivering the Off-Job-Training (OJT) or Related Training Instruction (RTI), which is broadly equivalent to the 20% off-job support ITPs and colleges must give to apprentices in England. While some grants have helped pay for these elements, acting as an incentive to US firms to get involved, the US-DOL has not yet succeeded in persuading Congress of the need to fully subsidise the OJT/RTI element of the apprenticeship journey, as is routinely the case in the world leading systems of the UK, Australia, Germany and Switzerland.Uncle Sam is thinking big. Despite the relatively low numbers, US policymakers are still thinki...