Apprenticeships you can start at 16 (and at 18)

Good news first: apprenticeships are open from 16, which makes them one of the few genuine full-time routes available the moment you can legally leave school. You do not have to wait.

One thing to be straight about though. FIRSTJOBZ lists roles for over-18s, so if you're 16 or 17 the vacancies here aren't yours yet. Treat this page as the map instead: where to look right now, what changes at 18 and how to arrive on your eighteenth birthday with more behind you than most people your age.

At 16 and 17: where the apprenticeships actually are

They exist in decent numbers. They're just found in different places from the ones on a jobs board.

Your school or college careers team. Genuinely the most underused resource in the country. They hold relationships with local employers who take one apprentice a year and never advertise anywhere public. Ask directly rather than waiting to be offered.

Training providers and further education colleges. Providers recruit apprentices on behalf of employers, so their vacancy lists often carry roles that never appear elsewhere. Ring the nearest one and ask which employers they place with. It's an unglamorous twenty minutes that occasionally hands you a list nobody else has.

The government's own apprenticeship service. The national listing, free to search, no account needed to look.

Walking in. Small firms, especially trades, still hire this way. A tidy CV handed over in person at a quiet time of day works more often than people expect. It doesn't always land. It costs nothing when it doesn't.

There's a rule worth knowing while you're 16 or 17. In England you have to stay in some form of education or training until you're 18. An apprenticeship counts, which is exactly why it works as a full-time route at this age rather than being a way of dropping out early. You're employed and studying at the same time, which satisfies both.

On hours: once you're past school leaving age you can work up to a maximum of 40 hours a week. There are also protections around breaks and working late that apply while you're under 18. Employers who take on young apprentices deal with this constantly and will build your rota around it. It's worth knowing your rota should look different from an adult colleague's, so you can spot it if it doesn't.

What changes at 18

Your eighteenth birthday shifts several things at once.

The hours protections fall away. You gain full adult employment rights, which cuts both ways: more flexibility, fewer guardrails. Night shifts, longer days and rotas that were previously off the table all open up.

Restricted work opens up. Depending on the trade this can mean particular machinery, certain vehicles, serving alcohol, some care settings and roles needing specific licensing. Whole categories of apprenticeship that were closed suddenly aren't.

Your pay band moves. The apprentice rate still applies while you're under 19, or while you're in the first year of your apprenticeship. Once you're 19 or over and past that first year you move onto the age band, which from 18 to 20 is £10.85 an hour. Our pay guide explains the rule properly, because it's the thing most people get wrong.

And FIRSTJOBZ becomes yours. The board lists apprenticeships from employers across the UK, refreshed around the clock. On your eighteenth birthday it stops being a place you read and becomes a place you use.

Arriving at 18 ready

The two build-up years are worth using rather than waiting through. Here's what actually compounds.

Get any paid work and keep it. Eleven months in one Saturday job beats four months across three. Employers reading an application care far more about the length than the glamour. A garden centre, a chippy, a warehouse over Christmas: all of it counts as proof you turn up.

Collect references as you go. A manager who watched you work for a year is worth more than any personal statement. Ask before you leave a job rather than a year later when they've forgotten you.

Pick up anything certificated. First aid, food hygiene, a driving theory pass, a CSCS card if the trade is construction. Each one is small, portable and yours. They also give an application something concrete to point at.

Fix your maths if it needs fixing. Plenty of apprenticeships assess it, particularly in engineering, construction and finance. Two years is an enormous amount of time to quietly get better at percentages.

Work out what you actually want. Two years is long enough to try things, talk to people doing the job and rule some things out. Turning up at 18 knowing which trade you want puts you ahead of people with better grades and no direction.

None of that requires permission from anyone. It's all available to you now. It is also the difference between arriving at 18 with a blank page or with a story.

If sixth form or college is the plan anyway

Plenty of 16 year olds aren't ready to commit to a trade, which is a perfectly reasonable position rather than a failure of nerve. Two years of A levels or a college course keeps options open. An apprenticeship at 18 with qualifications behind you is a stronger position than one at 16 without them. Higher and degree apprenticeships in particular often want that level of study first.

The trap is treating those two years as a waiting room. The people who move fastest at 18 are the ones who studied and worked a few hours a week and asked questions of people already doing the job. The study is the visible part. The rest is what separates two applicants with identical grades.

It also helps to know that starting later costs you very little here. Apprenticeships have no upper age limit, so nobody is going to look at an eighteen or nineteen year old applicant and think they've left it late. The idea that this route is only for people who leave at 16 is simply wrong. It puts off a lot of people who would do well at it.

Start where the door is already open. At 16 and 17 that means your college, a training provider, the national service or a walk in with a printed CV, none of which need you to be older than you are. Meanwhile build the boring things that compound: one job held for a while, a reference, a certificate, a clearer idea of what you want. Then, from 18, browse live apprenticeship jobs here with two years of evidence behind you. If you want to know what employers screen for before then, our no experience guide is the one to read next.