Youth Apprenticeship Certificate

A scheme which allows children to learn a career rather than simply studying at school. Different Certificates start at different ages, mostly between ten and fourteen, but there are some that can be taken on by children as young as eight. Certificates often don't have a static age of completion, but end when the apprentice demonstrates they understand the career well enough to do it. If they finish before the age of sixteen, they are expected to return to traditional schooling.

A Certificate programme is expected to include practical work or exercises that would require a basic understanding of language, mathematics, and science. There is a Core Curriculum that all children are expected to learn, whether it is through an apprenticeship or in school. Many apprenticeships include the mathematics core, for example, in the form of teaching a child to correctly keep accounts, and geography may come in the guise of calculating shipping rates for customers in other countries. If a career doesn't include anything that would qualify for a given academic subject, the employer can sign their apprentices in to evening classes at a local school, just for those subjects. Apprentices have the choice of taking the normal exams, at the same age as their peers who remained in school. If they do so then the employer will receive a bonus payment based on their grades, administered by the Committee for Joint Education but technically funded by an ancient bequest.