National Apprenticeship Week 2018…
No matter where you were across the country, between the 5 and 9 March, or how many times you checked social media, or heard what stakeholders were saying, or met contacts and friends working with employers or training providers, or read an article from an MP, you most certainly were aware of the huge momentum and profile that was National Apprenticeship Week 2018. Here is a selection of just some of the many highlights…
- There were over 780 events across the country celebrating the success of apprenticeships with employers and young people. This figure beats the totals in the last 2 years. Our dedicated events map was also viewed 24,355 times.
- On Twitter on Monday, #NAW2018 was trending in first place in the UK – higher than the mentions of the Oscars. This is first time we have made in to first place over the 11 years of NAW and we were still trending in this position at the end of the working day with 11.4k tweets.
- The NAW 2018 launch tweet had a potential reach of 5,969,334 with 1,379 retweets and 1,335 likes. And overall, for the tweets sent from @Apprenticeships, the potential reach was almost 18 million, a staggering 17,778,956 people.
- On the first day of NAW, our Twitter account gained 600 new followers which is a remarkable achievement and for the whole of NAW this total was 1,352 taking us up to almost 61,000 followers.
- There was coverage on Talk Radio, the BBC, in print in the Metro, the Daily Mail, the i, the Daily Mirror, online in the Evening Standard, The Guardian and Cosmopolitan – just some of the almost 1,800 features and articles that appeared last week.
- The GOV.UK NAW page received 43,149 unique visitors and an amazing 55,761 views, which has also resulted in an uplift in all our apprenticeship content on GOV.UK.
- We also had cross government party support for NAW with almost 80 MPs supporting the week by taking part in a poster pic campaign to help us spread the word about apprenticeships.
- New for this year, our online stakeholder portal www.naw2018.co.uk was a big hit with our partners and supporters with 14,547 unique visitors and 41,716 page views.
- We had an initiative called 10kTalks – we wanted employers and apprentices to talk to 10,000 people about apprenticeships in the week. With the help of over 60 Young Ambassadors, and with the involvement of over 300 schools, we absolutely smashed the target and connected with 33,500 people.
- The Big Assembly, which was led by our East Midlands Ambassadors, took place on Thursday, reached an additional 20,000 people with a live video stream – showcasing apprentices and employers telling their unique apprenticeship stories.
- The reaction on social media channels was unbelievable. An avalanche of pictures of proud employers, hugely excitable apprentices beaming with delight at their accomplishments…everyone standing up together to shout out the theme of the week – ‘Apprenticeships Work’.
The Class of 2018
Our Ambassadors in London, East of England, South East, Yorkshire and Humber and the South West hosted 6 graduation ceremonies on the final day of NAW. The ‘Class of 2018’ ceremonies involved 250 apprentices from various sectors and apprenticeships who had completed their apprenticeships in the last 12 months. Below is a selection of photographs from the amazing ceremonies, for all the photographs, please click here