"My parents are chuffed to bits" The Young Apprenticeships Programme gives 14 and 15 year olds the chance to experience Work Based Learning while continuing with their studies at school. Two talented young apprentices, Ryan Henderson and James Younas, explain what the programme has done for them. Ryan Henderson is obsessed with engines. His life-long ambition is to work as an engineer and he likes nothing better than taking machines to bits and putting them back together again. That’s why Ryan leapt at the chance to become one of the first cohort of teenagers to join the Young Apprenticeships Programme when it launched in September 2004. Together with 13 fellow pupils (all boys) from his year at St Thomas More Catholic School in Blaydon-on-Tyne, Tyne and Wear, Ryan spends half a day a week at South Tyneside College doing a Young Apprenticeship in engineering. After taking his GCSEs and GNVQ engineering next summer, he hopes to progress to an Apprenticeship. "My parents are chuffed to bits that I’m doing this," says Ryan, 15, who lives in Gateshead. "My dad was an engineering apprentice at the Northern Bus Company and he thinks it’s great that I’m starting to get my skills earlier. "Doing a Young Apprenticeship has given me something to work towards. I want to work with my hands and not be stuck behind a desk all day. The afternoons at college are brilliant and I feel I’ve really got something to show at the end of it. The thing I’m most proud of making is a barbecue. We used it at my sister Ellen’s Holy Communion party and it was champion." Like Ryan, 15-year-old James Younas began his Young Apprenticeship in engineering a year ago and will complete it next summer. He’s now a Year 11 pupil at Longbenton Community College in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and spends four hours at Tyne Metropolitan College every week. "I knew it was for me as soon as I got there," says James, who’s also studying for his GCSEs, including an engineering dual award, and hopes to embark on an Apprenticeship at 16 or 18. "At school we had only done Design Technology with a chisel and a block of wood but at college we use advanced machinery. This summer I did two weeks work experience at Siemens and it was fantastic. I thought engineering was all about getting your hands dirty and doing the same thing every day but now I’ve realised it isn’t. I’d like to be the manager of a company one day." Gareth Pritchard, Schools Project Manager for training provider Training and Development Resource is impressed by the boys’ commitment and hard work. “They are progressing really well," he says. "They both made major contributions in their presentations to senior staff in their work placement companies. At MKW Ryan worked in a team of four designing and making a car boot tidy, while Siemens said James was very keen to learn and showed an excellent attitude."