News story: National Apprenticeship Week 2017 – as it happens

Monday, 6 March

National Apprenticeship Week launched today with Secretary of State for Education, Rt Hon Justine Greening MP addressing an audience of almost 100 apprentices and employers attending at Barclays at Canary Wharf.

Two inspirational apprentices from Barclays gave an account of their apprenticeship journey, alongside Lucy Wilkins – a 10 year on case study from Somerset County Council and Chris Achiampong from IBM (and star of the Get In Go Far campaign).

National Apprenticeship Week 2017 launch event at Barclays HQ, Canary Wharf, London.

There was also a BBC You’re Hired event at BBC Broadcasting House to discuss apprenticeships in the creative industries and what needs to be done to create more opportunities. Hosted by BBC News’ Reeta Chakrabarti, guest speakers highlighted how important apprenticeships are for business and how, certainly in the creative industries, they need to be made more inclusive to attract candidates of all backgrounds.

BBC You’re Hired event

Royal Mail is supporting the week with a special postmark, which will be applied to millions of items of UK stamped mail nationwide. The postmark will appear on stamped mail between Monday 6 and Friday 10 March.

Our hashtag #NAW2017 was also trending on Twitter today.

Get involved

Full details of the events happening across England can be found on the events map.

Events and activities for the week will be shared on Twitter and LinkedIn over the week, and event images will also be made available on Flickr.