In this chapter we want to share our formative ideas about the relationship between apprenticeship and a four-dimensional concept of community. In doing so, we will explore the extent to which community is still relevant to contemporary forms of apprenticeship, most notably the Modern Apprenticeship in the UK. We will argue that, given the increasingly fractured nature of social and occupational relationships, it is necessary to intervene and actively reconstruct some semblance of those communal experiences from which apprentices benefited in the past. The attempt to construct and implement a modern model of apprenticeship under contemporary economic, social and cultural conditions presents, we believe, a considerable challenge for policy-makers, employers and vocational education and training (VET) practitioners. This chapter is written in the light of data published by the Department for Education and Employment in the UK which shows that significant numbers of young people are leaving the Modern Apprenticeship before completing the programme (see DfEE, 1998a), and against a background of continued concern that too many UK employers are unwilling to make a substantial investment in improving the skills of their workforces (see Keep and Mayhew, 1995, 1996). We will discuss some of the ways in which both early leaver rates and employer ambivalence mean there is a strong case for intervention in the Modern Apprenticeship to build substantial learning and support infrastructures which recreate the positive aspects of past communal structures. é Patrick Ainley, Helen Rainbird and named contributors, 1999.
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