With application volumes continuing to rise significantly, due to a tough economic environment and job market, along with powerful AI tools in the hands of candidates, employers are exploring multiple ways to respond to ever growing volumes, be that closing for applications early, raising the assessment pass marks, automated screening, to name but a few. 

This session will share how British Airways faced up to this familiar but intensifying challenge with an innovative pilot in 2025, leveraging their long-standing partnership with Connectr Talent Technology, by pioneering an intent-led pre-application journey, to create more informed candidates for one of their apprenticeship programmes. 

This interactive workshop focuses on leveraging unique UCAS data sets and outcomes from the Project Next Generation: a focus on diversity research, to inform workforce planning and apprenticeship strategies. With over 1 million students registering to explore their options, UCAS knows students better than anyone else.

In today’s rapidly evolving labour market, understanding future workforce trends is essential for employers, training providers, and policymakers. UCAS data and research outcomes, capture the intentions, interests, and choices of hundreds of thousands of prospective students, offering a unique lens into emerging talent pipelines and opening doors to the future ready workforce of tomorrow. 

Participants will engage in a small group exercise, reviewing anonymised UCAS data snapshots and discussing their implications for organisational workforce strategies, building skills for young people and growing the UK economy. This exercise provides an opportunity to share insights, foster collaborative learning and cross-sector dialogue.

Concluding with a Q&A and reflection segment, encouraging participants to share ideas and ask questions, followed by a summary of key takeaways. 

Apprentices are entering the workplace at a time of unprecedented pressure: fast-paced organisational expectations, new hybrid working norms, and rising concerns around mental health and resilience. Leaders responsible for apprenticeship programmes are increasingly seeking innovative, safe, and scalable ways to support wellbeing—without adding to their already stretched resources.

This masterclass from early career and wellbeing experts Gen Healthy Minds Ltd, partnering with AI and learning expert Erica Farmer, will explore how artificial intelligence can be used ethically and effectively to enhance apprentice wellbeing, strengthen support frameworks, and empower young talent to thrive at work—not just survive it. Mike Thompson from Gen Healthy Minds will also be joined by Matt Nichols from Hewlett Packard to share the impact of these approaches from the employer perspective.  

Far from replacing human care, AI presents an opportunity to augment the support leaders can offer, enabling more personalised check-ins, early identification of wellbeing challenges, and tailored coaching to help apprentices navigate workload, confidence, and professional growth.

This masterclass will provide not just inspiration, but grounded, evidence-informed methods for integrating AI into wellbeing support—helping you future-proof your apprenticeship programme and create a culture where apprentices feel confident, resilient, and ready to succeed.

The apprenticeship landscape is shifting fast. Gen Z and emerging Gen Alpha cohorts bring new expectations around flexibility, values driven careers, wellbeing, and accessible learning pathways that blend digital, social and real-world experience.

In this high energy Reality Lab, Springpod, alongside a panel of live student ambassadors and early career apprentices will collaborate with employers to reimagine the apprenticeship experience stage by stage. Instead of theorising what young people want, delegates will hear it directly from them and co-create solutions in real time.

Guided by Springpod’s behavioural insights and platform engagement data, the session blends student voice, employer expertise and facilitated interaction to shape actionable recommendations that ISE delegates can implement immediately.

Despite sustained national focus on widening participation, many employers still struggle to translate aspiration into measurable change within apprenticeship recruitment. In sectors with strong cultural identity, public visibility or inherited perceptions, whole groups of young people can self-deselect before selection ever begins. This session explores how psychology, fair assessment and platform innovation can combine to fundamentally change who applies, who progresses and who joins.

This hybrid masterclass + panel session is delivered through a real employer case study partnership between UR Future, and West Midlands Police. Together they will explore how West Midlands Police increased the proportion of Black and minority ethnic new starters from around 10% to 30% through a redesigned attraction, matching and assessment approach. 

In this session we'll also learn about the occupational psychology behind the barriers applicants face, with Ben Williams from Sten10. The session will conclude with a live chaired panel and audience Q&A. 

This session tackles a question that most workforce strategies quietly ignore: what happens to apprenticeships, and to UK growth, when employers run out of young people?

In aircraft engineering the demographic crunch is already visible: a long training runway, an ageing, highly specialised workforce and intense competition for experienced engineers. Together Impellam and Virgin Atlantic will explain Virgin Atlantic has chosen to respond by reshaping its apprenticeship and early careers strategy, including a postgraduate leadership apprenticeship route, rather than chasing the same shrinking pool of talent.

The case study will cover:

• How critical roles in engineering and maintenance were identified and mapped against future demand
• Why apprenticeships and technical pathways were prioritised over further expansion of contractor and graduate routes
• What they learnt about programme design, stakeholder alignment, pastoral support and progression routes for long-term retention.

The second half of the session is an interactive workshop where delegates will work in small groups using a simple diagnostic framework to stress-test one priority function in their own organisation. 
 

This session will pull together all the overlapping layers in apprenticeship reform and help ISE Apprenticeships Conference delegates navigate the challenges and opportunities in this space. There will be further apprenticeships policy experts confirmed for this panel shortly.

This practical and engaging session is built on new national research of 7,500 students across schools, colleges and universities. It explores how shifting student attitudes are quietly rewriting the rules of early careers recruitment and what this means for apprenticeship attraction, assessment and long term return on investment. The session will pay particular focus to mass recruitment in an AI driven application environment, and how employers can preserve authenticity, fairness and quality at scale.

Key takeaways include:

• A realistic view of the current student mindset
• Insight into emerging diversity challenges
• Up to date intelligence on attraction channels
• Practical lessons from an employer
• Guidance for recruiting in an AI driven world
• A practical framework to take away

Ultimately, this session supports employers planning for Apprenticeships 2026 by helping them design recruitment approaches that reflect how young people actually engage today.