Last week I had been mainly thinking about apprenticeships – and not just because of an amazing and inspiring evening at the National Apprenticeships Awards. The evening was a showcase of what is the best in apprenticeships and the young people were a tribute to their employers, trainers and tutors. However, to maintain this high quality, there needs to be solid data on pay, length of training, information on off-the-job study and statistics on gender and BME participation. Unfortunately this information is hard to come by. That is why we commissioned Incomes Data Services to undertake a survey and we published the results last Friday (July 1).