This National Apprenticeship Week, an early-career teacher who took the postgraduate route and their mentor explain why more schools should consider apprenticeships. When it comes to improving educational outcomes for disadvantaged children, continuity matters. For pupils who experience exclusion, instability, or long stretches of disrupted learning, trust is hard-won, routines are fragile, and progress can evaporate if familiar adults move on. For teacher trainees in settings where pupils need support with their social, emotional, and mental health (SEMH), the most appropriate path to becoming a high-quality teacher is often one that allows them to stay with the pupils they have come to know. That is why the postgraduate teacher apprenticeship (PGTA) is so valuable in specialist settings like ours at EdStart, where relationships underpin everything. Being able to employ unqualified teachers, support staff and teaching assistants and help them qualify as teachers has been transformative for our schools. Edstart supports pupils with complex social, emotional and mental health needs across a network of centres in the north west. Behaviour can be volatile, so positive learning …