Investment bank Goldman Sachs has announced it will take on 10 apprentices “as soon as possible” as part of newspaper the London Evening Standard’s ‘Ladder for London’ campaign to encourage businesses to take on apprentices. 

And the paper’s editor Sarah Sands commented in yesterday’s edition of the paper (26 September) that it hoped to be able to unveil details of “significant backing from a high street bank” for its campaign.

The apprentices will earn a London living wage of £8.30 an hour for 30 hours’ work a week – equating to £12,950 a year, receiving a day of off-the-job training with campaign partner City Gateway.

Michael Sherwood, Goldman Sachs co-chief executive, described the campaign as “visionary”, and said joining the campaign “feels like the right thing for us, and for the City, to do… As a large firm with significant resources, we believe it is right that we step up and commit to taking apprentices”.

As previously reported by recruiter.co.uk, there already seems to be a large amount of momentum behind apprenticeships, with the number of apprenticeship starts between the start of last academic year (August 2011) and April of this year totalling 383,200, a rate of uptake which if it continued would have meant over 500,000 new apprentices, up from the previous year’s total of 457,200.

Among potential applicants for the apprenticeships making a visit to the bank, which was photographed and reported in the paper yesterday, was Sana Babar, who seven days previously had been on its front page, highlighting the plight of jobless youth with her claim to have applied for 3,000 jobs in just over a year, obtaining just four interviews.