RICHARD KELSALL, a quietly spoken 20-year-old, has always liked working with his hands. While at school, he spent summer holidays working as a stonemason and on canal boats. When nearly all of his friends went to university, he started as an apprentice at Jaguar Land Rover, a thriving carmaker, working in the paint shop while studying part-time for a degree at Warwick University. “I’ve got my own car and I support myself,” he says. “They are all having to pull out loans.”

Politicians from all the big parties agree: apprenticeships are a terrific thing. Around 440,000 people started one in 2013-14, up from 280,000 in 2009-10. That costs money: the government has a £1.5 billion ($2.3 billion) pot for covering part or all of the training costs. But politicians are united by their desire to boost them further. The Conservatives want to fund 3m apprenticeships by 2020. On February 16th the opposition Labour Party pledged to increase the number of “high-quality” ones by 80,000 a year.

Although youth unemployment is ebbing in Britain, it is still high at 14%. After the 2008 recession, youngsters without a university degree or its vocational equivalent fared especially badly (see chart). Apprenticeships would seem an excellent remedy. Several European studies have suggested that firms are more productive if lots of their workers have vocational degrees—though not necessarily more profitable. Boosters also point to lower youth unemployment in Germany and Switzerland, where apprenticeships are common. But British apprenticeships are quite different from the well-oiled machines elsewhere. Big firms such as JLR run excellent schemes that get plenty of applicants. Elsewhere standards are patchy. Continental European apprentices are often kept on for three or four years; in Britain, the minimum requirement is a year. Swiss youngsters, many of whom go on to do university degrees, know that with an apprenticeship they are getting a “world-class education”, says Stefan Wolter, a professor at the University of Bern. By contrast half of British firms surveyed for a government study in 2014 only offered Level 2 apprenticeships (the equivalent of a GCSE). More rigorous training is a boon to apprentices. Another 2014 study found that apprentices trained to a Level 3 standard (the equivalent of an A-level) experience a larger wage boost than do those who only study to Level 2; they also seem to sustain this wage premium for longer. But better schemes are costly. It takes three years and seven months for an engineering firm to recoup the costs of training an apprentice to a Level 3 standard, according to a 2012 study from the business department. By contrast, a Level 2 apprentice in retail makes money for a firm after two years and three months. Yet politicians often seem transfixed by overall numbers. Under the previous Labour government, the number of Level 2 apprenticeships soared. The coalition government has expanded adult apprenticeships: the number starting at age 25 or older has more than doubled since 2009. But some of these will be existing employees, reclassified to get government bungs.

In 2013 the government introduced a “trailblazer” system in which big employers get together to promote higher-quality schemes. Around 1,000 employers out of 100,000 that offer apprenticeships have signed up. The proportion of businesses offering Level 3 apprenticeships has increased slightly over the past year.

Still, a strong impression remains that apprenticeships are for those who have failed at school. A study from Demos, a think-tank, on March 5th found that only 32% of parents thought they would be a good idea for their children. Only one teacher told Mr Kelsall about apprenticeships; the rest were keen for all pupils to do “the whole uni thing”, he says.