As Lord Alan Sugar’s right-hand man in The Apprentice boardroom, Tim Campbell dishes out advice that can help make or break contestants’ careers.
And now the businessman, who won the first series of The Apprentice, 20 years ago, is widening his advisory role off screen by helping the nation’s teenagers – and their parents – understand the new vocational and technical qualifications on offer that could shape their future careers.
Father-of-two Campbell, who worked for Lord Sugar for two years after winning The Apprentice, and is now on the board of several different enterprises and is also involved with NHS tech and leisure industry investments, is a founding member of the T-team – a group of technical education champions set up to help parents understand more about T-levels, the technical qualifications combining classroom learning with a 45-day industry placement.
New research by Talking Futures, a Gatsby Charitable Foundation campaign to help parents get the information they need to support young people’s education and career paths, found 41% of parents of teenagers fear their children will struggle in their future career because they’re not prepared for the workplace.
And over half (53%) of 11-18-year-olds questioned felt nervous about starting work – although 78% thought a qualification including workplace experience would make them feel more confident about starting work.
“We found more than 40% of parents had no clue about what they’re going to advise their children to do, and they’re not prepared for what’s going to come around tomorrow,” says Campbell, who is about to judge candidates in the new series of The Apprentice on BBC One at the end of this month.
“That can be really disheartening for a young person who’s looking to a parent for guidance on the ever-changing world of university versus apprenticeship versus technical education pathways. It’s very confusing, and if parents are confused themselves, we’re going to get wrong choices, and sometimes we’re going to get square pegs that fit in round holes.
“This isn’t about which is better – my daughter went to university, and my son is probably going to do a vocational course. It’s different strokes for different folks. We need to give young people particularly, and also parents, more information about the ever-changing nature of the educational landscape.”
T-levels, which were launched in 2020, are recognised by both universities and employers as equivalent to three A levels. There are currently 21 courses on offer, ranging from accounting, legal services, and media, broadcast and production, to agriculture, land management and production, building services engineering for construction, and education and childcare.
Not all schools and colleges provide T-levels, but increasing numbers do – and what’s on offer where can be found at the T-levels info for parents website.
Campbell points out that Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has just unveiled plans to make the UK an AI “superpower”, and stresses: “The world of work now is very different from when my mum was telling me ‘Tim get a degree because that’s the only way you’ll make it’. Now there’s different ways to get into work, different work that’s available.
“So how are we going to get young people to prepare for this new world that we’re going into? It’s a very interesting, opportunistic time.”
The entrepreneur, 47, obtained many of the qualifications available to him when he was younger, doing what he calls “the normal route” of GCSEs, A-levels, a degree, a postgraduate degree, and a diploma at London Business School. “I was trying to get as many letters after my name as possible to make Mum happy, of course,” he says with a chuckle.
But he says he wishes T-levels were available when he was at school.
“I really do believe that, yes,” he says. “I studied psychology at university, and if I’m honest, I picked the easiest degree I thought I could get away with, to get a degree that my mum wanted me to get. And I thought it would be perfectly interesting to listen to lots of talk about play theory and everything else, and at the end of it I’d be Cracker [the 1990s TV series in which Robbie Coltrane played a criminal psychologist who worked with the police to solve crimes].
“But that was far away from the reality of what I actually went on to do, or what the reality of what the university degree pathway actually taught me.”
He points out that for teenagers who, for example, “love putting things together or fixing stuff”, but don’t want to go to university and instead want to get engineering qualifications by working their way up, there’s now an apprenticeship pathway or T-level qualification that allows it.
“I think that’s going to work much better for some young people who may not be the most academic, not because of intelligence, but because that doesn’t suit their learning style.”
He says if he could have done a T-level himself, although the forthcoming marketing course appeals to him, as do the business and construction options, “the one that really sticks out to me would probably be legal services, because I always had ambitions of being the Harvey Specter in Suits, and then I learned how much studying you have to do. So legal services as a pathway through T-levels would probably be the one that I’d have picked – and that would make Mum happy as well.”
Talking Futures has just held two pop-up installations called Technical Education Opens Doors in London and Manchester, to showcase how technical qualifications like T-levels can open doors for young people.
Parents were asked what they’d tell their younger selves to help them make the right educational choices going forward – so what would Campbell tell his younger self?
“I’d say trust yourself,” he reveals. “I spent lots of my formative years – and I hope this resonates with many people – comparing myself to others, wishing I was like other people, wishing I had other people’s stuff. And what I didn’t realise, as cliched as it is, is that comparison is the thief of joy because I had everything I needed.
“All the things I used to get told off for at school are helping me to do business on a global scale, are helping me to connect with people in a unique and rewarding way. So, if I could just go back to the younger Tim at school who was messing around and deeply upset that he was always getting detention, I’d whisper in his ear ‘Just trust yourself, you’ll be alright’.”
