It needs an apprenticeship system that allows candidates to be rigorously evaluated.

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In Germany, a successfully apprenticeship system is cited as one reason why only 8% of young people are unemployed, compared with 22% in the United Kingdom.

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And to understand how this learning process operates, it is useful to look at the greatest system ever invented for the training of skills and the achievement of tacit knowledge the apprenticeship system of the Middle Ages.

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And so they developed the apprenticeship system, in which young people from approximately the ages of twelve to seventeen would enter work in a shop, signing a contract that would commit them for the term of seven years.

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Since Mike's report was compiled Tesco, Marks and Spencer and Mothercare have all agreed to work with several other big retailers, NGOs and the Ethical Trading Initiative to back efforts to persuade the Indian government to reform the country's apprenticeship system.

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Scott Upton, vice principal of Sandwell College in Birmingham, said a formal apprenticeship is the "gold standard of vocational training" and rushing candidates through an apprenticeship programme will devalue the entire system.

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What does make a difference is having a graduated system in which teenagers slowly acquire both more skill and more freedom a driving apprenticeship.

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